the four humours shakespeare
Heat stimulated action, cold depressed it. But it didn't actually work. The four humours were first mooted in the 5th century BC, in Greece. Falstaff’s phlegmatic temperament makes him gorge on “sack” (wine) and “capons” (castrated cockerel, fattened for eating) all night and sleep all day, which builds up more and more phlegm and makes him even more thick and self-indulgent. And they all have roughly the same number of lines. and find homework help for other Macbeth questions at eNotes The theory refers to these substances as “humors.” For ideal health, they have to be in perfect balance. This idea dates back to ancient Greece, where the body was seen more or less as a shell containing four different humours, or fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. The Use of Alchemy, Medicine and The Four Humours as Imagery In William Shakespeare’s Works. Copyright, Privacy, Accessibility, Site Map, Viewers and Players W illiam Shakespeare’s plays provide examples of all four temperaments, but it’s the cholerics who provide much of the drama.If it was all down to the brooding melancholics, the lazy phlegmatics and the friendly and pleasure-seeking sanguines, not much would happen. In order to heal the sick, balance of the four humors had to be restored. This is how Prince Hal greets him early on: “Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sac, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. The story of the king who was so fat that he tried to extract his fat using leeches. There is so little known about the real William Shakespeare. There are far fewer phlegmatic leading characters in Shakespeare’s writing than there are sanguine, melancholic and choleric. The word humor is a translation of Greek χυ… Hippocrates’ theory of the four humors basically states that the human body is made up of four substances. Find out what’s on, read our latest stories and get involved. He’d probably agree with fellow phlegmatic Sir Toby Belch: “I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.”. In the 16 th Century, the accepted science was known as Alchemy, and its four elements were believed what made the natural world. In Shakespeare’s time, the understanding of medicine and the human body was based on the theory of the four bodily humours. Falstaff imagined by artist Eduard von Grützner, 1906. Each humor was And did he write ‘humours comedy’? Greater imbalances were thought to lead to illness. 201) described the four temperaments as determined by a balance of the qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry. Phlegmatic or Phlegm is associated with water and is though of as having the physical properties cold and wet. CLICK FOR PORTRAIT OF ARISTOTLE. National Institutes of Health, Health & Human Services Understanding our personality types aides us in our journey of self-discovery. You can unsubscribe at any time using links in the emails you receive. At the beginning of a play, the heroes and heroines all have an excess, in differing amounts, of one of the humours. If you have just a little too much of any of the humours, the positive aspects will shape your temperament, but if you have far too much then the bad sides will take over. Did Shakespeare believe in the four humours? Any disability or sickness only meant that the humors weren’t balanced appropriately. above, left to right: Images from Deutsche Kalendar, 1498. This health theory existed, mainly between 490 and 430 BC. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? He became so popular that Shakespeare later wrote him his own play, ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) created characters that are among the richest and most humanly recognizable in all of literature. And did he write "humours comedy"? Courtesy National Library of Medicine. His works contains a lot of information on the contemporary medical practices of the time, but they also show the social history of medicine: how medicine formed a part of people’s lives and thoughts. 131–ca. Courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library. This classic novel provides ample opportunity for detailed character analysis of the four humors—for example, Jo is choleric, Meg is phlegmatic, Elizabeth is melancholic, and Amy is sanguine. Courtesy National Library of Medicine. It is also important to note that both people and their behaviors were categorized into these four humors in the Shakespearean times. He was revered as a great clinician. The concept of "humors" (chemical systems regulating human behaviour) became more prominent from the writing of medical theorist Alcmaeon of Croton (C. 540–500 BC). The implementation of the four humours by Shakespeare has set quite a high standard for writers of his time and an even higher standard for those who seek psychological realism in … Shakespeare and the four humours Blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile: the body’s four humours were believed to control your personality in Shakespeare’s day and influenced the way the Bard created some of his most famous characters. New York: Signet Classics, 1986. left: Thomas Elyot, Castel of Helth, 1541. Hippocrates (400 to 300 BC) believed that the human body was divided into four fluids or humours–blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Freedom of Information Act, NLM Customer Support, Last updated: 19 September 2013First published: 30 January 2012. Yet Shakespeare understood human personality in the terms available to his age—that of the now-discarded theory of the four bodily humors—blood, bile, melancholy, and phlegm. According to the theory of the four humors, the substances that make up the human body are… The Four Humours was a method of seeing what kind of disease you had and why. It is something peculiar to the Elizabethan audience he was writing for. Organized around the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire; the four qualities of cold, hot, moist, and dry; and the four humors, these physical qualities determined the behavior of all created things including the human body. above: Henry Peacham, “Sanguis,” Minerva Britanna, 1612. above left: Aristotle, De Animalibus, ca 1225. The Four Humors. Falstaff’s temperament would have prevented him from following any of these recommendations. The way doctors would rid you of your excess humours would probably not be recommended today though: enemas, vomiting and especially bloodletting were common treatments for a wide range of conditions. The four humours were based on theories of Ancient Greece and Rome. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894 Woodcut of two men drinking, over-consuming and vomiting. So the play itself is very close to the ideal humoral balance. (third image) The hot, dry man of choler furiously beats the woman kneeling helplessly at his feet. The young warrior’s choler gave him courage but phlegm produced cowards. These elements were believed to make up the human bodily fluids which linked to human temperament known as the four humours. At the beginning of the play, Falstaff and Prince Hal are great friends. Elizabethans adopted the ancient theory that the body was composed of four humours : blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Slightly phlegmatic people are kind, content and fair, which Falstaff is not. Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE) identified the classic four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—as the building blocks of the universe. Born in Pergamon, Roman physician and philosopher Galen (ca. All the temperaments have their good and bad sides. Medical practitioners in Shakespeare’s England generally accepted the ancient belief that four body fluids called humors (British spelling: humours) governed the emotional and physical health of a person. Organized around the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire; the four qualities of cold, hot, moist, and dry; and the four humors, these physical qualities determined the behavior of all created things including the human body. The notion transferred readily into a range of senses to do with temperament, mood, inclination, and manner of action ( humour ( n .) The four humours were blood, yellow bile, black bile (or melancholy) and phlegm. Shakespeare’s writing is one of the most important sources for the knowledge we have about medicine in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The four humors were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Courtesy National Library of Medicine. Besides Falstaff, who has the largest number of lines in ‘Henry IV’, they usually function in the subplot of the comedies, like the duos Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch in ‘Twelfth Night’ or Stephano and Trinculo in ‘The Tempest’. above center: Hippocrates, De Humoribus, 1525. I'm not sure that this reference to the four "humours" is something peculiar to Shakespeare that you must comprehend in order to grasp the meaning of the other plays. William Shakespeare: profile. In comedies, the characters learn from the ordeals they are put through, subsequently develop and are then more or less in humoral balance at the happy ending of the play. Four substances in the body known as humours - blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile - were thought to control the health and temperament of every individual. In tragedies, the characters usually start out with a normal excess of their temperamental humour, but thru their actions and reactions their excess is built up, leading to more and more extreme behaviour until all hope of restoring balance is lost. Did Shakespeare believe in the four humours? William Shakespeare: The Conspiracy Theories. In the human body, the interaction of the four humors explained differences of age, gender, emotions, and disposition. 460 BCE–370 BCE) is often credited with developing the theory of the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm—and their influence on the body and its emotions. Drawing, c.1793. (first image) The hot, moist man representing the sanguine temperament is depicted as an active wooer embracing a woman. Courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library. above: Henry Peacham, “Cholera,” Minerva Britanna, 1612. In ‘Henry IV’, parts one and two, there are four main characters, one of each temperament. Courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library. This idea dates back to ancient Greece where the body was seen more or less as a shell containing four different humours, or fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile … The cold, dry temperament was considered the least desirable of the four, yet melancholy was also traditionally associated with genius and the life of scholarship. What he should be doing is trying to restore the balance by switching to a warming and drying diet and engaging in warming and drying activities. Courtesy National Library of Medicine. Greek physician Hippocrates (ca. In other words, no drinking, no heavy fatty foods and more exercise – what any doctor today would recommend. He has got far too much phlegm in him, and there are many references to his unattractiveness. above: Henry Peacham, “Melancolia,” Minerva Britanna, 1612. To address these questions it is necessary first to review Renaissance humoral theory, derived from Galen and Hippocrates, which held that a human body contains four principal fluids, each of which corresponds to the one of the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water. These characters also can be compared to Shakespeare … Later, the Four Humors theory of temperament was discredited, but was expanded upon by researcher and psychologist David Keirsey in his Temperament Sorter. These were in balance in a healthy person. (second image) A cold, moist phlegmatic couple prefer retirement and leisure, signified here by music. A medieval German woodcut depicts the temperaments of the cold and dry qualities of the melancholic disposition, which were associated with old age, retentiveness, and scholarship, like the old man depicted here with his head resting on a table. The influence of the humors changed with the seasons and times of day and with the human life span. We use a third party provider, dotdigital, to deliver our newsletters. Blood had “preeminence” over the other humors because it was in the blood that melancholy, phlegm, and choler were delivered to the other parts of the body. The four bodily humors were part of Shakespearean cosmology, inherited from the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. If blood dominates, you will have a sanguine temperament; yellow bile makes you choleric; black bile melancholic; and phlegm leads you to being phlegmatic. The four bodily humors were part of Shakespearean cosmology, inherited from the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. Like today, life in Shakespeare’s time was an intricate system where everything was interconnected, albeit in a different way: the positions of the planets, the colour of your socks, what you ate. The key to good health (and being a good person) is to keep your humours in balance. The Humors Influence the Mood, Behavior, And Health of Characters. Presentation for our World Literature classBy Kevin Li, Angus Huang, and Ren Makino Image from ‘Histoires Prodigieuses’, by Pierre Boaistuau, The free museum and library from Wellcome, Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). The presocratic philosopher Empedocles established the fourfold division of the universe; and since humans are part of the universe, the division applied to us too. 1 -- 4 ), regarded as permanent or alterable features of behaviour. This theory, however, has its roots in Hippocrates. Four humours were recognized: blood, phlegm, choler (also called yellow bile), and melancholy (also called black bile or black choler). Here he describes sickness as an imbalance—or distemperature—in the quantity or quality of one of the four bodily humors. The four humours Shakespeare in context Elizabethans believed that health and temperament were connected to four fluids that were contained within the human body. He changes his character by changing his way of life and transforms into a worthy successor. CLICK FOR PORTRAIT OF GALEN. Courtesy National Library of Medicine. The Four Humours Written by: Stephaniex4 During the sixteenth-century, the four humours was the basis of medicine. For information about how we handle your data, please read our privacy notice. For readers of Walkington’s text, “temperament” (what we would call personality) was literally a matter of temperature—the result of the action of cold, hot, wet, and dry in governing behavior. Many of Shakespeare's best-known characters were influenced by the theory, including Falstaff, Hamlet and Lady Macbeth. Slight imbalances, favoring a specific humor, were thought to result in specific personality types. In tragedies they may appear in short scenes of comic relief, like the porter in ‘Macbeth’ who messes things up by being drunk on duty. The Four Humors of Shakespeare The metabolic agents of the four elements in the human body Needed to be balanced and pure in order to maintain proper health By: Mikayla and Sierra The basis for the theory of medicine and psychology Sanguine/Blood Choleric/Yellow Bile In Shakespeare’s England, mental illness was closely tied to the mystical, ... Medical explanations of the time asserted that illnesses were a product of imbalances in the body, corresponding to the four humours: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. Jack Falstaff is fat, lazy, cowardly, dishonest and sentimental, but the audience loved him despite all his faults. One play really stands out when it comes to the subject of humours. Some authors suggest that the concept of "humours" may have origins in Ancient Egyptian medicine or Mesopotamia, though it was not systemized until ancient Greek thinkers. There’s a certain thrill present in discovering what “type of person” we are. T: +44 (0)20 7611 2222E: info@wellcomecollection.org, Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. above right: Galen, De temperamentis libri tres, 1545. King Henry IV himself is melancholic, Prince Hal sanguine, Sir Harry Hotspur choleric and the knight Sir John Falstaff is phlegmatic. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) created characters that are among the richest and most humanly recognizable in all of literature. Though modern readers no longer believe in the four humors of Galenic naturalism—blood, choler, melancholy, and phlegm—early modern thought found in these bodily fluids key to explaining human emotions and behavior. Youth was hot and moist, age cold and dry. The word only developed its modern association with being funny in the late 17th century. Courtesy Pierpont Morgan Library. Men as a sex were hotter and drier than women. His list of humours was longer and included fundamental elements described by Empedocles, such as water, air, earth, etc. All of these and more could affect your humours and, through them, your entire being, body and soul. Melancholy is the most complex of emotions for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as it was for the ancients. Research the structure and function of the human body through our anatomy archive, Immerse yourself in the medieval past and explore what we have in common with the Middle Ages, Architecture affects our health in profound ways. To address these questions, this chapter suggests that humoral theory is intimately bound up with early modern ideas of selfhood, not merely as a metaphor, but as a literal understanding of the processes at work in cognition, emotion, and selfhood. above: Henry Peacham, “Phlegma,” Minerva Britanna, 1612. Blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile: the body’s four humours were believed to control your personality in Shakespeare’s day and influenced the way the Bard created some of his most famous characters. Shakespeare uses the word many times: in sonnet 91 he writes “Every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,/ Wherein it finds a joy above the rest”. Yet Shakespeare understood human personality in the terms available to his age—that of the now-discarded theory of the four bodily humors –blood, bile, melancholy, … The phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments have a lot in common. The four bodily humors were part of Shakespearean cosmology, inherited from the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. left: Thomas Walkington, Optick Glasse of Humors, 1639. The “glasse” in the title of University of Cambridge cleric Thomas Walkington’s Optick Glasse of Humors is a mirror. Many people associate the theory of the four humors with Shakespeare. The four humours, also known… Phlegmatic people are often calm, patient, reliable and passive. However, everyone has a natural excess of one of the humours, which is what makes us all look unique and behave differently. Medicine in Shakespeare’s England followed the theory of the ‘humours’. Tudor humanist Thomas Elyot (1490–1546) wrote The Castel of Helth as an accessible introduction to the basic concepts of ancient Greek and Roman medicine. Nelly Ekström is a Visitor Experience Assistant, bringing the galleries and exhibitions to life. Each one corresponded to an element and a quality. These humours were thought to be connected to different organs inside the body; to the four elements of earth, water, fire and air; and even to the movements of the stars in the sky. Organized around the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire; the four qualities of cold, hot, moist, and dry; and the four humors, these physical qualities determined the behavior of all created things including the human body. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in particular, is taken as a … It is hardly surprising therefore that plenty of theories about our most famous bard and his work have arisen. As such, the way to treat these diseases was to regain that balance. The reader is promised greater self-knowledge through understanding the role of the four bodily humors in determining individual human behaviors and overall disposition. Courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library. However, the four humours theory scattered around up until the eighteenth-century. Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of day.”.