Humours

In the Renaissance context: there are four essential body fluids. In Greek, Medieval, and Renaissance thought, four traditional elements constitute the basis for a theory of medicine and later psychological typology generally referred to as the theory of the four humours. This theory is the western equivalent of the Chinese five states of change.

Each of the humours were associated with various correspondences and particular physical and mental characteristics. These characteristics could also be combined in order to form more complex personality types: e.g. choleric-sanguine, etc.

The four humours are closely related to the four elements: fire, air, water, earth. Water is associated with phlegm (produced by the lungs), earth with black bile (believed to be produced by the gall or the bladder), fire with yellow bile (believed to be produced by the spleen) and air with blood (believed to be produced by the liver). Ideally, the four humours should be in balance in the body. If this was not the case, they were taken to determine people's characters in extreme ways: too much blood makes one sanguinic, too much phlegm phlegmatic. A choleric is someone with a surplus of yellow bile, while a melancholic is someone with too much black bile.

Also characteristics of personality were associated with these four humours. A Saguine person for example was described as being especially amorous, happy, generous, optimistic and irresponsible, a choleric was featured as violent, vengeful, short-tempered and ambitious. A phlegmatic person was regarded as being particularly sluggish, pallid and a coward. Someone who was described as introspective, sentimental and gluttonous was a melancholic.

Furthermore thr humours were associated with a person's complexion and body type. Sanguine people were generally believed to be red-cheeked and rather corpulent, while the typical choleric was percieved as red-haired and thin. Moreover, phlegmatic people were also believed to be corpulent contrary to the melancholic, who was depicted as sallow and thin.

The perfect temperament came into being when no one of these four humours dominated. By 1600 it was common to use the term "humour" in order to classify different characters, thus the knowledge of the humours is not only important to understanding later medieval literature and art, but it is especially important to interpreting Elizabethan drama since the theory of the four humours is a primary constitutant of the Elizabethan World Picture.

The comedy of humours (associated with Ben Jonson) has nothing to do with humour in the conventional sense, but with the four humours. It presents characters that are strongly shaped by one humour or that represent (stereo-)types. In the Restoration period Jonson's model found many admirers, among them playwright Thomas Shadwell.

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Sources

http://www.kheper.net/topics/typology/four_humours.html

http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/humours.html

Sauerbaum, Ulrich: Das elisabethanische Zeitalter. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999.