Humours

In the Renaissance context: the four essential body fluids.

The four humours are closely related to the four elements (fire, air, water, earth). Water is associated with phlegm (produced in the lungs), earth with black bile, fire with yellow bile and air with blood. Ideally, the four humours should be in balance in the body. If not, they determine people's characters: too much blood makes one sanguinic, too much phlegm phlegmatic. A choleric is someone with a surplus of yellow bile; a melancholic someone with too much black bile.

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.