the four humors hamlet

Create your account. Centaury(Centaurium erythraea)was a traditional bitter tonic used for treating choleric digestive issues (Osborn, 2015). In our role as herbalists to support the body using natures gifts, may we remember the wisdom given to us by our ancestral teachers. (2019). The humours affect your whole being, from your health and feelings to your looks and actions. He has got far too much phlegm in him, and there are many references to his unattractiveness. Hamlet's stubbornness is one of the survival tactics he has developed to counter his own reluctance to kill Claudius. spacious in the possession of dirt." Thought to be produced in the stomach, phlegm was associated with moisture and with winter. 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 peoples lives and thoughts. These humours in turn were composed of four qualities (hot, dry, cold and . 2 With reference to this element of humor in the play of The temperament is sanguine, meaning optimistic even in challenging situations, as well as patient, balanced, and thoughtful. Severe melancholia, what today would probably be called clinical depression, is also the most frequently mentioned mental illness in Elizabethan literature. People who had too much blood, proportionally speaking, were said to have a sanguine temperament. Speaking of the king, Hamlet's humor To cure an imbalance of yellow bile, patients were sometimes told to starve themselves. Hippocrates' temperamental approach draws striking similarities to the Kiersey temperaments, Jungian types, DISC, as well as Socionics. Yet Shakespeare understood personality and health in the terms available to his agethat of the now-discarded theory of the four bodily humors. Understanding the concepts of each humour helped ancient herbalists categorize sickness and identify the proper herbs for the individual, much like we do today. The four humors were identified as black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. (Original work published 165-175 CE), Gill, N.S. What is the humoral theory. Herbs that support this imbalance include pungent, stimulating, and aromatic herbs, such fenugreek (. . 359-365.) From Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakesperean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear by Alexander W. Crawford. In Europe, the theory remained widespread for centuries and still had its adherents as late as the 1800s. Regardless of how different ancient civilizations developed their systems of medicine, it is both impressive and reassuring that many of these concepts overlapsignifying the universal truths of wellness and the use of herbs across both time and distance. Another Greek physician, Galen, connected the humors to temperament and personality. 185 BCE). Death by poisoning features in six of Shakespeares plays, and is the third most common cause of Shakespearean death, after stabbing and beheading. Hippocratic method and the four humors [Blog Post]. Phlegm was another important component of humorism. ), who greatly emphasized their validity in his extensive writings, thus establishing them as a dominant practice well into the Middle Ages (McKeown, 2017). 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. Find out whats on, read our latest stories and get involved. Cesare Ripa, 1610. We may call it herb of grace o Sundays. Humoral theory is based on beliefs that ancient civilizations developed thousands of years ago. The humours (1) The humours each had associated physical and mental characteristics; the result was a system that was quite subtle in its capacity for describing types of personality. In addition to age, gender, diet, and a host of other factors, humors were even thought to be connected to appearance. Humor and madness do not travel the same road. show credit information for image 'Astrological man, 1503', show credit information for image 'Woodcut of drinking and vomiting', show credit information for image 'Falstaff, Eduard von Grtzner, 1906', show credit information for image 'Image from Histoires Prodigieuses, by Pierre Boaistuau', Image from Histoires Prodigieuses, by Pierre Boaistuau, Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. It was the dominant medical theory of the Medieval period. . Similarly, the four humours loosely correspond to the wheel of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Nelly Ekstrm is a Visitor Experience Assistant, bringing the galleries and exhibitions to life. The 4 humors corresponded in their natures to earth, air, fire, and waterthe 4 elements of which all matter was composed, according the Greek philosopher Empedocles, a contemporary of Hippocrates. What a person ate was thought to change the balance of these humors, and even specific flavors were thought to influence humors. They correspond to real substances produced within the body; but the properties ascribed to them by ancient physicians, and the functions they were said to perform in human health starting with the idea that the stuff in your veins was a mixture of all four were largely speculative. Hamlet was written in the early 17th century around 1600 or 1601 and first performed in 1602. Shakespeare belongs to you. The belief that blood, yellow bile, black bile, 1) Heat and moisture was the most suitable for the preservation of health. Curator Gail Kern Paster explains "The four humors were an early typology for human personality. Article in The Love might have the same effect: passion heats the body and causes the moisture inside to vaporise and all this hot, moist air escapes your body through lovesick sighs. Deception in Hamlet 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. provides an opportunity to more deeply understand the evolution of medicine throughout the history of humankind. It is very likely that Shakespeare created these humoral parallels deliberately, as he would have been very familiar with the kinds of personalities and treatments delineated by humoral theory. Disease - whether malaria or cancer or epilepsy - was a skid along a slippery continuum. Retrieved from https://www.passionsandtempers.com, Galen (2003). Hamlet is arguably the most famous literary melancholic, demonstrating an excess of black bile - one of the four humours thought to govern bodies in Shakespeare's time. The body was a system of four fluid "humours": black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. The four major fluids in the bodyyellow bile, phlegm, black bile and bloodwhich the Greeks believed corresponded to the four elementsfire, water, earth and airin the universe. All diseases and disabilities resulted from an excess or deficit of one of these four humors. Ageing was in itself seen as a process of gradual drying of the flesh and cooling of bodily humours. Humoral theory meant that the effect of an imbalance of the humors would cause predictable changes in a person's behavior and health. The four humours were: phlegm blood yellow bile black bile If the humours stayed in balance then a person remained healthy, but if there was too much of one humour then illness occurred. Often compared to sap in plants, blood is responsible for the foundation of life. Plants could, like everything else around us, be divided into the four categories according to their qualities and effects on the human body: heating, chilling, drying or moisturising. These fluidsproduced by the body's organs and tissueswere black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. This is the humour of regeneration and is supported by herbs that are either cooling and drying to help regulate blood, such as agrimony (Agrimonia spp. The bodys supply of blood diminishes as you approach the final coldness and dryness of death, so it was seen as a part of life to grow a bit melancholic towards the end of your life (see Henry IV, Shylock and King Lear). In Act V, Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes and Queen Gertrude are all poisoned, and Hamlets father is, of course, murdered by the dripping of poison in his ear before the play even begins. A natural excess of black bile could make you cautious and analytical. (V. ii. The four seasons spring, summer, autumn and winter paralleled the four humors blood/sanguine, yellow bile/choleric, phlegm/phlegmatic and black bile/melancholic, which in turn paralleled the four elements air, fire, water and earth. Although hes young, he still ticks all the boxes. Choler was much more acceptable in men than in women, which is part of why Kate has to be ''tamed'' over the course of the play. The amount of blood an individual had depended on their gender, age, diet, and health, as well as the time of year and other factors. He has given Hamlet nearly all varieties of humor, from the playful to the sardonic. Theres rue for you, and heres some for me. 13 chapters | In some cases, humors were even associated with different zodiac signs. endstream endobj 110 0 obj <>>> endobj 111 0 obj <. In Shakespeares time, the understanding of medicine and the human body was based on the theory of the four bodily humours. William Shakespeare notably used humoral theory in his plays as a way to describe his characters in terms that would have been familiar to his audience. Its a choice that has to be made in every production of it: how mad is he really? It was classified among other types of mental illness of its time, like mania, phrenitis, frenzy, lunacy and demoniacal possession. Loeb Classical Library. People with too much phlegm were considered to be phlegmatic, a term dating back to Galen. The four main characters of the two plays each represent one of the four temperaments. As a class review the two handouts and tell students that they are to examine closely Hamlet's temperament during the exposition and rising action part of the play's dramatic structure. If Hamlet does not really go mad under his unparalleled griefs and burdens it is because under all circumstances his grim and tragic humor holds evenly the balance of his mind. The four humors, or bodily fluids, thought to impact humans' temperaments, personalities, and health were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Loeb Classical Library. The theory of the four humours was central to the teachings of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. Strong passions, like the mourning over a dead family member, the betrayal of a friend or a lost love, could affect the levels of your humours. Harry Hotspur is choleric, his anger motivating his actions; finally, Falstaff is phlegmatic and unwilling to act at all. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. All rights reserved. %PDF-1.7 % ), stinging nettle (Urtica dioicia), and yarrow (Achillea Millefoliium), or herbs that are warming and moistening to nourish and increase blood flow, such as linden (Tilia), chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), and hawthorn (Crataegus spp.). moment again that "it is very sultry and hot." Hamlet: Problem Play and Revenge Tragedy Having an excess of one humour could be a bit of a vicious cycle: it both causes and is caused by your behaviour. Herbs that support an imbalance in this humour include plants with bitter qualities, which cool and detoxify the body. The union of. Sasha Blakeley has a Bachelor's in English Literature from McGill University and a TEFL certification. I would definitely recommend Study.com to my colleagues. At the beginning of the play, Falstaff and Prince Hal are great friends. On One of the things that Petruchio does in order to make his new wife less angry is to deprive her of food, which was in line with the acceptable treatment for choleric temperaments at the time. Shakespeare knew the use and meaning of plants as well as anyone and his writing contains a great number of references to plants, flowers, herbs and spices. The physic garden or patch, would be as important to the household as the kitchen garden, and it was common knowledge how these plants and herbs were used. ), In the graveyard scene with the clowns Hamlet indulges freely in a grim and melancholy humor. The humours affect your bodily and mental health alike, and what you do with your body and mind will in turn affect the levels of your humours. A later Greek physician, Galen, suggested that the humors could predict moods and temperaments. These four humours, from the Greek word chymos or bodily fluid, helped ancient healers effectively explain disease and help those seeking medical treatment with appropriate recommendations, becoming a practice that would survive well into the Middle Ages (Galen, 165-175/2003). ( hot, dry, cold and medical theory of the king, Hamlet 's humor cure. Have a sanguine temperament adherents as late as the 1800s were an early typology for personality! 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