An Image of the Times. Nils-Johan Jorgensen
had its origin in the cold and dry element Earth and combined ‘leannesse with hardnesse of skynne’ and he appears with a white or ‘duskish’ colour of skin, his dreams would be ‘fearfull’ and he would give a ‘tymerous’ impression. He would rarely be seen ‘lawghynge’ and his angry mood would be ‘longe and frettinge’.
Elyot introduces the term Humours into his work much in the sense later coined by John Jones as ‘the sonnes of Elements’, existing in the body as a kind of elemental hormones. The health of a person would depend on a fair balance of the four humours and any distortion of their distribution would upset the harmony of the body. Elyot goes on to introduce a distinction between natural and unnatural humours as when a specific humour get mixed up and is contaminated by one or more of the others. The sanguine humour escapes the distortion of the other humours and ranks as the natural captain in Elyot’s team of four. After all, Blood is ‘the treasure of life’.
‘Ages be foure’ in Elyot’s system links up with the principle of decorum of age in the Horatian theory. Horace had outlined the decorous behaviour of the four stages of man and Elyot adds the prevailing elemental qualities of the different ages. Together the two approaches promote an understanding of the psychological changes of age: ‘The man, whiche is sanguine, the more that he draweth into age wherby naturell moisture decayeth, the more is he colerike.’ Even the otherwise favourable sanguine humour does not escape unnatural distortion in old age. The four humours also related to the four seasons and Elyot explored this relationship in great detail for each humour, even with exact dates for their abundance and decline.
Anatomy and medical science associated with Renaissance cosmography and the word anatomy was used to demonstrate any physical or abstract quality. Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is an example of this use. A similar application is apparent in Simion Grahame’s The Anatomie of Humours and John Donne’s eulogy, ‘An Anatomy of the World’. The contemporary language was ‘anatomiz’d’ and the characteristics of, for example, folly, vanity, absurdity, wit, fortune, baseness and abuse were expressed in terms of anatomy. Henry Hutton’s, Follies Anatomie, T. Garzoni’s The Hospitall of Incurable Fools, Richard Braithwaite’s Times Curtaine Drawne, or the Anatomie of Vanitie, Thomas Nashe’s The Anatomie of Absurditie, John Lyly’s The Anatomie of Wit, Robert Greene’s The Anatomie of Fortune, John Andrewes’, The Anatomie of Basenesse and Philip Stubbe’s The Anatomie of Abuses are examples of the popular application of the term.
‘De corpore politico’ like Man’s body needed a diagnosis before a cure could be suggested. John Taylor’s peace pamphlet, ‘The Causes of the Diseases and Distempers of this Kingdom’, illustrates the application of medical terms to the state. We also find contemporary medical satires like ‘A Cure for the State’ which set out to find medical prescriptions for political disturbances. The word body is used as a collective term for the art of warfare in R. Elton’s The Compleat Body of the Art Military. The Church was included as body theologie and John Taylor’s Rare Physick for the Church sick of an Ague demonstrates neatly the extension of medical analogies. There are still stirrings of the old analogies in terms like governing body, in the Prime Minister’s image of himself as the family doctor and in a recent book title, The Elements of Eloquence.83
When Shakespeare and Jonson began to write they had at hand a humoral theory that looked like this:
The elements were found in the universe as Earth, Water, Air and Fire, each element possessed two of the four primary qualities Cold, Moisture, Dryness and Heat. The four humours or complexions were the children of the elements. The melancholic humour was cold and dry like earth, formed by the gall bladder and a constituent of black bile; the phlegmatic humour was cold and moist like water, formed in the lungs and a constituent of phlegm; the choleric humour was like fire, hot and dry, formed in the spleen and a constituent of yellow bile; the sanguine humour was like air, hot and moist, formed in the liver and a constituent of blood. Each ‘roving humour’ was mingled and carried with the blood in the body. Each humour would cause distinct physical characteristics, change during the seven ages of man and be affected by food and drink. Women were seen as phlegmatic, but the playwrights made memorable exceptions. The Germans were viewed as very choleric, and the Frenchmen were seen as phlegmatic, slow and weak.84 The climate of the northern nations was moist and cold but the qualities of the people were ‘ample, strong, courageous, martiall, bold’.85 There is a slight paradox here as they were given choleric elements in spite of the phlegmatic climate. Fortinbras (in Hamlet) enters the stage as a very resolute and choleric Norwegian character.
The Elizabethans thought that the right blend of the humours would establish the supreme character, just as the alchemist believed that a perfect metallic blend would give gold. The state of a perfect balance and harmony of the elements or humours was very rarely found in Man but the ideal established a contrast to the living reality of the four humours. The perfect, well-balanced temperament was very rare. Brutus in Julius Caesar and Mercury in Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels fits the elusive perfection:
A creature of a most perfect and divine temper. One, in whom the humours and elements are peacably met, without emulation of precedencie: he is neither to phantastickely melancholy, too slowly phlegmaticke, too lightly sanguine, or too rashly cholericke, but in all so composde & order’d, as it is cleare, Nature went about some ful worke, she did more then make a man, when she made him.86
The two most extrovert humours and characters were the sanguine and the choleric while the melancholic and the phlegmatic clearly listed towards introversion. The sanguines were generous, brave, merry and amourous (‘his red lips, after fights, are fit for Ladies’).87 This humour was close to the feeling and thinking heart. As the sun was the heart of the world, the heart was the sun of the body, the seat and fountain of life, of joy, grief, anger and love. The cholerics were bold, ambitious, rash, arrogant and lecherous (‘crosse not my humor, with an ill plac’d worde, for if thou doest, behold my fatall sworde’).88 The phlegmatics were slow, lazy, cowardly and witless, but also amiable and good-tempered. The melancholics were the ‘fullest of varietie of passion’89 and appeared unsociable, suspicious, jealous, revengeful and amorous.
The psychological effects of the four humours, the ‘phisiognomie of the body humaine’ was neatly summed up in 1592:
The blood maketh men moderate, merry, pleasant, fayre, and of a ruddy colour, which he (i.e. Arcandam) called sanguine men. The fleame maketh men sloathfull, sluggish, negligent …and soone to have grave hayres. The choler maketh them angry, prompt of wit, nimble, inconstant, leane and of quick digestion. The melancholic humor which as it were the substance, the bottome, and lees of the blood maketh men rude, churlish, careful, sad, avaritious, deceivers, traytors, envious, fearful, weake hearted and dreamning, and imagining evill things, vexed with the trouble of the minde, as though they were haunted with a malignant spirite. These humours then may be referred unto the Phisiognomie: for by them a manne may know the naturall inclination of men.90
A hot, dry, moist and cold temperament and a sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholy humour were synonymic. An Elizabethan could speak of an earthly temperament and a melancholy humour, a melancholy element and a dry humour and have essentially the same image. Robert Burton later confirmed that ‘these four humours have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages in man’.91
The terms decorum and humour applied to two distinct spheres of human thought; decorum was a central idea in ethics and aesthetics and the humour proper was a well-defined descriptive term in medicine (and psychology). The antique interchange between science, philosophy, theology and art gave quality to the union of decorum and humour and it also distinguishes the relationship between the two theories in the Renaissance. Hippocrates explored and defined the humoral theory but he also produced a treatise on decorum with special reference to the character and conduct of the phycisian. Aristotle had laid down the principle of decorum in De Poetica and Rhetorica and he compiled a medical treatise that observed the humoral theory. His friend Theophrastus obeyed the moral and medical theories in creating the social types of his character sketches, incorporating decorum and humour