What are Shakespeare's 4 humors?

Answer 1

Classical medical theory said that our temperament and physical appearance was governed by our bodily fluids or humours, in particular the fluids blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. A person dominated by blood was said to be sanguine, a person dominated by phlegm was said to be phelgmatic, black bile made you melancholic and yellow bile made you choleric. Medical theory of that time said that if you were too sanguine, blood should be taken out of your system as a cure.

The ancients associated particular personalities with the four humours: sanguine people were passionate but happy; choleric people were hot-tempered and quarrelsome; phlegmatic people were calm and content; melancholic people were depressed and miserable. See the related link. This theory naturally suggested character types for plays; playwrights made use of them to create their characters. Indeed a play of Ben Jonson's is called Every Man in His Humour (Shakespeare acted in this play). Shakespeare has Hamelt say to the players "the humourous man shall end his part in peace". A "humourous man" is a character dominated by one of the humours, such as Jaques in As You Like It, who was melancholic.

Answer 2

Shakespeare's 4 humours are

Choleric

Melancholy

Phlegmatic

Sanguine

These were originally attached to medicine in greek times, but soon became attached to psychology, and in turn personalities in which everyone adhered to. Shakespeare liked that people could be classified like this, and would write certain parts of scripts to attract just one type.

Answer 3

Paris is sanguine; he's a pretty upbeat guy.

Answer 4

I'd say she's pretty sanguine.