The humors were thought to influence a person's temperament and soundness of mind and body. If out of balance, fluids in the body could determine what was dominating a person. These temperaments included melancholy, which related to black bile, phlegmatic, which related to phlegm, sanguine, which related to blood, and choleric, which related to yellow bile. Each of these also corresponded to an element of nature. In order of them being already addressed these were earth, water, air, and fire.

While the idea of there being four humors originated with Aristotle, Empedocles expanded on the theory in 450 BC, saying that they needed to be in balance, and it was Galen in On the Constitution of Man that reported they corresponded temperaments and could be used to treat illnesses.

Playwrights used the idea of the four humors to inform the characters they created. Since order and balance were so important to people in the Renaissance period, playwrights would often use the humors being out of balance to explain how disorder within a person or disorder in a situation would erupt. Man with his humors in balance was thought to be closer to the pre fall state of mankind, and so any imperfections of characters were a clue something washout of tune.

Oftentimes food or diets were prescribed to help tune the humors, but music was also thought to have a balancing effect. In your plays, look for characters that reflect out of balance humors and look for references to fluids or to the elements being out of balance.

The prevailing view of physiology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (until William Harvey in the 17th century) was that the human body, and the personality of any person, was contolled by five liquids or humours in the body, such as blood, phlegm, bile, etc.  Each personality was was controlled by the “humour” that dominated that person—(from which we get such terms as “phlegmatic,” “sanguine,” etc.  Playwrights, especially Ben Jonson, made use of these stereotypes as characters in his plays.  Every Man in His Humour (1601?) was a comedy that portrayed characters (Knowell and his son) in balance with their dominating humour; Every Man Out of His Humour (1599?.  These dates are in scholarly question).was a play about the effects of being at odds with one’s natural “humour.”  The plays are most well known for being a part of “The War of the Theatres” in which several contemporaries of Jonson’s (including Shakespeare and Dekker) are parodied and ridiculed.