Black Bile and other Humors

Elizabethan psychology was a direct descendent of the theory of humors that originated with the Ancient Greeks. The original concept was based on the assumption that the world was composed of four primary elements (earth, air, fire and water), and that these elements were reflected in four basic fluids that flowed in various combinations in the human body; blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Of these, black bile determines the disposition toward melancholy, and the word itself "melancholy" comes directly from the Greek for "black bile."

By Shakespeare's time, a complex structure of medical theory had been superimposed on the concept of humors, but the basic theory remained very much the same.

When Shakespeare, Burton and other Renaissance writers gave melancholy the complex meanings and associations it has in their work, they were drawing on a tradition that had been developing throughout classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, and whose diverse origins made it an especially fruitful subject for literature.
 - Bridget Gellert Lyons, Voices of Melancholy, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1971. p.1.

A person's psychological disposition was the direct result of the proportions of the four basic fluids in the body.

The body of man has in itself, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile; these make up the nature of his body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. Pain if felt when one of these elements is in defect or excess, or is isolated in the body without being compounded in the body with all the others.
 - Hipporcates, The Nature of Man, trans. W.H.S.Jones, Loeb Classical Library, London, 1931, v.IV. pp. 11-13.

Over time, the humors came to be associated with a cosmology that extended the human body far beyond its original confines. Each of them represented such things as the seasons, organs, planets, cardinal directions, etc. in addition to psychological attributes. The following two charts, give a sense of the elements associated with the various humors.

Humor
Element
Season
Attributes
Organ
Sanguine
blood
air
spring
hot and wet
sweet
red
liver
Choleric
yellow bile
fire
summer
hot and dry
bitter
yellow
gall
Melancholic
black bile
earth
autumn
cold and dry
sour
black
spleen
Phlegmatic
phlegm
water
winter
cold and wet
tasteless
white
lungs or
kidneys

Humor
Planets
Functions
Directions
Attitude
Sanguine
Jupiter
nourish fleshy parts and warm the body
south
cheerfulness
simplicity
Choleric
Mars
provoke the expulsion of excrement
east
rashness
anger
Melancholic
Saturn
nourish the bones gristle and sinews
north
sadness
contrariness
deliberation
Phlegmatic
Venus or
the Moon
nourish the brain and kidneys
west
heaviness
foolishness

I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind
is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
 II.ii.388

Audiences familiar with the humors and the variety of signifiers attached to each of them will find numerous references to them throughout Hamlet. In the above line, for example, Hamlet uses the relationship of the humors to the cardinal points of the compass and the winds emanating from them to make a mockery of this mode of analysis.

In addition to the various planets, directions, seasons, elements, etc., there is also a mythological heritage attached to each element. The reference to melancholy as a Saturnine humor, for example, goes beyond the association of the humor to the planet, Saturn. Saturn is the Roman manifestation of the ancient Kronos; once the ruler of the Titans during their Golden Age. As such, he became the god of agriculture. Subsequently, however, he was overthrown and castrated by his son Zeus and the Olympians and imprisoned in a dark place deep in the earth. Kronos is also associated with Chronus, the god of time, and as such is seen as a representation of old age and death. The cold and dry attributes of melancholy are also considered representative of the condition of old age.

Such a system of associations provides the basis for a large number of symbolic connections throughout the play.