WEBVTT

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This is editor of The Shakespeare Quarterly,

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which is the leading scholarly journal devoted to Shakespeare, published by the Folger Shakespeare

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Library in association with the George Washington University,

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where she was a professor of English and taught since 1974 and had taught since 1974.

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She's the author of numerous scholarly articles and three books, including The Idea of the City

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in the Age of Shakespeare in 19, 1986 and The Body, Embarrassed Drama and the Disciplines of

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Shame in Early Modern England in 1993. Her latest book, Humoring the Body

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Emotions in the Shakespearean Stage, was published by the University of

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Chicago Press in the fall of 2004, and she recently wrote The Introduction to Shakespeare,

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The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard, published by Encyclopedia Britannica in 2007.

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Please welcome her.

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First of all, let me apologize for making you wait. I was. I didn't realize really quite the

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number of security hurdles I would have to leap before I would get here.

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But I am delighted to be here and I want to thank Michael and Steve Greenberg for inviting me.

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And I want to thank all of you for coming here today. I've actually myself used the

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National Library of Medicine, although clearly not recently and in doing my own research.

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And perhaps some of you have been to the Folger Library to do some of your research.

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But I certainly would want, as the director of the library, to invite you to come to the library,

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not just for research purposes, but for for the many, many programs

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that we that we offer the public. Right now we have an exhibition called

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Breaking News on the birth of the newspaper. It was just, yeah, it there was just a little a

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piece about it in the post. It's going to be up for the next until the end of the month.

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It's a wonderful exhibition and Winter's Tale is starting in our theater in February.

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And we would just be so delighted to have you come and join us.

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Now I'm speaking to you informally today, and really I'm speaking to you not as

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the director of the Folger, but in my capacity as Shakespeare scholar with,

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as Michael's introduction suggested, a specialized interest in the cultural

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history of the body and an even more specialized interest in the theory of the

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of the four humors and and particularly using the theory of the four humors as

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a way of reading early modern texts.

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Now for me that has meant reading the texts,

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the dramatic texts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

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But would I like to persuade you today

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is that the theory of the four humors

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is actually remarkably versatile and a

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useful lens with which you can really

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approach most of the texts of this period, although I think it does take learning

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to hear or listen for the cues now. The mantra for my enterprise today

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comes from the brilliant historian of science at Harvard, Shigehisa Kuriyama,

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who has written, and I quote Kuriyama quote, The history of the body is a history

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of the ways of inhabiting the world, UN quote. And what I would add to what I consider

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to be a wise and wonderful phrase is, is my own addition. And that would be the history of the

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body is also a history of the ways of being inhabited by the world. Now,

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the humors are a huge part of what

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that means of both inhabiting the world and being inhabited by the world.

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And this is really what I want to talk to you about today. Now just as a reminder.

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And for some of you this may be as familiar as your own face. And for some of you,

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maybe you do need a little bit of reminder about the theory of the four humors,

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but it was really it came from the ancients and certainly was formulated by Galen,

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who proposed the existence of four bodily humors, First of all, blood,

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the master humor, phlegm, collar, or otherwise known as yellow bile, and melancholy,

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otherwise known as black bile. And these were more of the more or less. That is to say,

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three of them were real fluids, real bodily fluids to which largely hypothetical origins,

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sites and functions were ascribed. And this is what Nancy Suraci has written about the humors.

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And in the humeral body, the body's internal oops, the body's internal organs produced

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and sent these fluids out through the

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bloodstream to deliver the qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry out to the body's parts,

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including to the body's flesh and of course to the brain. Now from blood came the quality

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of hot and moist. From phlegm the qualities of moist and of cold and moist.

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From color came the qualities of hot and dry, from melancholy,

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the qualities of cold and dry.

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So these are the four qualities, and they are the key, really,

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rather than the four humors to finding the vocabulary of the four humors

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and I would say the critical utility of the four humors in Shakespeare

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and other texts of his period. Now, if any of you were English majors,

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and perhaps some of you were English majors, you will remember how in an earlier critical generation,

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the four humors used to be described and referenced. And that was with an explanation of the

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kind I just outlined of the classical doctrine of the four humors as the

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basis for Elizabethan theories of relatively rigid personality types, that is to say, the sanguinix,

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the Collar, the the Melancholics, and the phlegmatics. And it was typically an explanation

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that like a lot of explanations in the history of science and certainly in a

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older model of the history of science, really emphasized how quaint,

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old fashioned and wrong these Elizabethans really were.

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And it and it's even though we, we ourselves do not describe.

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I mean we may use the language of sanguine,

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choleric, melancholic or even phlegmatic. Although I think to do so is to drop

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into a relatively abstruse vocabulary that you risk people not understanding.

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Certainly those to the degree that those types are recognized even now,

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it seems to me they have a certain kind of hierarchy of value. So that I was teaching a course some

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years ago in the history of the humors, and I asked just as a way of breaking the ice.

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I asked the people around the table, my students around the table,

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if they would be willing to describe themselves in any of these four types, and a number of them

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confessed to be synguidic, and a number of them were proud to declare themselves as melancholic.

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But not a single soul was willing to describe him or herself as phlegmatic. I mean,

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it was simply not possible to think of yourself as a phlegmatic. So,

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but I have used in my own work, I have used a rather different approach

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than was the case for this earlier generation of critics interested

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in the humors and and I would call what they did as a humoral allegory.

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I mean it really, it really, they really produce allegorical readings using the four humors and

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really obeying by large that sort of rigid typology that you do find

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in the humeral text of the period. But which in my reading of the literature of the period,

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both the vernacular medical literature

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and also just the all of the writings that I've read in the period,

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that is on the whole, not the way the language of the humors behaves.

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Because really the language of the humors is saturated or saturates the

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the discourse of the period through the language of the qualities. And it's really the language

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of the qualities, that is to say a language of hot, cold, moist and dry,

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that is really where you find the humors operating and they don't operate

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in a rigid or typological way at all. Now, my basic interest,

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that is to say my overarching

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interest in and why I use the humors at all

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as a kind of explanatory or heuristic model,

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has to do with a kind of literary

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criticism that is increasingly becoming known as historical phenomenology.

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And by historical phenomenology I

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really mean that those of us who are interested in the large this large

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topic are interested in the ways of glimpsing the possibility of historical

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difference in the quality of bodily experience and bodily self experience

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between the early moderns and ourselves.

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Now, to say this is to of course venture into the area of dangerous generalization.

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That is to say, how can we possibly generalize about how they experience their bodies

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when it's hard enough to generalize about how we experience our bodies.

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And so it's it's relatively fraught trying

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to find different ways of being in the body. But nevertheless,

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it seems to me a worthwhile historical exercise, because what we're really trying to do

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is to glimpse what it might have been like to live within the bodily frame

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in an era that that that assumed a very different cosmology than our own.

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And that, I think, is the invitation to us. What is it like to live in the

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in a Renaissance cosmology? What is it like to live in a in an early modern cosmology?

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And for me, the humoral, the language of the humors, the language of the four qualities,

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has been one way to surprise the text of

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the period into revealing what they are really not in the business of revealing.

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And that is something about that which went without saying that

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which everybody assumed to be the case in early modern Europe.

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And So what when you are reading for the language of the four qualities or when you're reading

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for the language of the humors, you are really reading sub thematically.

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You're not reading about what these texts are are trying to jump out and talk to you about.

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You're really reading for something that is is kind of the subterrestrial

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a little bit of that which they assumed in order to say that which they they meant to be saying.

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Now, the reciprocal thinking about inhabiting

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the world and being inhabited by the

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world that Kuriyama and and me and cahoots with Kuriyama are interested in

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is really a description of reciprocity between the body and the world.

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And it suggests a kind of ecological approach to the history of the body

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and to the questions of the humors and the passions and the emotions.

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And it's that that has really been driving my interests.

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Reciprocity is key to understanding why it is that the four humors become

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an interesting way of approaching literary texts of all kinds in the in early modern literature.

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It's pretty clear from to me, from reading the medical literature,

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especially, as I said, the vernacular literature and the and the

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imaginative literature of the period, that the early modern body

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was conceived as a porous and fragile container that is a more porous than our bodies,

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more fragile as a container than our bodies. And it was filled with it had an

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interior that was filled with fluids that moved pretty sluggishly from

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part to part and sloshed around.

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Here is the English physician Halkaya Crook

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in 1615 for the matter of man's body.

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It is soft, pliable and temperate,

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ready to follow the Workman in everything and to every purpose.

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For man is the moistest and most sanguine of all creatures.

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So it's the most adaptable to divine, to divine instruction,

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It's the most adaptable to divine endowment, says Crook. He goes on to say, quote,

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all bodies are transpirable and

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transflexible that is so open to the air

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that it may pass and repass through them.

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It's that kind of thinking that lies behind John Dunn's remark in a

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sermon in 1623 in which Dunn says, quote, every man is a sponge and

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but a sponge filled with tears.

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I This is the kind of imagery that makes

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me sit up and say what's going on here?

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It's this kind of imagery that one wants to try to unpack and say what

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what is the way of thinking that would

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lead done to say every man is a sponge?

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Because I don't think that that's a kind of body metaphor that we ourselves

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are likely to use, so that this humoral body is open to the world,

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inhabited by the world in in a way that seems to me significantly

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different from our own more closed, more protected bodily envelopes.

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And I would say that the humoral, the humoral self, that is to say,

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the, the, the, the, the, the conscious interior that

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inhabits this body, is considerably it thinks of itself

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as considerably less stable, considerably more open to emotional

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psychological change than typically we think of ourselves as being,

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which is to say a fairly steady state. OK, So the question then is,

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what is living in a human body like, And how did the theory of the

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humorous provide Shakespeare and his contemporaries with a discourse for

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representing the body and its emotions? And I would say that the doctrine of

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the four Humors gave Shakespeare and his contemporaries a theory of personality,

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a theory of behavior, a theory of status, gender and age and ethnicity,

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with the distinct advantage of being rooted in what Shakespeare and everyone else in 17th century

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England and pretty much in 17th century Europe thought were the facts about the human body and its

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relation to the natural world. Especially in the humoral interaction of the four qualities,

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early modern people accounted for thoughts and deeds in a way that

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does not distinguish between the physical and the psychological.

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This is summed up in the galenic commonplace that is often repeated

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in text throughout the period. Quote The mind's inclination

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follows the body's temperature, and you do just find it everywhere.

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And everyone repeats it as something that Galen said. The mind's inclination follows

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the body's temperature. OK, what does that mean?

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It means that heat stimulates action. Cold depresses it.

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Sound judgment and prudence require the free flow of clear fluids

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in the brain through the brain.

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But Kohler or melancholy produce

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dust soot smoky vapors that ascend to

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the brain cloud. Judgment darkened.

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Mood produce imprudent, rash,

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aggressive behavior. The young warrior's heat and

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caller gave him impulsivity. A good thing for warriors.

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Cowards were phlegmatic.

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Women were naturally phlegmatic.

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Youth was hot and moist. Age was cold and dry.

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Men were hotter and drier on the whole than women,

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and thus women rarely had the capacity for historically significant action.

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They couldn't get it together.

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Cold gave northern people's

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valor hardiness, slow wittedness.

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Heat gave southern peoples sagacity and quickness of response,

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but a tendency towards jealousy.

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So as I suggested at the beginning, a earlier generation of literary

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scholars thought the humors were a typology of behavior to be broken down

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into four temperaments or dispositions. But in fact there is some usefulness.

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And there's some usefulness and remembering the the typologies.

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But the fact of the matter is that if you follow the language of the four humors

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through the language of the four qualities, the language of hot and moist, cold and dry,

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you can get to a place where you will find Northern people described

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as as as courageous but stupid. Southern people described as

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brilliant but hot tempered. Women described as too slow except when

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their maternal juices are aroused and they're trying to defend their babies too,

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too phlegmatic for significant and sustained historical action.

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Because manliness in this model is a model of sustained heat,

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a sustained heat which will produce a plan

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and the executive ability to carry it out. And this is, on the whole,

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what women are imagined to lack.

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Well, if you take the language of the humors and the qualities seriously, and I do,

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and in effect asking you to do the same,

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one of the effects is that it will take away the metaphorical in the language,

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the bodily language of the period, and replace it with the literal.

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And in fact, that is on the whole,

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one of the ways in which I propose that

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we read the language of the period, that is to say, as language that had,

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that we have inherited, that we accept as metaphorical descriptions

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of bodily and emotional events in which we project back onto the past,

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because it's almost impossible not to. As being equally metaphorical for them.

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But but the history of bodily language is a history of progressive

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abstraction and dematerialization, and the, the,

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and what we regard as as the as dead, dead metaphors of bodily language

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is at least it is at least possible,

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and I think at the end of the day,

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warranted, to see this language as literally descriptive of psychological

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and bodily events in the period.

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For example, the Elizabethans would not have understood what we mean by a sense

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of humor by having a sense of humor. They did not have senses of humor.

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The language did not exist to use the

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term a sense of humor because for them,

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humor, a bottle of humor, was a liquid. It was hot or dry,

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or it was drier or moister or colder.

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A dry sense of humor is a late

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example for us of humoral thinking, but in it is probably equivalent to what

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the Elizabethans might have called wit. Since wit was thought to be a

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relatively quick and dry state of mind early on in the 17th century,

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the word humor becomes associated with having an impulse or a whim,

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or an eccentricity or an idiosyncrasy. It became something that one

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had one had a humor. And then over the course of that century, until you get to the 7th,

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to the 18th century, gradually the language alters such that you

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can then come to possess a sense of humor, which is to say, your characteristic

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way of looking at the world, some way in which you are disposed to see events,

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and you possess it, and you possess it as your own.

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And if somebody accuses you of lacking one, you will probably feel as if some

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someone has just taken something away that is very precious to you.

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But if I asked you to locate it, to tell me where in your body

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your sense of humor was, you would be hard pressed to do so. It is something we possess,

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but it is not something that we

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we designate A bodily locust for.

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And it is that habit, that habit of not assigning A bodily

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locust for emotional or psychological traits, that the Elizabethans on the whole

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do not share with us on the whole, that their psychological traits, their emotional,

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their their feelings have a bodily sight and have a bodily origin,

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and that bodily origin is actual.

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So for the Elizabethans, the cycle, the the physical model underlying the

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psychological model was a simple a relatively simple hydraulic system based

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on a clear localization of psychological

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function by organs or system of organs. And I'm pretty much paraphrasing here,

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Catherine Park, the historian of science, Catherine Park.

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So rather than the term psychological

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to describe what we would describe as psychological events,

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I find it is much more accurate in

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this period to use the term psycho, physiological as clunky and clumsy

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and invented as a jargony sounding as as that term is.

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But it is much more accurate in pushing us back before Descartes

24:19.000 --> 24:24.920
to an earlier moment of of bodily sensation and being in the body,

24:24.920 --> 24:28.160
in which the psychological and the

24:28.160 --> 24:32.600
physiological are simply not separated out,

24:32.600 --> 24:39.600
and in which the mind's inclination follows the body's temperature. Now, as a social discourse,

24:39.600 --> 24:45.640
particularly for the privileged male,

24:45.640 --> 24:51.880
the humor has become a way of claiming an emotional or social privilege based on something natural,

24:51.880 --> 24:58.732
unalterable, and and inalienable. So the Elizabethan courtier or the

24:58.732 --> 25:04.345
Elizabethan Gallant would claim to have a humor when they wanted

25:04.345 --> 25:08.896
to get away with something, when they wanted their desires or

25:08.896 --> 25:13.920
their habits to take precedence over somebody else's.

25:13.920 --> 25:18.597
And so they they're to have a humor becomes a way of asserting the

25:18.597 --> 25:23.400
primacy of one's own psychological and emotional needs over somebody else.

25:23.400 --> 25:27.560
So that, for example, the timid emotions, the cold,

25:27.560 --> 25:32.760
wet emotions of fear being far less valued than the hotter,

25:32.760 --> 25:35.840
drier emotions that belong to the blood,

25:35.840 --> 25:39.960
or in particular to melancholy or or color,

25:39.960 --> 25:43.194
become things that males claim and

25:43.194 --> 25:46.988
and ask their servants or their wives

25:46.988 --> 25:52.800
or their children simply to defer, to defer to their humor.

25:52.800 --> 25:57.833
And So what develops is something that I call the humoral right of way. Who gets to have it? Who?

25:57.833 --> 26:04.000
Who inhabits the humoral highway? Whose emotions get to take precedence over somebody else's.

26:04.000 --> 26:09.070
So that servants would would say that it was was part of their

26:09.070 --> 26:12.320
duty really to

26:12.320 --> 26:18.208
to cater to their masters humors. And that that really means that their own

26:18.208 --> 26:22.880
humors have to take a kind of backseat to the the hotter humors of their masters.

26:22.880 --> 26:29.266
Now, in Shakespeare, the character most associated with the

26:29.266 --> 26:32.376
explicit language of the humors in the

26:32.376 --> 26:35.984
sense of whim or impulse or idiosyncrasy,

26:35.984 --> 26:42.960
is a character named Corporal Nim. And Corporal Nim is a minor character in Henry the Fifth,

26:42.960 --> 26:46.880
who Shakespeare brings back in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

26:46.880 --> 26:53.000
And Nim is one of the most inarticulate characters in all of Shakespeare,

26:53.000 --> 26:59.080
and we know this because of this habitual recourse to the phrase. Well, that's the humor of it.

26:59.080 --> 27:04.947
And this is the phrase that Nim uses basically to substitute for his lack of a

27:04.947 --> 27:10.780
better vocabulary or a better vocabulary for expressing a point of view or an attitude.

27:10.780 --> 27:14.480
So at one moment in The Merry Wives of Windsor,

27:14.480 --> 27:21.268
he has decided to revenge himself against Falstaff, who has insulted him.

27:21.268 --> 27:26.364
And he decides to do this by revealing Falstaff's plan to seduce

27:26.364 --> 27:32.528
Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. And so Nim goes to their husbands and declares, quote,

27:32.528 --> 27:38.960
my name is Nim and Falstaff loves your wives. I love not the humor of bread and cheese.

27:38.960 --> 27:43.320
And there's the humor of it, UN quote, and walks off.

27:43.320 --> 27:49.680
Page and Four are simply dumbfounded. I mean, here's this guy,

27:49.680 --> 27:54.347
he walks up to them. He makes this declaration. He says I love not the humor of bread

27:54.347 --> 27:58.688
and cheese completely unprepared for. And there's the humor of it and stalks

27:58.688 --> 28:04.000
off and Master Page says here's a fellow frights English out of his wits.

28:04.000 --> 28:10.798
Now what This means two things. Not only does it mean that Nim scares the English language out of

28:10.798 --> 28:16.040
its ability to mean anything at all, and certainly to mean anything to Page and forward.

28:16.040 --> 28:20.506
I mean, if English is the language in which you are supposed to be conducting

28:20.506 --> 28:24.160
social intercourse in which you are supposed to be making sense to one another,

28:24.160 --> 28:29.104
here comes Nim, and he makes no sense to either one of them at all. And of course,

28:29.104 --> 28:34.384
to say that it fright he's fighting English out of his wits. It also means that he's he's he's pretty

28:34.384 --> 28:40.252
much frighted English out of his own wits, since he uses the word humor as a

28:40.252 --> 28:45.656
as an absolute placeholder to mean anything else to mean anything else

28:45.656 --> 28:49.080
more particularized in the world.

28:49.080 --> 28:55.554
So what he is doing is declaring himself a humoral subject. I am,

28:55.554 --> 29:01.600
I am possessed by humors in order to justify boorish behavior

29:01.600 --> 29:06.240
and to put it out of question, as that which simply is in his nature,

29:06.240 --> 29:12.680
cannot be altered, cannot be rebuked, cannot be refused, reproved, cannot be questioned.

29:12.680 --> 29:18.600
So using the term in this way over using the term in this way, Nim justifies his unwillingness

29:18.600 --> 29:23.765
to regulate his behavior, articulate his his thoughts or

29:23.765 --> 29:29.960
reflect upon his world or actions to fellow human beings.

29:29.960 --> 29:36.428
So that in for Nim, the humors and the way he uses them expand to become the basis

29:36.428 --> 29:43.020
of a way of being in the world, a way of social interaction. It's a maladaptive way.

29:43.020 --> 29:48.400
It's an inarticulate way. It's a way that is characterized by impulsiveness and aggressiveness.

29:48.400 --> 29:51.960
[no speech detected]

29:51.960 --> 29:58.959
I'm not asking you to care about Corporal Nim, but I am asking you to think

29:58.959 --> 30:04.556
about what I just said in in relation to Corporal Nam and to translate it

30:04.556 --> 30:09.800
to a much more compelling case of the humors in The Merchant of Venice.

30:09.800 --> 30:15.800
And I thought I would focus on a well known scene in this well known play.

30:15.800 --> 30:21.547
To give you an example of what I mean by the language of the four humors at

30:21.547 --> 30:26.680
work and the scene in question is Act 4, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice.

30:26.680 --> 30:31.960
And this of course is the long courtroom scene in which Shylock has appeared

30:31.960 --> 30:35.153
before the Duke of Venice to to extract,

30:35.153 --> 30:40.840
to cut out the pound of flesh from the Merchant to Antonio.

30:40.840 --> 30:46.680
Even when because the debt has come due, and Antonio has been unable to pay it,

30:46.680 --> 30:52.800
and he is coming to the court to claim to claim the exaction of the bond,

30:52.800 --> 30:58.059
even though in fact he has been offered triple repayment of his

30:58.059 --> 31:00.775
bond belatedly by Bassanio.

31:00.775 --> 31:05.464
So let me quote from the Duke here,

31:05.464 --> 31:11.552
And this is the Duke of Venice to Shylock. Shylock The world thinks,

31:11.552 --> 31:17.172
and I think so too, that thou but leadest this fashion of

31:17.172 --> 31:22.696
thy malice to the last hour of act, and then to thought that show

31:22.696 --> 31:27.870
thy mercy and remorse, more strange than is thy

31:27.870 --> 31:33.440
strange apparent cruelty. And where thou now exact the penalty,

31:33.440 --> 31:36.960
which is a pound of this poor merchant's flesh,

31:36.960 --> 31:40.520
thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture,

31:40.520 --> 31:44.040
but touched with humane gentleness and love,

31:44.040 --> 31:47.160
forgive a moiety of the principle,

31:47.160 --> 31:50.552
Glancing an eye of pity on his losses

31:50.552 --> 31:54.200
that have of late so huddled on his back

31:54.200 --> 32:00.769
enough to press a royal merchant down and pluck commiseration of his state

32:00.769 --> 32:04.400
from brassy bosoms and rough hearts of Flint.

32:04.400 --> 32:07.508
From stubborn Turks and tartars never

32:07.508 --> 32:11.080
trained to offices of gentle courtesy,

32:11.080 --> 32:14.120
sorry, of tender courtesy.

32:14.120 --> 32:20.960
We all expect a gentle answer, Jew. And of course there's a pun here,

32:20.960 --> 32:24.920
a gentile answer, Jew.

32:24.920 --> 32:31.240
Now what the Duke says here is that the natural response,

32:31.240 --> 32:36.466
as far as he is concerned, the natural response, the natural response to the

32:36.466 --> 32:42.720
spectacle of human suffering, is human gentleness and love is pity.

32:42.720 --> 32:49.440
Pity such that would soften. Brassy bosoms that would soften

32:49.440 --> 32:54.546
hearts made of metal. And it is so natural, in fact,

32:54.546 --> 32:59.320
that even peoples like Turks and Tartars, whom Elizabethans regarded as

32:59.320 --> 33:04.920
especially ferocious, barbaric, and uncivilized, would respond with pity,

33:04.920 --> 33:11.000
tenderness, commiseration, to the spectacle of suffering.

33:11.000 --> 33:14.986
So the Duke is calling on human nature

33:14.986 --> 33:18.530
and and the softness that he thinks

33:18.530 --> 33:22.400
of as the quality in human nature

33:22.400 --> 33:28.392
of pity in response to suffering, and Shylock refuses it.

33:28.392 --> 33:32.029
But what Shylock does in responding

33:32.029 --> 33:35.452
to the Duke is to invoke another

33:35.452 --> 33:40.240
to invoke nature and human nature in another form.

33:40.240 --> 33:45.435
And he does so by using the language of the humors to explain

33:45.435 --> 33:50.358
why he refuses to relent. So here is Here is Shylock.

33:50.358 --> 33:57.230
[no speech detected]

33:57.230 --> 34:03.790
You'll ask me why I rather choose to have a weight of carrion flesh

34:03.790 --> 34:09.494
than to receive 3000 duckets. I'll not answer that,

34:09.494 --> 34:15.030
but say it is my humor. Is it answered?

34:15.030 --> 34:20.992
What if my house be troubled with a rat, and I'd be pleased to have to give

34:20.992 --> 34:25.712
10,000 ducats to have it banned? What are you answered?

34:25.712 --> 34:31.720
Yet some men there are love, not a gaping pig, some that are mad

34:31.720 --> 34:37.480
if they behold a cat, and others, when the bagpipe sings in the nose,

34:37.480 --> 34:42.040
cannot contain their urine for affection.

34:42.040 --> 34:45.088
Masters OFT passion sways it to

34:45.088 --> 34:51.772
the mood what it likes or loathes. Now for your answer,

34:51.772 --> 34:55.760
as there is no firm reason to be rendered.

34:55.760 --> 34:59.000
Why he cannot abide A gaping pig,

34:59.000 --> 35:02.040
Why he a harmless, necessary cat,

35:02.040 --> 35:06.118
why he a woollen bagpipe, but of force,

35:06.118 --> 35:09.400
must yield to such inevitable shame

35:09.400 --> 35:13.760
as to offend being himself offended.

35:13.760 --> 35:16.600
So can I give for no reason,

35:16.600 --> 35:20.996
nor will I not more than a logitate and a

35:20.996 --> 35:25.542
certain loathing I bear Antonio that I thus,

35:25.542 --> 35:30.240
that I follow thus a losing suit against him.

35:30.240 --> 35:35.232
Are you answered Now what?

35:35.232 --> 35:41.800
What Shylock does is to take his hatred for Antonio,

35:41.800 --> 35:48.262
a hatred that we know to be a compound of personal history,

35:48.262 --> 35:53.120
wounded self-interest, and religious hatred.

35:53.120 --> 35:57.880
And he turns it using the language of the humors.

35:57.880 --> 36:04.204
He turns it into deep antipathy, intense humoral incompatibility,

36:04.204 --> 36:09.360
what we would call, in effect, an allergy.

36:09.360 --> 36:16.160
I mean, he's in effect saying I'm allergic. I can't help this,

36:16.160 --> 36:22.908
I can't help this behavior. He uses the bodily humors as an

36:22.908 --> 36:27.320
agreed upon instance agreed upon between the Venetians and himself,

36:27.320 --> 36:33.200
agreed upon by everybody of that which in

36:33.200 --> 36:40.120
the body comes before religious difference, ethnic difference,

36:40.120 --> 36:46.240
before cultural inscription, before the history of Christians and Jews.

36:46.240 --> 36:52.640
He equates his hatred for Antonio. We might call it, if we don't call it an allergy,

36:52.640 --> 36:56.920
we would call it a phobia, we would locate it in the mind,

36:56.920 --> 37:03.200
or we would locate it in the body. But he is not locating it in

37:03.200 --> 37:08.373
either one sphere or the other. He is locating it. He's locating it in the the

37:08.373 --> 37:13.760
doctrine of the humors, and he equates it to why some men hate cats,

37:13.760 --> 37:19.920
why someone cannot hold their urine, and when they hear bagpipes, why other men don't like pork.

37:19.920 --> 37:24.704
Which is an interesting example, actually, since of course he doesn't eat pork,

37:24.704 --> 37:29.800
although he doesn't say he doesn't like pork, of course we know that he won't eat it.

37:29.800 --> 37:35.176
He describes it using the Renaissance doctrine of sympathy and antipathy

37:35.176 --> 37:40.800
as a natural antipathy and antipathy that he describes as his humor,

37:40.800 --> 37:45.704
and he thus roots it in the natural order of things and makes it unanswerable.

37:45.704 --> 37:51.320
He says, Now are you answered? I will not give you a reason.

37:51.320 --> 37:57.000
I will cite my humor, he says. I do not have to explain this.

37:57.000 --> 38:01.860
I claim that I am unable to. Turks and Tartars and people

38:01.860 --> 38:07.213
with brassy bosoms would relent. It can't happen in my city because my city

38:07.213 --> 38:10.280
is ruled by the doctrine of human nature,

38:10.280 --> 38:16.440
and human nature has at its root pity and gentleness.

38:16.440 --> 38:21.840
A resident of Venice would not be so cruel as to take a pound of flesh.

38:21.840 --> 38:27.480
Natural passion, says the Duke, Requires Shylock to re relent.

38:27.480 --> 38:33.824
Shylock says no. My natural passion of hatred for Antonio,

38:33.824 --> 38:40.440
which is rooted in my humor, which is part of my body,

38:40.440 --> 38:45.933
becomes that in the body, in my body, which cannot be answered, cannot be altered,

38:45.933 --> 38:49.975
cannot be other than it is, is below signification.

38:49.975 --> 38:56.206
It's it is the it's it is that. It's an example of what the

38:56.206 --> 38:59.760
philosopher Judith Butler has called the bodily unsignified.

38:59.760 --> 39:04.182
And that is that we're moving

39:04.182 --> 39:10.243
to an area below inscription, below cultural inscription in which

39:10.243 --> 39:16.480
the body is simply imagined as being not culturally constructed.

39:16.480 --> 39:22.040
And that is, that is what Shilak is is saying here. But the Duke has said it too.

39:22.040 --> 39:26.960
And So what you have are these warring notions of what is not,

39:26.960 --> 39:32.840
what is natural and what is not culturally constructed. He pretends this is an embarrassment,

39:32.840 --> 39:38.828
it's an embarrassing he's, he pretends to be embarrassed, he says. He says I can't help this just

39:38.828 --> 39:42.195
the way other people can't help embarrassing themselves and in the

39:42.195 --> 39:48.500
process of embarrassing themselves, offending you, offending offending other people by

39:48.500 --> 39:53.680
being unable to contain their urine, or being unable to tolerate cats,

39:53.680 --> 39:58.440
or being unable to do anything else that other people are unable to do.

39:58.440 --> 40:04.544
But of course the real embarrassment is for Venice itself, because it has brought Shylock to

40:04.544 --> 40:08.208
this position of power and now

40:08.208 --> 40:11.940
cannot cite nature in order to

40:11.940 --> 40:15.440
claim to have some power over him.

40:15.440 --> 40:20.758
Now at this point Bassanio interjects and he says

40:20.758 --> 40:26.420
[no speech detected]

40:26.420 --> 40:31.840
this is no answer, thou unfeeling man to excuse the current.

40:31.840 --> 40:36.600
Of thy cruelty, the current, of thy cruelty.

40:36.600 --> 40:41.520
This is the this is the language of the humorous because it imagines cruelty,

40:41.520 --> 40:48.288
the synonym for which is caller. They're used synonymously

40:48.288 --> 40:53.803
throughout the period. The current of the of that cruelty

40:53.803 --> 40:59.320
is the running of the humor of caller and of color in Shylock

40:59.320 --> 41:05.042
Current. The phrase current tips us off

41:05.042 --> 41:09.440
to the underlying humoral logic here that his cruelty is based on the hot,

41:09.440 --> 41:14.364
dry humor of color, and it's not a metaphor. The current of cruelty,

41:14.364 --> 41:18.160
which we I think accept is metaphorical,

41:18.160 --> 41:24.920
is I am proposing not metaphorical at all, but a way of thinking humorally about how anger works,

41:24.920 --> 41:29.240
how anger moves from the gallbladder to the

41:29.240 --> 41:36.080
brain and produces language and behavior. Where anger comes from in the body.

41:36.080 --> 41:40.728
Now at this point they're at an impasse, the Venetians and Shylock.

41:40.728 --> 41:45.160
And it's at this point, of course, that Porsche intervenes.

41:45.160 --> 41:52.010
And what's interesting about Porsche's

41:52.010 --> 41:58.936
response is that she shifts the discourse into another register altogether,

41:58.936 --> 42:04.862
into the the language of religion. But she does not leave the language

42:04.862 --> 42:10.280
of the humors entirely behind. And here is her famous speech.

42:10.280 --> 42:16.660
The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain

42:16.660 --> 42:22.460
from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed.

42:22.460 --> 42:29.200
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes his mightiest in the mightiest.

42:29.200 --> 42:34.780
It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His scepter shows the

42:34.780 --> 42:38.720
force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty,

42:38.720 --> 42:45.720
Wherein does sit the dread and fear of kings? But mercy is his, is above this scepter's sway.

42:45.720 --> 42:48.520
It is enthroned in the heart of kings.

42:48.520 --> 42:53.840
It is an attribute of God himself.

42:53.840 --> 42:57.640
Well, OK, in effect here,

42:57.640 --> 43:03.818
it seems to me Portia is conceding the naturalness of Shylock's cruelty by

43:03.818 --> 43:09.324
characterizing its opposite, that is to say, mercy or compassion as a liquid.

43:09.324 --> 43:15.440
That is to say, it is like the rain falling on the earth.

43:15.440 --> 43:21.800
In this case. If it were to work in Shylock's body, it would moisten the place beneath.

43:21.800 --> 43:26.800
And in terms of this extended simile, what is the place beneath?

43:26.800 --> 43:33.551
The place beneath is Shylock's hard heart, the hard heart that has been hardened

43:33.551 --> 43:39.520
and dried by the current of his cruelty.

43:39.520 --> 43:46.320
So that Shylock's heart is being compared to hard, dry earth

43:46.320 --> 43:51.680
and the ability of a soft, moist emotion like pity to soften

43:51.680 --> 43:55.190
Shylock's heart would depend literally on

43:55.190 --> 43:59.680
how hard the heart was in the 1st place,

43:59.680 --> 44:02.520
Lear says of his cruel daughters.

44:02.520 --> 44:07.296
Is there any cause in nature that makes these

44:07.296 --> 44:13.232
hard hearts the heart of a cruel person? In this period is regularly characterized as

44:13.232 --> 44:16.400
Stony or hard because the effects of anger,

44:16.400 --> 44:22.120
particularly anger held in the body over a long period of time,

44:22.120 --> 44:26.040
would have the literal physiological effect of hardening the mind,

44:26.040 --> 44:31.660
hardening the heart, hardening the flesh. That is why it makes it so hard for

44:31.660 --> 44:36.360
sinners or constitutionally angry people

44:36.360 --> 44:41.835
to behave with pity and and mercy, because their flesh is coming

44:41.835 --> 44:46.760
from so far away from that place. And so in fact,

44:46.760 --> 44:51.600
Portia concludes that there is no you cannot, as the Duke has done,

44:51.600 --> 44:57.515
call on Shylock to be naturally pitiful or compassionate.

44:57.515 --> 45:02.680
And so there's nothing to be gained by expecting his heart to be softened.

45:02.680 --> 45:09.256
And therefore she turns elsewhere to the law, to an overly literal interpretation

45:09.256 --> 45:15.040
of the words of the bond, to look for an escape clause to benefit Antonio.

45:15.040 --> 45:21.233
And as you know, she allows the cutting of Antonio's flesh only on the condition that

45:21.233 --> 45:27.480
quote in the cutting of it, if thou dost shed one drop of blood,

45:27.480 --> 45:32.640
thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice confiscate.

45:32.640 --> 45:38.775
Now, in the rewriting of this bond, Porsche brings nature and culture

45:38.775 --> 45:42.040
together in the language of blood.

45:42.040 --> 45:47.144
Nature in that Shylock cannot

45:47.144 --> 45:51.120
possibly hope to cut Antonio's flesh

45:51.120 --> 45:56.840
without spilling his blood culture because the legal distinction,

45:56.840 --> 46:03.800
which she invokes here, between Christian and Jew, which she talks about Christian and Jewish blood,

46:03.800 --> 46:09.930
is actually located in a discursive register, conveniently distant from the old

46:09.930 --> 46:16.305
fluid Physiology which Shylock and the Duke have invoked. The language of humoralism recognizes

46:16.305 --> 46:21.768
a number of differences in the blood, but it does not recognize Christian

46:21.768 --> 46:26.680
blood or Jewish blood. It recognizes Northern blood, Southern blood,

46:26.680 --> 46:32.440
but it simply does not recognize religious blood.

46:32.440 --> 46:35.849
OK, what we see in this exchange

46:35.849 --> 46:42.080
in between the Duke and Shylock is different aspects of humoral discourse.

46:42.080 --> 46:47.400
Shylock manipulates its theoretically undeniable basis in nature,

46:47.400 --> 46:52.557
but when Portia comes, she she actually manipulates its

46:52.557 --> 46:57.840
actual susceptibility to what I would call hegemonic redefinition

46:57.840 --> 47:03.500
by invoking that which supersedes the natural and displaces it through

47:03.500 --> 47:08.240
the symbolic complexity of blood. The fact that in fact you can talk

47:08.240 --> 47:13.800
about in familial terms or racial terms but not in biological terms,

47:13.800 --> 47:18.560
the symbolic complexity of blood. It's in Shylock's interest to portray

47:18.560 --> 47:23.224
the humorous as fixed and irreducible, but it's in Porsche's interest to

47:23.224 --> 47:29.480
invoke a different register altogether. Most often in humoral discourse,

47:29.480 --> 47:34.837
the humors are represented as part of the natural body that can and

47:34.837 --> 47:41.720
must be manipulated through various dietary regimes for the sake of physical and emotional health.

47:41.720 --> 47:46.435
That is to say, on the whole, the kind of impasse that you are

47:46.435 --> 47:50.440
getting in The Merchant of Venice

47:50.440 --> 47:56.724
between two ways of regarding the humors actually is not what mostly takes

47:56.724 --> 48:00.720
place in the language of the humors. Because instead of seeing the

48:00.720 --> 48:06.200
humors as as determining as Shylock finds it convenient to do here,

48:06.200 --> 48:11.133
for the most part in the medical texts the humors are regarded as an

48:11.133 --> 48:15.468
aspect of bodily health which can be manipulated through finding balance

48:15.468 --> 48:19.366
so that if you're too hot and dry,

48:19.366 --> 48:25.616
you look to foods and other remedies for for cooling and moistening.

48:25.616 --> 48:30.786
If, for example, it's the summertime and you're hot and dry, one of the things you would you're

48:30.786 --> 48:34.200
recommended to do by the almanacs is to avoid sexual intercourse.

48:34.200 --> 48:36.960
I have no idea whether that particular

48:36.960 --> 48:43.424
piece of advice was ever followed. There would be times of the year when

48:43.424 --> 48:49.612
you would be told not to bathe yourself, that is to say through immersion bathing. So on the whole,

48:49.612 --> 48:54.548
the humors are not regarded as this, this sort of deterministic as they're

48:54.548 --> 49:00.079
not regarded as having the last word. They're regarded as that in the body

49:00.079 --> 49:05.600
which makes you what you are and if you can regulate them properly,

49:05.600 --> 49:08.880
makes you as good as you are possibly able to be.

49:08.880 --> 49:15.014
And it's it is because of this remarkable flexibility of the of the language

49:15.014 --> 49:20.172
and the thinking of the humors that I find it an absolutely fascinating way

49:20.172 --> 49:24.680
of reading the text in the period. So thank you very much.

49:24.680 --> 49:27.680
[no speech detected]

49:27.680 --> 49:30.680
[no speech detected]

49:30.680 --> 49:34.800
[no speech detected]

49:34.800 --> 49:38.240
All right. That was wonderful. Thank you.

49:38.240 --> 49:41.640
And we have some time for some questions.

49:41.640 --> 49:46.855
I'm wondering if if you have a question perhaps press the button in front

49:46.855 --> 49:50.278
of you so that your microphone will come on and everybody can hear you.

49:50.278 --> 49:57.160
I have a question actually.

49:57.160 --> 50:02.800
I was wondering what you have thought of people who've tried to use a

50:02.800 --> 50:07.580
different sort of a psychological, slightly medical, psychological way

50:07.580 --> 50:13.694
of interpreting some Shakespeare. I'm thinking of things like people who've tried to use Freudian

50:13.694 --> 50:19.626
theory or union theory to interpret some of Shakespeare's passages.

50:19.626 --> 50:25.160
Well, that's really interesting, Michael. Actually this sort of the dominant

50:25.160 --> 50:28.640
the dominant critical language right now for psychoanalytic critics is

50:28.640 --> 50:33.205
really Lacanian which is of course several generations thank you very

50:33.205 --> 50:38.337
much past Freud and and but what's interesting it seems to me part of

50:38.337 --> 50:43.376
what's interesting is that Freud begins by looking for a a physical

50:43.376 --> 50:49.881
a physical answer to psychological problems and and and simply and moves

50:49.881 --> 50:52.890
beyond it and what what interests And

50:52.890 --> 50:58.760
I'm and I don't really have a quarrel. I'm not myself a psychological critic,

50:58.760 --> 51:04.800
but I I don't. I find that psychoanalytic criticism is often enormously exciting.

51:04.800 --> 51:11.640
Gets you, you know, really gets you to thinking. But my enterprise is a different enterprise.

51:11.640 --> 51:16.777
In other words, what what I really want to do is to try to figure out what Elizabethan's

51:16.777 --> 51:22.520
thought was happening in their minds and in their bodies when they were

51:22.520 --> 51:27.800
under the impress of powerful emotions. I mean, this is a period,

51:27.800 --> 51:33.520
remember before 1628, when the blood doesn't circulate the blood.

51:33.520 --> 51:38.404
I mean the the model was that you you consumed food,

51:38.404 --> 51:44.200
the food was transformed into first into Kyle and then into blood,

51:44.200 --> 51:48.160
and then the blood was refined into into various kinds of spirits.

51:48.160 --> 51:51.716
And so basically your in your energy

51:51.716 --> 51:54.920
came in a far more direct way than it

51:54.920 --> 51:59.440
does for us with with with food And so,

51:59.440 --> 52:04.760
so food becomes blood and and that's that's what happens.

52:04.760 --> 52:10.113
The idea that that the blood is circulating, even though Harvey discovers it in 1628,

52:10.113 --> 52:16.280
it doesn't really take hold as a way of thinking about the body for decades after that.

52:16.280 --> 52:22.316
And so when you when you start to say, OK, they're a set of bodily facts, the the non circulation,

52:22.316 --> 52:27.320
non circulation of the blood being a very good example, but really the possession of the humors

52:27.320 --> 52:32.722
and the qualities that go along with the humors as being the paradigm, the framework.

52:32.722 --> 52:38.064
Then I think you're in a very different set of bodily facts and it's it's

52:38.064 --> 52:42.560
that that I use as the starting place.

52:42.560 --> 52:47.148
And IA friend of mine says the problem with what you do is that you think

52:47.148 --> 52:52.120
people have theories and then they have experiences and that that is not.

52:52.120 --> 52:55.936
I mean it may sound as if I'm saying, ah, they had a theory and then they

52:55.936 --> 53:02.032
had then they had a sensation. But I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that if we wish

53:02.032 --> 53:08.280
to write a history of the body, and if we wish to write a history of the emotions,

53:08.280 --> 53:11.360
and if we wish to imagine that that that

53:11.360 --> 53:17.594
that the emotions in the body has a history, then we ought to be able to try to figure

53:17.594 --> 53:21.080
out how we're going to get at that at some kind of historical difference.

53:21.080 --> 53:27.258
We have to, we can't interview Elizabethan's. We have to use the language that's

53:27.258 --> 53:32.303
that's come down to us in text and see if we can surprise it into

53:32.303 --> 53:38.840
revealing something new and strange. And what I find

53:38.840 --> 53:44.825
invariably fascinating is reading texts that I that I feel as if we we all

53:44.825 --> 53:49.172
have known how to read for a long time, and finding something leap out of the page at

53:49.172 --> 53:54.640
me like every man is but a sponge and saying, OK, why what? Where is that?

53:54.640 --> 54:01.196
Where is that metaphor coming from in the language of the body and

54:01.196 --> 54:05.440
particularly the language of the emotions?

54:05.440 --> 54:10.316
Yeah. Was there any sort of contemporary

54:10.316 --> 54:15.520
debate or counterpoint to the idea that you are predetermined or programmed,

54:15.520 --> 54:18.641
if you like, by your humors, which would be analogous to the debate

54:18.641 --> 54:23.481
that goes on today, is to the extent to which you're predetermined by

54:23.481 --> 54:28.470
your genes or whatever the current, you know, the medical theory

54:28.470 --> 54:34.823
of how you're constituted is. I mean, I think one of the, one of the reasons that it's so that I

54:34.823 --> 54:38.800
find it so interesting to look at this language is that it's really a biochemical.

54:38.800 --> 54:44.720
It's a really a biochemical model of behavior. And to the degree that we are,

54:44.720 --> 54:48.160
we are now in a bio biochemical

54:48.160 --> 54:53.728
model for thinking about emotions. You know, we're really,

54:53.728 --> 55:00.280
we're really touching the 16th century, 17th century in a very profound way it seems to me.

55:00.280 --> 55:06.960
Of course, our our typical everyday commonsensical language seems to me still to be pretty dualistic.

55:06.960 --> 55:12.961
And so we use a dualistic language even if we know that that.

55:12.961 --> 55:17.967
I mean sometimes it's convenient to cite our genes and sometimes it's convenient to cite adrenaline

55:17.967 --> 55:23.056
rushes and sometimes it's convenient to cite mom or sometimes it's convenient you know what mom did

55:23.056 --> 55:27.724
to me and sometimes it's you know, I mean we, you know we we typically pick

55:27.724 --> 55:33.200
and choose the bodily model that that suits us at at whatever.

55:33.200 --> 55:38.639
I mean I think we're not only self contradictory but quite self interested in the bodily language

55:38.639 --> 55:44.520
we typically tend to pick.

55:44.520 --> 55:48.720
But to answer your question,

55:48.720 --> 55:53.740
there is a fairly wide range of opinion in the period.

55:53.740 --> 55:59.960
That is say if you read the the vernacular medical literature which is what I what I have done,

55:59.960 --> 56:05.729
you'll find that there are some physicians that regard the humors as as deterministic in the way that

56:05.729 --> 56:09.100
Shylock does at that moment in in the Merchant of Venice and that there's

56:09.100 --> 56:15.375
very little you can do about them. And there are and but the but the the the health manuals tend to

56:15.375 --> 56:20.568
offer a great many remedies which are designed to balance to to take

56:20.568 --> 56:26.360
in a situation of imbalance and produce better bodily solubility.

56:26.360 --> 56:32.643
Solubility being really the the ideal, an ideal kind of you don't want

56:32.643 --> 56:36.320
to be too moist, but you want to be moist enough.

56:36.320 --> 56:42.060
And so there were all sorts of bodily symptoms for for being too

56:42.060 --> 56:47.502
hot or too dry or too cold or too moist and so the there's a lot of

56:47.502 --> 56:52.872
medicine which tells you what to eat. All of the all foods, for example,

56:52.872 --> 56:58.736
had their own combinations of the qualities. I mean, they were hot in the degree and

56:58.736 --> 57:03.472
cold in a degree and wet in a degree and dry in a degree. So if you had a sense of what

57:03.472 --> 57:08.560
you were suffering from or what you felt yourself to have, you would then remedy it through diet,

57:08.560 --> 57:14.377
and that the complexity of the theory is such that that diet would be

57:14.377 --> 57:20.720
altered by time of year by it might be altered by how old you were.

57:20.720 --> 57:25.640
The more extreme remedies like phlebotomy was certainly not prescribed for pregnant women,

57:25.640 --> 57:30.370
for children, for people who were sick. I mean, you had to be really in the peak

57:30.370 --> 57:36.400
of health to to be a candidate for opening your your vein, to make yourself feel better.

57:36.400 --> 57:40.800
I mean, I know it's very peculiar, but

57:40.800 --> 57:47.800
Ficino is a very interesting example because Ficino is,

57:47.800 --> 57:52.528
if you read Ficino's three books on life, you'll find out that he was born under

57:52.528 --> 57:56.640
Saturn, therefore melancholic and born in born in a melancholy month.

57:56.640 --> 58:00.640
I mean, he felt that he, you know, as far as astrologically speaking,

58:00.640 --> 58:06.348
he was in a very bad place. And he writes and and consequently

58:06.348 --> 58:12.695
for him it's all about remedying, being cold, being cold and dry. And he recommends,

58:12.695 --> 58:18.520
and he's also very interested in an extending human longevity,

58:18.520 --> 58:23.720
very interested in how it is that you get to live longer. And so he recommends things like

58:23.720 --> 58:30.112
drinking a young person's blood because it would have the qualities of hot

58:30.112 --> 58:34.685
and moist that he thought he lacked, or drinking the drinking milk

58:34.685 --> 58:40.004
from a young nursing mother to to also that would also have the

58:40.004 --> 58:46.440
qualities that you would would lack. So he he really, on the one hand, he wasn't giving up, right?

58:46.440 --> 58:50.400
But on the other hand, he felt that he was astrologically challenged.

58:50.400 --> 58:55.000
He was astrologically challenged.

58:55.000 --> 58:58.000
[no speech detected]

58:58.000 --> 59:01.000
[no speech detected]

59:01.000 --> 59:04.000
[no speech detected]

59:04.000 --> 59:07.000
[no speech detected]

59:07.000 --> 59:13.120
Well, I don't think it's.

59:13.120 --> 59:15.120
I mean, I think it's

59:15.120 --> 59:21.410
[no speech detected]

59:21.410 --> 59:26.330
on the whole, what the humors do is tell you how things happen,

59:26.330 --> 59:29.370
how things are imagined to happen.

59:29.370 --> 59:32.954
They don't really explain

59:32.954 --> 59:38.345
metaphysically why things happen. I mean, what Portia says to go

59:38.345 --> 59:42.565
back for a minute to that place. You can't expect him to be compassionate.

59:42.565 --> 59:45.880
[no speech detected]

59:45.880 --> 59:52.600
But she doesn't. She she doesn't. She doesn't say. But why does he? Why does he hate Antonio?

59:52.600 --> 59:55.480
Given that he hates Antonio, you can't expect him to be compassionate.

59:55.480 --> 01:00:00.488
That's what the humorist will tell you. They can't, they can't do anything

01:00:00.488 --> 01:00:05.720
to soften religious animosity. But it's a so it's a language of.

01:00:05.720 --> 01:00:11.200
It's a language of how rather than why now, as far as Hamlet is concerned.

01:00:11.200 --> 01:00:15.293
Well Hamlet berates himself in the if you remember that the the famous

01:00:15.293 --> 01:00:18.920
syllogue where he begins what a Rogan peasant slave am I that I,

01:00:18.920 --> 01:00:22.920
the dear son of a dear father murdered. OK and on and on and he says no.

01:00:22.920 --> 01:00:27.648
I peek like John dreams unpregnant

01:00:27.648 --> 01:00:32.368
of my cause and and can do nothing.

01:00:32.368 --> 01:00:38.088
Well John A dreams is a sleepy fellow. John A dreams is a sleepy, low born fellow.

01:00:38.088 --> 01:00:42.176
And So what he is saying is why do

01:00:42.176 --> 01:00:45.760
I behave as if I have the humors,

01:00:45.760 --> 01:00:52.480
the phlegmatic, cowardly humors of a lowborn,

01:00:52.480 --> 01:00:57.790
not royal person? He says it cannot be. But I am pigeon livered and lack

01:00:57.790 --> 01:01:04.520
Gaul to make oppression bitter. That is the language of the humors, he says. I'm a Prince.

01:01:04.520 --> 01:01:08.832
I should be, I should, my Gaul should be more full of

01:01:08.832 --> 01:01:12.811
collar than it is and it's not.

01:01:12.811 --> 01:01:16.914
And therefore I'm ashamed of being

01:01:16.914 --> 01:01:23.128
being who I am at this moment. And so and so you, you watch him and

01:01:23.128 --> 01:01:29.920
then that's at that moment that he, I mean, he's clearly depressed. He's clearly melancholic,

01:01:29.920 --> 01:01:36.776
and he decides to stage the play, stage the mousetrap for him.

01:01:36.776 --> 01:01:42.651
But it's that pigeon liver. What does that mean? It means your liver is too small, It's too cold.

01:01:42.651 --> 01:01:48.480
It doesn't have enough. Because your liver in this bodily paradigm is where your blood is made.

01:01:48.480 --> 01:01:51.480
It's not made in your bone marrow. They didn't know that, They thought,

01:01:51.480 --> 01:01:55.272
because if you think about what a liver looks like, it's very bloody right.

01:01:55.272 --> 01:02:01.600
And so since it's so bloody, it obviously has to be that place in the body where the blood is made.

01:02:01.600 --> 01:02:07.520
So he's saying my liver, you know,

01:02:07.520 --> 01:02:13.080
and he berates himself for in this bodily language. Now

01:02:13.080 --> 01:02:18.572
does he believe it? Well, I think what he believes is that

01:02:18.572 --> 01:02:21.640
this kind of behavior is characterized

01:02:21.640 --> 01:02:28.574
by this kind of bodily cause. But it isn't clear at this moment. And I think that gets to the

01:02:28.574 --> 01:02:33.534
last part of your question, that that he really believes it. He's saying I I act like

01:02:33.534 --> 01:02:36.960
somebody who has a pigeon liver. I act like somebody who lacks gall.

01:02:36.960 --> 01:02:40.320
But that can't be right because I'm a Prince, therefore I've got to do something.

01:02:40.320 --> 01:02:45.960
What am I going to do? Oh, I think I'll put on a play.

01:02:45.960 --> 01:02:49.840
And then he does put on the play and he gets the reaction he wants.

01:02:49.840 --> 01:02:56.160
And then his change of mood is dramatic. And when Rosa Cranston Guildenstern

01:02:56.160 --> 01:03:02.155
come to talk to him he said, Sir, can we have a word with you? A whole history.

01:03:02.155 --> 01:03:07.843
He says bring it on. I mean he's and at that point he says now, now, now I could drink hot blood

01:03:07.843 --> 01:03:12.200
and do such bitter business as I can't remember the rest of the line.

01:03:12.200 --> 01:03:17.555
I mean this transformation of mood in him is one that he describes

01:03:17.555 --> 01:03:21.808
in humoral language and it's it's what I said at the beginning this

01:03:21.808 --> 01:03:27.460
the the volatility of the humoral self is quite extraordinary.

01:03:27.460 --> 01:03:34.093
And so Ham and we see Hamlet as being a very changeable character, but he's telling us about it all

01:03:34.093 --> 01:03:37.399
the time and he's telling us about it in the language of the humors.

01:03:37.399 --> 01:03:43.790
[no speech detected]

01:03:43.790 --> 01:03:48.350
Oh, yes, Sir. Sorry. So dreams figure prominently

01:03:48.350 --> 01:03:55.237
plays they do. So how would Hannibal be? Can have dreams.

01:03:55.237 --> 01:04:01.117
What happens in in dreams is that you had better watch out what

01:04:01.117 --> 01:04:06.920
you ate because because what you ate would produce because the

01:04:06.920 --> 01:04:11.504
model is the model of cooking. The you know the your body is is

01:04:11.504 --> 01:04:17.208
basically a kind of a kitchen and the the food is getting cooked and and

01:04:17.208 --> 01:04:23.896
which is why sooty smoky vapors can ascend. And so there is a real connection between

01:04:23.896 --> 01:04:29.081
vapors in the brain smoke soot and so forth in the brain and the and the

01:04:29.081 --> 01:04:35.888
quality of and the quality of dreams. There's a wonderful line in Othello this, this is slightly off,

01:04:35.888 --> 01:04:40.344
but there's a wonderful line in Othello where where he is his jealousy is

01:04:40.344 --> 01:04:45.125
just starting to manifest itself. And Desdemona says sure something

01:04:45.125 --> 01:04:51.480
has has has puddled his clear spirit. Something has has darkened and

01:04:51.480 --> 01:04:57.160
muddied is clear spirit. And so that's what a bad dream was was really kind of your muddy

01:04:57.160 --> 01:05:02.396
spirit producing these these images. There's a wonderful book of by Elizabethan writer,

01:05:02.396 --> 01:05:07.120
kind of wild Elizabethan writer named Thomas Nash called The Terrors of the Night.

01:05:07.120 --> 01:05:14.012
And it's really a dream vision and it, you know, it's full of of, you know illusions and it's very

01:05:14.012 --> 01:05:18.440
full of humoral language too. Yes,

01:05:18.440 --> 01:05:21.440
[no speech detected]

01:05:21.440 --> 01:05:24.440
[no speech detected]

01:05:24.440 --> 01:05:27.440
[no speech detected]

01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:31.600
[no speech detected]

01:05:31.600 --> 01:05:35.360
well, Iago is an interesting character

01:05:35.360 --> 01:05:39.200
because it he doesn't, he doesn't

01:05:39.200 --> 01:05:44.480
much use the language of the humors. I mean, he does use language of blackness,

01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:49.200
but the question of what kind of blackness is being invoked, whether it's a sort

01:05:49.200 --> 01:05:54.080
of metaphysical blackness, right, the blackness of the devil, or whether

01:05:54.080 --> 01:06:00.805
it's blackness of bodily blackness, like the blackness of of melancholy, which of course was the

01:06:00.805 --> 01:06:04.521
one real imaginary humor. I mean that was the one that they knew had

01:06:04.521 --> 01:06:08.440
to be there because there had to be 4. But they could never, they could never find it.

01:06:08.440 --> 01:06:13.288
So it was a little bit of a of a puzzle. But on the whole he doesn't use the

01:06:13.288 --> 01:06:19.051
language of the humorous to describe what's happening in him in his language,

01:06:19.051 --> 01:06:25.366
his in his language towards Othello. The language of the humors is

01:06:25.366 --> 01:06:31.528
very much in the play and it's very interesting in the play, but it but it tends to hover around

01:06:31.528 --> 01:06:36.756
Desdemona and and Othello their Desmond and Othello are the much more the

01:06:36.756 --> 01:06:42.125
users of humoral language in that play. What is interesting about Othello is of

01:06:42.125 --> 01:06:47.352
course Othello is a Southerner, right? He is a sub, I mean depending upon

01:06:47.352 --> 01:06:51.478
where you think he comes from. OK And the play is a little vague on

01:06:51.478 --> 01:06:55.847
that subject because the because what a more could be in Elizabethan English

01:06:55.847 --> 01:07:00.808
was varied enormously from somebody, you know who was we call a North

01:07:00.808 --> 01:07:05.880
African or someone who's from further South in in Africa.

01:07:05.880 --> 01:07:11.760
But what what's very interesting about Othello, according to scholars who study

01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:18.188
what's called geohumeralism and that is the language of the humors as it is applied to the world and

01:07:18.188 --> 01:07:24.615
and the regions of the world, is that there are really two there is there is infumeral thinking

01:07:24.615 --> 01:07:30.760
and this is not untypical at all. That is a contradictions. So on the SO there is a theory

01:07:30.760 --> 01:07:34.320
that the the blackness of skin, which of course is a humoral attribute,

01:07:34.320 --> 01:07:41.312
every physical attribute has a humoral cause, was either considered to be a

01:07:41.312 --> 01:07:47.036
sign of unnatural melancholy, and therefore collar the residue of collar

01:07:47.036 --> 01:07:52.200
the residue of intemperate passion,

01:07:52.200 --> 01:07:58.960
or, which is to say it's that kind of color is called unnatural melancholy, or melancholy a dust.

01:07:58.960 --> 01:08:03.310
The natural, I know this is complicated. The natural kind of melancholy, natural melancholy,

01:08:03.310 --> 01:08:07.579
which could also produce black skin, in some theories,

01:08:07.579 --> 01:08:14.160
would produce wisdom and wisdom and coolness of behavior and coolness of temper.

01:08:14.160 --> 01:08:17.800
So you've got these two in the period

01:08:17.800 --> 01:08:23.544
two very powerful and absolutely a contradictory notions of what black

01:08:23.544 --> 01:08:29.800
skin and and the temperament that would go with black skin would be like.

01:08:29.800 --> 01:08:33.424
And what you have in Othello is that

01:08:33.424 --> 01:08:39.280
he moves from the one to the other in the course of the play because when

01:08:39.280 --> 01:08:44.800
we first see Othello he's coming on he's being accosted by Brabantio's

01:08:44.800 --> 01:08:49.600
Brabantio and his kids kinsmen Vermont. He was furious, is ready to attack him.

01:08:49.600 --> 01:08:53.384
He's coming at him with swords. What's a fellow say put up your bright

01:08:53.384 --> 01:08:59.240
swords for the dew will rust them and they, you know they accuse him of stealing this.

01:08:59.240 --> 01:09:03.372
The Duke will answer this. Let's go to the Duke. I mean absolutely cool.

01:09:03.372 --> 01:09:07.480
I mean he tells us remarkably eloquent story of his life.

01:09:07.480 --> 01:09:11.080
I mean he is he's eloquent he's wise.

01:09:11.080 --> 01:09:16.780
He's he's that model of the African. And what happens is that

01:09:16.780 --> 01:09:22.760
Iago through working on him, through inflaming him, through puddling his clear spirit,

01:09:22.760 --> 01:09:29.608
is in Desdemona's phrase, turns him into the jealous, the impulsive, the murderous,

01:09:29.608 --> 01:09:36.080
the the the the hot tempered other S other black person.

01:09:36.080 --> 01:09:41.640
The problem is that in that for us, those two paradigms have been turned

01:09:41.640 --> 01:09:45.540
into the one, in other words, the the, the the other, the the paradigm of

01:09:45.540 --> 01:09:52.224
the black person is dispassionate, cool, wise, has largely been overtaken for reasons having a lot

01:09:52.224 --> 01:09:57.640
to do with everything that goes on in terms of colonialism and slavery.

01:09:57.640 --> 01:10:03.875
And the that second paradigm overtakes it. So it's very, very hard for us to read

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a fellow before that, that before,

01:10:07.352 --> 01:10:12.960
before those that racial paradigm has set in. And so we see Othello.

01:10:12.960 --> 01:10:17.840
I mean we we see, we see the stereotype, but we don't see the other,

01:10:17.840 --> 01:10:22.960
we don't see the counter stereotype, if you will.

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Well,

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the thing about reading for the humors is, is that what you you want the

01:10:49.415 --> 01:10:54.252
text to invite you to do it? OK. In other words, when I when I was talking

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about an earlier form of allegorical reading, the way that it tended to work was, Oh yes,

01:10:58.492 --> 01:11:03.880
there's this doctrine of the four humors. Let's just slap it onto the plays and see what happens.

01:11:03.880 --> 01:11:07.510
My own, I hope somewhat more

01:11:07.510 --> 01:11:13.440
nuanced approach is that you look, you look for that discourse and

01:11:13.440 --> 01:11:18.400
you find it when you hear hot, cold, wet, or dry.

01:11:18.400 --> 01:11:24.280
If you can't, if somebody isn't going to be kind enough to use the word collar,

01:11:24.280 --> 01:11:29.140
then you've got to find other words that will lead you into the sense that

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you're inhabiting you're, you're in the, you're in a humoral paradigm.

01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:38.520
But it's like any other discourse sometimes it's simply not in play.

01:11:38.520 --> 01:11:44.120
And what what is interesting is when it is called upon,

01:11:44.120 --> 01:11:47.900
when it is invoked by speakers and why.

01:11:47.900 --> 01:11:54.080
And so in the case of The Merchant of Venice, the Duke says, hey, nature tells me,

01:11:54.080 --> 01:11:59.464
human nature tells me that you'll show pity right now. And Charlotte says not.

01:11:59.464 --> 01:12:04.949
No, human nature doesn't. In my case it doesn't. So you you have to you What you need

01:12:04.949 --> 01:12:08.520
to do is to say OK, is the play,

01:12:08.520 --> 01:12:14.080
is the play moving into a humoral language? And why is it doing so?

01:12:14.080 --> 01:12:19.352
In whose interest is it for the humorous to be invoked here? And as I say,

01:12:19.352 --> 01:12:26.251
it's not that if you start reading him, really you're taking tragedy out. OK, it's that's.

01:12:26.251 --> 01:12:30.872
I don't think that's what's happening. I think what is happening is that

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the humor has become a language in which the Elizabethans looked

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for answers in what we would call, well,

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either in the in the psychophysiological, trying to find ways in which

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they could find natural explanations for

01:12:52.202 --> 01:12:56.560
things that were things that were happening.

01:12:56.560 --> 01:13:00.756
Yeah. I'm sorry I can't hear you.

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If you had access to a physician you'd

01:13:21.872 --> 01:13:25.734
you would you and and the means you could certainly go to a physician and

01:13:25.734 --> 01:13:30.410
we have as I'm sure you all know we have some surviving case books and

01:13:30.410 --> 01:13:36.120
there and typically those physicians in England are astrological physicians.

01:13:36.120 --> 01:13:39.880
I mean are astrological empirics and they you know they will certainly

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they will certainly you know they will cast horoscopes and do a whole

01:13:45.482 --> 01:13:51.808
bunch of things like that. But typically you'd go to an if you

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were in this city or town you'd go to an apothecary. If you were out in the country you'd

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probably go to the Manor house and the lady of the Manor house very

01:14:01.727 --> 01:14:06.800
often would have her own little home distillery and would have remedies.

01:14:06.800 --> 01:14:11.020
So that was often the way that it worked. There's an amazing diary medical

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diary of a of a Elizabethan woman named Lady Grace Mile May. And if if Lady Grace Mile May were

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alive today, she'd be in medical. She'd she'd be the surgeon general. I don't know.

01:14:21.711 --> 01:14:26.050
She'd she'd she would she would have gone to medical school because she lived.

01:14:26.050 --> 01:14:32.960
She bank she she impoverished her family by by ordering medicines, expensive medicine,

01:14:32.960 --> 01:14:38.025
so she could dose the whole neighborhood. She loved it and her and and she

01:14:38.025 --> 01:14:44.288
says things like, if you're melancholic, don't walk abroad at night by

01:14:44.288 --> 01:14:49.160
yourself because your body will suck up the humors of the night. And that would be very bad for you.

01:14:49.160 --> 01:14:54.480
Very bad. You'd get really suicidal. You'd start acting like Romeo. She doesn't say that.

01:14:54.480 --> 01:15:00.376
OK, great. I think that's about

01:15:00.376 --> 01:15:04.437
all the time that we have. But thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all so much.

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