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The Physiological Conception of Love in the Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lawrence Babb
Lawrence Babb*
Affiliation:
Michigan State College
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Extract

Emotion, according to scientific writers of the Renaissance, is a physiological as well as a psychological phenomenon. A passion provokes muscular activity in the heart and movements of humors to or from the heart. It is accompanied, moreover, by intensification of two of the four primary physical qualities: heat, cold, moisture, and dryness. Heat and dryness, for instance, are concomitants of anger; an angry man is a hot, dry man. A sorrowful or fearful man is a cold, dry man. A desirous, hopeful, or joyful man is a hot, moist man. Since choler is a hot, dry humor, men of choleric complexion, or temperament, are physically predisposed to anger, and anger is the passion most characteristic of them. Since melancholy is a cold, dry humor, melancholy men are naturally prone to fear and sorrow. Since blood is hot and moist, sanguine persons are naturally inclined to desire, hope, and joy. Phlegmatic men are relatively passionless, for phlegm is cold and moist and there are no cold and moist passions.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1941 , pp. 1020 - 1035
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

1 This paragraph is based on: Philipp Melanchthon, Liber de Anima, Opera, ed. Bretschneider (Halle, 1834–60), xiii, 86–87, 126–129; Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie, tr. T. B. C. (London, 1618), pp. 455, 466–471; William Vaughan, Approved Directions for Health (London, 1612), p. 110; Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generali (London, 1630), pp. 34–45; Thomas Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors (London, 1639), pp. 101–133; F. N. Coeffeteau, A Table of Humane Passions, tr. Edw. Grimeston (London, 1621), passim; Edward Edwards, The Analysis of Chyrurgery (London, 1636), p. 20. (Liber de Anima was first published in 1540, the relevant section of The French Academie in 1580[?], Vaughan's Directions in 1600, Wright's Passions in 1601, Walkington's Optick Glasse in 1607, Coeffeteau's Passions in 1619.) See also Ruth L. Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays (Iowa City, 1927), pp. 78 ff., 127; Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 73–74.

A large part of the material in this article was gathered while the author was a fellow in the Folger Shakespeare Library.

2 Jacques Ferrand, Erotomania or a Treatise … of Love, or Erotique Melancholy, tr. Edmund Chilmead (Oxford, 1640), p. 64. The French original of this work appeared first in 1612.

3 Ibid., p. 261. The third digestion is the process by which the humors are utilized as nutriment. See P. A. Robin, The Old Physiology in English Literature (London, 1911), pp. 76–77.

4 Thomas Cogan, The Haven of Health (London, 1589), p. 240.

5 Ibid., p. 241; Vaughan, Directions, p. 69; Tobias Venner, Via Recta ad Vitam Longam (London, 1628), p. 221. Young persons and persons of sanguine complexion, since they have blood to spare, can safely indulge more often than others; intemperance is especially dangerous to persons of choleric or melancholy complexion (Cogan, Haven, pp. 239–240, 244; Venner, Via Recta, p. 221).

6 Vaughan, Directions, p. 70.

7 Cogan, Haven, p. 242. “Facit … ad vitae longitudinem atque robur, Veneris paruus usus; namque plurimum in ea effunditur ex arteriali illo sanguine atque purissimo spiritu, quod his indigeat generatio, propter quam Venus ipsa constituta est.”—Hieronymi Cardani … de Subtilitate Libri XXI (Basel, 1554), p. 363. See also Aristotle, De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae, 466b.

8 See André du Laurens, A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight, tr. Richard Surphlet (London, 1599; Shakespeare Association Facsimiles, 1938), p. 170; Cogan, Haven, p. 192; Walkington, Optick Glasse, pp. 64–65. Cf. Aristotle, De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae, 466a.

9 One occasionally reads that choler, another hot humor, makes men amorous: Batman uppon Bartholome, His Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum (London, 1582), fol. 32v; Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 241. Some writers say that flatuous melancholic humors have the same effect: Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie (London, 1586; Publications of the Facsimile Text Society, 1940), p. 176; Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. A. R. Shilleto (London, 1926–27), iii, 66; Ferrand, Erotomania, pp. 64–66. Blood, however, is much more often associated with love than is either choler or melancholy.

10 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 64. “Spirits” refers to the vital spirits, or vital spirit, a subtle fluid which is the vehicle of the natural heat and is mingled with the arterial blood. There are two other kinds of spirit, each with its physiological or psychological functions. See Robin, The Old Physiology, pp. 108–114, 139–175.

11 Cogan, Haven, p. 244. Cf. Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 141.

12 Walkington, Optick Glasse, p. 117.

13 Coeffeteau, Passions, p. 551. Cf. pp. 22, 26. Blood is produced in the liver by the second digestion (see Batman uppon Bartholome, fol. 29v; Burton, Anatomy, i, 169; Robin, The Old Physiology, pp. 76–77).

14 Anatomy, iii, 66.

15 Coeffeteau, Passions, pp. 655–656.

16 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 241.

17 The curious reader may pursue this subject in any of the many dietaries of the period, among which are: Sir Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helth (London, 1541; Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1937); Cogan, Baven; Vaughan, Directions; Venner, Via Recta. The sanguine foods are those which the authorities describe as hot and moist in various degrees These are the very foods which ordinarily they recommend most highly.

18 Cogan, Baven, pp. 208–209. Cf. Elyot, Castel of Helth, fol. 33r; Vaughan, Directions, p. 19; Venner, Via Recta, p. 20. See also M. P. Tilley, “Good Drink Makes Good Blood,” MLN, xxxix (1924), 153–155.

19 Christopher Wirtzung, Praxis Medicinae Universalis, tr. Jacob Mosan (London, 1598), p. 783.

20 Venner, Via Recta, pp. 23–24.

21 Vaughan, Directions, p. 20.

22 Burton, Anatomy, iii, 69. Cf. iii, 62, 67, 70, 117, and Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 249. “Paratiores ad id malum esse putantur, qui ingentes iecoris fibras habent, & qui semine abundant, ociosam vitam agunt, & delicate uiuunt. Nam & seminis abundantia & otium sunt caussa amons insani.”—Peter van Foreest, Observationum et Curationum Medicinalium … Libri XXVIII (Frankfort, 1602), p. 352.

23 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 59. Labor, says Bright, cools and dries the body (Treatise, p. 248).

24 Burton, Anatomy, iii, 119.

25 Du Laurens, Discourse, p. 118.

26 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 68.

27 La Primaudaye, Academie, p. 491.

28 Robert Henderson, The Arraignement of the Whole Creature (London, 1631), p. 264. Cf. Burton, Anatomy, iii, 171.

29 Pierre Boaistuau, Theatrum Mundi, tr. John Alday (London, 1581), p. 192. Miss Anderson quotes this passage. Cf. Burton, Anatomy, iii, 173.

30 Du Laurens, Discourse, p. 119.

31 John Bishop, Beautifull Blossomes (London, 1577), fol. 52v.

32 Renaissance ethics is based upon the classical principle that virtue consists in following the dictates of reason. To allow passion to overrule reason is to sin. See Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays, especially pp. 132–143; Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, pp. 63–72, 93–102; Hardin Craig, The Enchanted Glass (New York, 1936), pp. 116–118, 122 ff., 233–234. The moralists' denunciations of love appear in company with homilies on the other passions and on passion in general.

33 Coeffeteau, Passions, pp. 154–155. Examples of this kind of invective on the subject of love are common. See, for instance, Bishop, Blossomes, fol. 50v; Wright, Passions, p. 203: Henderson, Arraignement, pp. 258–265; Burton, Anatomy, iii, 54, 177, 213–214.

34 According to a medieval authority, “si non amantibus succuratur, ut cogitatio eorum auferatur, & anima leuietur, in passionem melancholicam necesse est incidant, & sicut ex nimio labore corporis in passionem laboriosam incidunt, itidem ex labore animae in melancholiam.”—Constantini Africani … Opera (Basel, 1536), p. 18.

35 Reasons for this appear in Foreest, Libri XXVIII, p. 352; Du Laurens, Discourse, p. 120; Vaughan, Directions, pp. 96–97; Ferrand, Erotomania, pp. 10, 64, 125, 131, 261; Coeffeteau, Passions, pp. 170–171.

36 J. L. Lowes' article “The Loveres Maladye of Hereos,” MP, xi (1914), 491–546, traces the long history of the lovesickness in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance medical theory. Although the article is primarily a historical and etymological study, it contains a great deal of information concerning the malady itself. This information, however, pertains to the melancholic rather than to the sanguine, stage of the disease.

37 Burton, Anatomy, iii, 263.

38 Du Laurens, Discourse, p. 122.

39 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 261.

40 Burton, Anatomy, iii, 218. Cf. iii, 220–221; Du Laurens, Discourse, p. 123; Vaughan, Directions, p. 91.

41 Cogan, Haven, p. 245.

42 Ferrand, Erotomania, pp. 241–242. Ferrand advises against both hot and moist and hot and dry foods.

43 Ibid., p. 238. Ferrand refers to Aristotle's Problems, 953b.

44 In this paper I am ignoring melancholy love in the drama (an extensive subject in itself). I do not mean to imply, however, that the sanguine and melancholic stages are clearly defined in the minds of the dramatists. The two stages are often confused. In Ford's Love's Sacrifice, for instance, Fernando illogically complains both of plethora of blood and of extreme emaciation; see The Works of John Ford, ed. Gifford-Dyce (London, 1895), ii, 21, 34, 48.

45 The association between love and heat is, of course, a very old and familiar one. See Ovid, Remedia Amoris, lines 105, 117–120, 491; Henry Thornton Wharton, Sappho (New York, 1920), p. 56. This association probably did not originate in scientific theory, yet scientific theory undoubtedly strengthened it.

46 The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. W. Bond (Oxford, 1902), iii, 255.

47 The Works of George Chapman: Plays, ed. R. H. Shepherd (London, 1889), p. 4.

48 The Works of John Marston, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1887), iii, 158. Cf. p. 210.

49 Sig. C1v (Students' Facsimile Edition). Cf. sig. G3V.

50 The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, ed. Glover-Waller (Cambridge, 1905–12), ii, 397.

51 The Plays of Philip Massinger, ed. William Gifford (London, 1813), ii, 284. Cf. Massinger's The City Madam, Plays, iv, 45.

52 Plays, i, 247. “Jovial” means sanguine.

53 The Faithful Shepherdess, Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 438.

54 Works, ii, 160. Cf. Massinger, The Parliament of Love, Plays, ii, 300–301.

55 Othello, iii, iv, 40. I am using W. J. Craig's “Oxford Shakespeare.”

56 The Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1885–86), vi, 41.

57 The Faithful Shepherdess, Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 384.

58 The Lover's Progress, Beaumont and Fletcher, v, 112.

59 The Bloody Brother, Beaumont and Fletcher, iv, 302.

60 Ford, Love's Sacrifice, Works, ii, 35.

61 Massinger, The Great Duke of Florence, Plays, ii, 523. Cf. Massinger's The Bondman, Plays, ii, 38.

62 Ford, 'Tis Pity, Works, i, 160.

63 Tomkis, Albumazar, A Select Collection of Old English Plays, ed. Dodsley-Hazlitt (London, 1874–76), xi, 308. Cf. Chapman, The Widow's Tears, Plays, p. 323.

64 Massinger, The Parliament of Love, Plays, ii, 299. Cf. “No heat of lust / Swells up her azure veins.”—Massinger, The Great Duke of Florence, Plays, ii, 465.

65 Ford, Works, i, 177, 293. Ford uses the word in the sense of “plethora” (see pleurisy in NED). Cf. Burton, Anatomy, iii, 263.

66 Marston, The Insatiate Countess, Works, iii, 195; Middleton, The Spanish Gipsy, Works, vi, 128; Ford, Love's Sacrifice, Works, ii, 21, 48.

67 Lust's Dominion, ed. J. Le Gay Brereton (Louvain, 1931), p. 121.

68 The Honest Whore (ii), The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker (London, 1873), ii, 131.

69 Appius and Virginia, The Complete Works of John Webster, ed. F. L. Lucas (London, 1927), iii, 222.

70 A Wife for a Month, Beaumont and Fletcher, v, 33.

71 The Atheist's Tragedy, The Works of Cyril Tourneur, ed. Allardyce Nicoli (London, 1930), p. 200.

72 The Rape of Lucrece, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood (London, 1874), v, 217.

73 See Lyly, Endimion, Works, iii, 26, 34.

74 As You Like It, iii, ii, 449–451.

75 Beaumont and Fletcher, x, 97.

76 The Merry Wives of Windsor, ii, i, 119.

77 Beaumont and Fletcher, i, 271.

78 Dekker, The Honest Whore (ii), Works, ii, 118.

79 Chapman, Monsieur D'Olive, Plays, p. 117.

80 Chapman, The Widow's Tears, Plays, p. 332.

81 See Massinger, The Bondman, Plays, ii, 33–35.

82 P. 9.

83 The Spanish Curale, Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 110.

84 The Second Maiden's Tragedy (Malone Society Reprints), p. 2.

85 The Elder Brother, Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 45.

86 Cupid's Revenge, Beaumont and Fletcher, ix, 222.

87 Works, v, 207–208.

88 Plays, ii, 451.

89 Beaumont and Fletcher, iii, 181. Cf. Marston, The Fawn, Works, ii, 216.

90 Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 375–376.

91 Works, i, 247.

92 The Malcontent, Works, i, 262.

93 A Collection of Old English Plays, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1882–85), i, 15. Cf. Massinger, The Parliament of Love, Plays, ii, 244.

94 Eryngo, defined by NED as “The candied root of the Sea Holly …,” is the aphrodisiac most frequently mentioned in the drama. Eryngo, it happens, is not a sanguine but a choleric food, “hot and dry in the second degree.”—Venner, Via Recta, p. 136. It warms “the parts of generation.”—Wirtzung, Praxis, p. 717. See also Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 247.

95 Massinger, The Bondman, Plays, ii, 38.

96 Jack Drum's Entertainment, sig. G4r. Cf. The Merry Wives of Windsor, v, v, 20–24.

97 A Trick to Catch the Old One, Works, ii, 290. “Eggs and Muskadine” are referred to as aphrodisiacs also in Cupid's Revenge, Beaumont and Fletcher, ix, 224. The qualities of muscadine, or muscatel, are discussed above.

98 Beaumont and Fletcher, ix, 33. Cf. “See, provoking dishes; candid Eringoes, / And Potatoes,” p. 58.

99 The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne (London, 1874), i, 84. A young man in Marston's The Insatiate Countess indicates that his apothecary sells him “stirring meats” (Works, iii, 159).

100 Wit Without Money, Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 195.

101 Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 442.

102 Massinger, The Guardian, Plays, iv, 171.

103 Beaumont and Fletcher, v, 71.

104 Works, i, 122.

105 iv, iii, 97–98.

106 Lust's Dominion, p. 52.

107 Tourneur, Works, p. 216.

108 Beaumont and Fletcher, iii, 226. Other references to bloodletting as a remedy of love occur in Field, A Woman Is a Weathercock, Old Plays, ed. Dodsley-Hazlitt, xi, 84, and Massinger, The Duke of Milan, Plays, i, 291.

109 Plays, ii, 294.

110 P. 302. This episode constitutes one of the principal interests of the play. See especially pp. 299–302.

111 Plays, p. 278.

112 Measure for Measure, i, iv, 57–61. Cf. Cogan, Haven, p. 245 (quoted above).

113 Works, iii, 74.

114 Ben Jonson, ed. Herford-Simpson (Oxford, 1925–38), vi, 481.

115 The Faithful Shepherdess, Beaumont and Fletcher, ii, 396.

116 Chapman, Plays, p. 150. Cf. Marston, The Insatiate Countess, Works, iii, 171, 187.

117 P. 152.

118 Beaumont and Fletcher, x, 302–303.

119 P. 303.

120 P. 304.

121 Works, ii, 47.

122 P. 21.

123 P. 36.

124 P. 34.

125 The conflict between love and right reason is a major interest also in Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Measure for Measure, in A Warning for Fair Women, in Marston's The Dutch Courtezan, in A King and No King and Monsieur Thomas, in Massinger's The Unnatural Combat, in Ford's 'Tis Pity (see especially Works, I, 122, 125), in Brome's The Queen's Exchange, in Glapthorne's (?) Revenge for Honour. See also The Second Maiden's Tragedy, p. 27; Bonduca, Beaumont and Fletcher, vi, 99; Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness, Works, II, 108; Middleton, Women Beware Women, Works, vi, 251.

126 Works, iii, 220.

127 P. 224.