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“And there’s the humor of it!” Shakespeare and the Four Humors

“And there’s the humor of it!” Shakespeare and the Four Humors explores the language of four humors and their influence in Shakespeare’s plays. English poet and playwright William Shakespeare created characters that are among the richest and most humanly recognizable in all of literature. Yet Shakespeare understood human personality and health in the terms available to his age—that of the now-discarded theory of the four bodily humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. The exhibition features rare books from the collection of the NLM and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

NLM produced the traveling banner and online exhibitions alongside an onsite display, which was in the History of Medicine Division Reading Room January 30, 2012–August 17, 2012.

In 2022, the Exhibition Program has refreshed the original online exhibition from 2012 into a responsive website with related digital resources from the National Library of Medicine.