Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Green Humor


So, I'm having one of those surprisingly frequent moments this year when I wished I had kept last year's AP Psychology book. It came on around the time I hit Act I.II, while Armado and Moth begin arguing about the "four complexions."
Here's the context:

Arm. Who was Samson's love, my dear Moth?
Moth.  A woman, master
Arm. Of what complexion?
Moth.  Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.
Arm.  Tell me precisely of what complexion
Moth. Of the sea-water green
Arm. Is that one of the four complexions?
Moth. As I have read, sir; and the best of them too.

The reference at the bottom offers some explanation. It says:

"complexion] used as the double sense of 'colour of the face' and 'humour' or 'temperament' of the body. The humours or temperaments were held in contemporary medicine to be four in number: the phlegmatic, the choleric, the sanguine, and meloncholy, and were all accredited with distinguishing hues. No complexion (in the sense of 'humour') was, of course, of a  'sea-water green' colour. But an ordinary symptom of chlorosis, or the 'green sickness,' from which young growing girls suffered, was a pale, greenish complexion"






The four humors are a greek idea of the four substances/fluids believed to inhabit the body. It was believed and generally accepted that, when these fluids were in balance, one was healthy; disease was caused by an excess or deficiency in one of these "humors" (thus the practice of blood-letting or leeching).  It primarily came from the observance of the separation of blood into four distinct layers after being left in a clot in a clear container. The idea, since, has obviously been refuted, but for hundreds of years it was the basis for medicine, as well as psychology and classification of personalities.

As for the "green" part. . .Armando says something odd about "Green is indeed the color of lovers." That didn't make much sense to me until I did a little research on different meanings it has carried across different cultures and times. According to Wikipedia (yes I used wikipedia. Get over it)
"Stories of the medieval period further portray it as representing love[40] and the base, natural desires of man.[41] In Persian and Sudanese poetry, dark-skinned women, called "green" women may be eroticized.[14] The Chinese term for cuckold is "to wear a green hat." 
It also mentioned green as representing fertility, rebirth, and inexperience.

1 comment:

  1. That's interesting about the color green. I'll bet that every color at one time or another or in one place or another has represented "love and the base, natural desires of man," haha.

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