A traveling banner exhibition, and online exhibition with education resources developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health will be on display for a limited engagement at the South Campus (main) Library from March 19 – April 28, 2012.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) created characters that are among the richest and most humanly recognizable in all of literature. Yet Shakespeare understood human personality in the terms available to his age—that of the now-discarded theory of the four bodily humors –blood, bile, melancholy, and phlegm. These four humors were thought to define peoples’ physical and mental health, and determined their personalities, as well.

The language of the four humors pervades Shakespeare’s plays, and their influence is felt above all in a belief that emotional states are physically determined. Carried by the bloodstream, the four humors bred the core passions of anger, grief, hope, and fear—the emotions conveyed so powerfully in Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies.

“And there’s the humor of it” Shakespeare and the four humors explores these themes in a special display featuring images of rare books and incunables from the collection of the National Library of Medicine and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Curated by Gail Kern Paster, PhD and Theodore Brown, PhD and exhibition design by Riggs Ward Design.