The Four Humors in Romeo and Juliet

In Shakespeare's time it was believed that people were made up of a combination of four humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm), and if one of those four humors was in a higher amount than the others, that person would be considered "mad" because their actions would reflect the humor that out was out of balance. Romeo in Romeo and Juliet would be considered a textbook example of a person with "too much blood." He is extremely "warm and moist" in his characterization as being amorous, hopeful, courageous, optimistic, and loving. Each and every one of these characteristics can be seen in his interactions with Juliet, he is very loving and amorous towards her, and he is also hopeful and optimistic that their relationship/marriage will be able to overcome the feud of their families. He could easily be said to be an artisan (a key title given to those with "too much blood") because making Juliet fall in love with him is an art, maybe even a challenge and past time for Romeo. It was stated that those with too much blood respond to stress with denial, spontaneity, and become reckless when under stress which may cause one to retailate against the source of the stress. Once again, Romeo is a textbook example of one responding to stress in this fashion. He was in strong denial in the beginning when he found out that Juliet was a Capulet and that they could not be together, he was also in a short period of denial when he saw that Juliet had "killed herself" so it seems that when Romeo finds himself in a stressful situation that his first response is to fall into denial. This leads to the second step of dealing with stress for Romeo-spontaneity. When he came out of the denial about not getting his way with Rosaline, he instantly fell in love with Juliet instead which shows spontaneity. When he found out that loving Juliet was forbidden by their families, he decided they should get married, also showing spontaneity. Lastly, when Romeo passes the spontaneous state, he becomes reckless. After Romeo and Juliet were married (spontaneously) and the Monagues and Capulets were once again fighting, Romeo ended up recklessly killing Tybalt (who represents the Capulet family as a whole, which is the underlying source of all of Romeo's stress). Therfore, as shown above, to the psychologists of Shakespeare's time, Romeo's character is the epitome of a person who's bodily humors were out of balance and in this case, the blood was in excess.