Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The 5th Hairy King

In my home, when one of the kids scraped their knee, got a bruise, or caught the cold, my mother would pull out many different herbal home remedies.We rarely went to the doctor. I was raised under the philosophy that plants can help our bodies heal themselves. Coming to college I found out that this idea of course is one of many traditional medicinal philosophies.
I took a class (Cultual History of Medicinal Plants PWS 101 at BYU) and learned a lot about the 4 Humors of old European medicine. This was practiced widely in Shakespeares time as the new scientific reasoning behind bodily health. I don't agree with all of this, but I thought it would apply so here is a little that I know about it.
Humorism is the philosophy that the main body fluids (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) need to be in balance for one to be healthy and that excess of one over the others would account for the change in moods (sanguin, choleric, melencolic, and phlegmatic).

The reference to this topic is what I found interesting in Henry V, Act 2 Scene I.
Here is where Nym mentions it a few times, and my own thoughts about it in parenthesis.
   "Pistol -'Solus' egregious dog? O viper vile, the solus in thy most marvelous face, the solus in thy teeth and in thy throat and in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, and, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the solus in thy bowels, for I can take, and Pistol’s cock is up, and flashing fire will follow. (Pistol brings up a magic spell here which was seen as backwards and completely opposite to the science of the humors in that time.)
   Nym - I am no Barbason; you cannot conjure me. I have an humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms. If you would walk off, I would prick your guts a little in good terms, as I may, and that’s the humour of it. (Nym is talks of how spells and enchantments are nothing when science and health is concerned. Nym says he is in the mood (humor) to fight. He also says he would aim at Pistol's guts. Because yellow bile is associated with the gut and because an excess of yellow bile would mean that one is choleric, I think that Nym might be saying that Pistol is easily angered and temperamental and will loose. Nym is confident of his fighting ability over Pistol and says that he will win and that is just the way it is.)
...
   Nym - I will cut thy throat one time or other in fair terms, that is the humour of it. (If Nym were to cut Pistol's throat he would bleed. Blood was the body fluid of those who were called Sanguine who were also known to be courageous. I think that Nym is saying that Pistol would see that he is no match for Nym and that he would eventually understand that he would loose and therefore be shown for the coward that he is.)
...
   Nym - The king hath run bad humours on the knight; that's the even of it. (This explains that the king had given his friend Falstaff a bad turn which eventually lead to the man's death.)
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   Nym - The king is a good, but it must be as it may. He passes some humours and careers. (Nym blames the king's betrayal on his bad moods and his ways.)

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