Love, Humoralism, and "Soft" Psychoanalysis.

HUMOR in literature; PSYCHOANALYSIS; LOVE; EMOTIONS; SHAKESPEARE, William, 1564-1616; ELIZABETHAN (Literary period)

This essay puts humoralism into dialogue with psychoanalytic thought focusing on the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Like humoral theory, psychoanalysis has been hesitant to appraise the most esteemed of human passions, love, in any terms other than symptomatic ones. That is, both discourses might be characterized as treating love somewhat suspiciously, in wholly affective terms. As the play opens, spectators are led to believe that Romeo is suffering through a bout of love melancholy. Critics who have noticed Juliet's levelheadedness in comparison to Romeo's emotional maturity, including her desire for the physical consummation of her love for reasons of imagined enjoyment, are noticing something else: her body does not seem to obey the same fluid dynamics as does her young husband's. She is in control of what she is thinking, and her passionate outbursts appear appropriate in relation to the objects and events that cause them.