volpone

A comedy of humours focuses upon the four humours that the Greeks believed were responsible for human health and emotion. In essence, this means that if any of the body's functions were out of balance, the body and its mental state would be out of sorts. Example in Volpone are found in Volpone's lust and feeling of melancholy, which were believed to have been caused by too much bile (black), and deceit, which is directly affected by too much blood.