Talk:Comedy of humours

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Discussing "humour comedy" without reference to the four humors of the Greeks implies that the greek influence was not present. The "four humours" entry on wikipedia is fairly rich.

Even if this were so, breaking character types according to a gross physical trait falls under the umbrella of archetypal literary criticism or dream interpretation, at worst, common medical practice of the time, likely, and possibly modern narrative writing practice.

There may even be enneagrammatical and stanford personality studies viz classic literary criticism of narrative formulae, going back to this time. A student interested in the classic humors is likely looking for writing systems as promulgated by Georges Polti and Viola Spolin, though neither of these provides one a template that could be neatly placed over "Star Trek" as well as "Sex In The City." Although I have heard that Shakespeare's writing leaned toward more humours than four, the Greek Humour article might be very useful in this context.

Western civilization literary tradition places the dramatized individual firmly in the grip of the golden rule, but this still allows them particular paths of disrepute to climb out of. Addressing just a system of humours is likely going to miss key assumptions like this and not yield very good writing.

There is also implied in the idea of the humours additional levels of richness for the audience to bring away from the play. An awareness of the organs and their arguments, lest they gain the upper hand, for instance. A metaphysical approach of looking on one's fellow man as aspects of one body of Christ, etc.