Medieval Personality Types Contd., or, Look, A Thermos of Phlegm!

See my first post about the Four Temperaments here: http://umedieval.blogspot.com/2009/04/medieval-personality-types.html

In King Lear Goneril makes the following remarks to her sister regarding their father, Lear:

"The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash: then must we look to
receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition,
but, therewithal, the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring
with them."

Often a man's enemies are the best at analysing his weaknesses, and in this case Lear's enemy, his daughter, has zeroed in on one of his biggest problems: he has a naturally rash temper and he is coming on to a period in his life when he will be more choleric than ever.

Similarly in Hamlet it is Hamlet's enemy, Claudius, who identifies Hamlet's temperamental problem, telling Polonius:

"There's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger"

What makes it particularly interesting is that both these characters go mad, but in different ways. Lear's madness demonstrates the link between madness, as in insanity, and madness, as in anger. Lear is mad in both senses of the word. Hamlet's madness is nothing like this; it is a melancholy, brooding madness.

In both cases Shakespeare's villains are able to identify and exploit the temperamental trait that brings the hero to madness.