the black oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health giving air.” In the following scene the question is actually mooted, though unfortunately not determined, of the difference between sadness and melancholy. “Arm. Boy, what sign is it, when a man of great spirit grows melancholy % Moth. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad. Arm. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp. Moth. No, no ; O lord, sir, no.
Arm. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal Moth. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior.” King John, in that fine scene where he tempts Hubert to the murder of his nephew says, “Or if that surly spirit melancholy, Had baked thy blood, and made it heavy-thick, Which else runs trickling up and down the veins, Making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes, And strain their cheeks to idle merriment.”
In Twelfth Night it is supposed to perform another culinary process. Fabian says, “If I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy.” In Taming the Shrew, the physicians are said to recommend the pleasant comedy to Christopher Sly, on the grounds that, “Seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d your blood, And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy,
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play, And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life.” In Viola's touching description of the effects of concealed love, the black spirit is made to assume a new livery, in a manner which proves Shakespeare to have been conversant
with the appearances at least of chlorosis or green sickness, the febris amatoria as it has also been called, R
