A Storm on the Table : Tyrant's Feast in Macbeth

Abstract

Medical theories during Elizabethan period were based upon the medieval physiological concept of four humors. It was then believed that the macrocosm as well as the microcosm was fundamentally composed of the four elements - air, fire, water, and earth, while the microcosm (human body) had four humors - blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile, each being thought to correspond with each of the four elements: for example, blood corresponds with air. Diseases were thought to be the result of the imbalance of these four humors. The humor doctrine was dominant not only in medical theories, but in the field of culinary art. Every foodstuff, as it is a part of the macrocosm, was also believed to be composed of the same four elements, each of which, when ingested, turn to each of the four humors. Consequently, it was understood that, if a body is short of blood, a foodstuff full of air such as milk should be taken. This tells us that the Elizabethans believed the microcosm could be a part of the macrocosm through the act of eating - you are what you eat. In Macbeth there are so many metaphors expressing inability to eat, and in the 'Banquet Scene' all the guests cannot eat because they are hosted by the mad king. To my thinking, when Macbeth shouts, "let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer," Shakespear dramatized the total collapse of the two cosmos that was in one through the act of ingestion.