This book explores how the humoral womb was evoked enacted and embodied on the Shakespearean
stage by considering the intersection of performance studies and humoral theory. Galenic
naturalism applied the four humors-yellow bile black bile phlegm and blood-to delineate
women as porous polluting and susceptible to their environment. This book draws on early
modern medical texts to provocatively demonstrate how Shakespeare's canon offers a unique
agency to female characters via humoral discourse of the womb. Chapters discuss early modern
medicine's attempt to theorize and interpret the womb specifically its role in disease
excretion and conception alongside passages of Shakespeare's plays to offer a fresh reading
of (geo)humoral subjectivity. The book shows how Shakespeare subversively challenges
contemporary notions of female fluidity by accentuating the significance of the womb as a
source of self-defiance and autonomy for female characters across his canon.
