Shakespeare playing cards

The Elizabethans believed that people's temperament is influenced by the balance of four 'humours' : blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. Passionate and overzealous people were believed to have a larger proportion of blood than usual and were “sanguine“. “Melancholics" had too much black bile in their system and were be prone to brooding and sadness. “Choleric“ people- yellow bile- were said often to be angry, jealous and proud. The “phlegmatic“ had a tendency to be passive and self-indulgent. 

In Shakespeare’s plays, black bile fills Hamlet with despair, Iago lives in a choleric state of envy and spite, Cleopatra’s boundless energy comes of her blood, and Gertrude, preferring to be blind and happy than to see is rotten in Denmark, is phlegmatic. 

In the deck of cards I’ve designed, the characters have been organised in suits according to their temperaments such that the king, queen and jack of hearts are sanguine, the spades are choleric, the diamonds, phlegmatic and the clubs melancholic. The drawings were made with coffee, ink, squashed berries and a black pen.