ABSTRACT
Far from supporting the tenets of Galenism, The Taming of the Shrew parodies humoral medicine and its implicit notions of medico-behavioral modification even more thoroughly than the more conventional stage satire of medical practitioners as ineffective charlatans or mercenary murderers who harm and even kill patients. Under the influence of alchemy and Neoplatonism, Paracelsus dismissed the antique notion of humors and instead developed homeopathic chemical remedies that treated diseases as 'entities in themselves', rather than the result of humoral imbalance. In the spirit of Paracelsus, The Taming of the Shrew mocks any theory humoral, theatrical, or otherwise, that affords performative speech absolute power to control and manipulate bodies, behaviors, emotions, and health. William Shakespeare wrote his plays in an environment that took seriously the connections between minds and bodies, emotions and actions. But The Taming of the Shrew repeatedly critiques the notion that the 'Bodies Temperature' dictates the 'Minds inclination', an essentializing form of humoral behaviorism.
