Choleric
Action-oriented
- Speed: The choleric temperament is quick to react. If a plan needs to be put into action, the choleric readily rises to the occasion. If someone is in danger or in need, the choleric jumps to his feet immediately. Cholerics are willing to serve and seek high ideals. They are natural leaders.
- Intensity: The choleric has an intense and fiery temperament. The higher the challenge, the more intense is the choleric’s reaction. Ambitious ideals drive the intense choleric to the greatest of deeds or the worst of crimes. Cholerics are go-getters and self-starters.
- Duration: A choleric temperament has reactions that endure long after an event. Cholerics keep up their energy throughout a challenge. On the one hand, they will continue a task or project to the very end. On the other hand, they are prone to hold grudges for a very long time and find forgiveness difficult. Cholerics are the engine to push projects forward, but sometimes they are so focused on the goal that they do not consider whether they have the right goal or whether they are pursuing it in a virtuous way.
Examples from Western Literature
Choleric
Charles Le Brun's sketch for an allegorical statue depicts the choleric temperament. The athletic choleric, armed with a sword and shield and followed by a roaring lion (a symbol of strength and kingship), turns and strides to meet the oncoming enemy.
Cassius's Choleric Temperament
BRUTUS [to CASSIUS]: "Go show your slaves how choleric you are, / And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? / Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch /Under your testy humour? ... / I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, / When you are waspish."
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar 4.3
King Lear's Choleric Temperament
GONERIL [to REGAN]: The best and soundest of his [ Lear’s] time hath been but rash; then must we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.
Shakespeare’s King Lear 1.1
Choleric Henry IV
HOTSPUR: An if the Devil come and roar for them, / I will not send them: I will after straight, / And tell him so; for I will else my heart, / Although it be with hazard of my head.
NORTHUMBERLAND: What, drunk with choler? stay, and pause awhile.
Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI 1.3
Fluellen on Choler
FLUELLEN: I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is born. … Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his brains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.
KING HENRY: For I do know Fluellen valiant / And, touch’d with choler, hot as gunpowder, / And quickly will return an injury.
Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry V 4.7
The Choler of the Duke of York
YORK. [Aside]: Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great. / O, I could hew up rocks and fight with flint, / I am so angry at these abject terms; / And now, like Ajax Telamonius, / On sheep or oxen could I spend my fury. / I am far better born than is the King, / More like a king, more kingly in my thoughts; / But I must make fair weather yet awhile, / Till Henry be more weak and I more strong.
Shakespeare's The Second Part of King Henry 6th 5.1