Origin of Green-Eyed Monster

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is David from Irving, Texas.

Hi, David. Welcome to the show.

Well, hello.

My question is about the phrase, the green-eyed monster. It’s a phrase I’ve heard growing up representing jealousy. And I know you can be green with envy, but why in the world with jealousy is it a green-eyed monster?

The green-eyed monster is first mentioned in Shakespeare in his play Othello. Iago says, oh, beware my lord of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster. But the idea was probably circulating before that. Actually, in The Merchant of Venice, Portia talks about green-eyed jealousy. And so a lot of times Shakespeare picks up ideas that are circulating in the culture and in the zeitgeist. So it probably existed before that. And it may be related to the old medieval idea of the humors, the four humors in the body and the different colors being related to different emotions, like black bile being connected with melancholy. And green was connected with bile as well. So it may have to do with the bodily humors.

So the bile of the body is actually green, right? Is that stuff that comes out of the gallbladder next to the liver, right? Kind of gross.

Yeah. Yeah. So there was a lot of connection between colors and humors. And actually in French, you’re not green with envy. You are yellow with envy.

Interesting. And, you know, I think I remember that envy and jealousy have often been conflated, that they’re not necessarily considered different emotions completely. Oftentimes, particularly in the older works, they’re treated as the same because jealousy and envy share a lot of properties where you want something that you can’t have, even if it’s just a situation. But a lot of people now draw a distinction between the two, right?

So I could see how green with envy and green-eyed monster can represent two different sides of the same emotional palate. Does that make sense, David?

It makes total sense.

So basically Shakespeare introduced the monster.

Oh, he is by far and away, yeah, by far and away the popularizer of this term. We have no records of the green-eyed monster before Othello.

Absolutely. He gets a lot of credit for this one.

Very good. Thank you.

Cool, right?

Yeah.

Thanks for calling, David.

So the whole line from Iago is, oh, beware, my lord of jealousy, it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on. The cuckold lives in bliss, who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger.

So there’s this whole idea here that the green-eyed monster desires a thing and yet belittles it and makes fun of it because it can’t have a little bit of sour grapes going on there, too, right?

Really interesting.

Yeah.

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