Symptomes of Jealousie, fear, sorrow, suspition, strange actions, gestures, outrages, locking up, oathes, trials, lawes, &c.

Of all passions, as I have already proved, Love is most violent, and of those bitter potions which this Love-Melancholy affords, this bastard Jealousie is the greatest, as appears by those prodigious Symptomes which it hath, and that it produceth. For besides Fear and Sorrow, which is common to all Melancholy, anxiety of minde, suspition, aggravation, restless thoughts, paleness, meagerness, neglect of business, and the like, these men are farther yet misaffected, and in an higher strain.

’Tis a more vehement passion, a more furious perturbation, a bitter pain, a fire, a pernicious curiosity, a gall corrupting the honey of our life, madness, vertigo, plague, hell, they are more than ordinarily disquieted, they lose bonum pacis, as Chrysostome observes; and though they be rich, keep sumptuous tables, be nobly allied, yet miserrimi omnium sunt, they are most miserable, they are more than ordinarily discontent, more sad, nihil tristius, more than ordinarily suspitious.

Jealousie, saith Vives, begets unquietness in the minde, night and day: he hunts after every word he hears, every whisper, and amplifies it to himself (as all melancholy men do in other matters) with a most unjust calumny of others, he misinterprets every thing is said or done, most apt to mistake or misconstrue, he pryes into every corner, follows close, observes to an hair. ’Tis proper to Jealousie so to do,

Pale hag, infernall fury, pleasures smart, Envies observer, prying in every part.

Besides those strange gestures of staring, frowning, grinning, rolling of eyes, menacing, gastly looks, broken pace, interrupt, precipitate, half-turns. He will sometimes sigh, weep, sob for anger,

Nempe suos imbres etiam ista tonitrua fundunt,

swear and bely, slander any man, curse, threaten, braule, scold, fight; and sometimes again flatter, and speak fair, ask forgiveness, kisse and coll, condemn his rashness and folly, vow, protest and swear he will never do so again; and then eftsoons, impatient as he is, rave, roar, and lay about him like a mad man, thump her sides, drag her about perchance, drive her out of doors, send her home, he will be divorced forthwith, she is a whore, &c.

by and by with all submiss complement intreat her fair, and bring her in again, he loves her dearly, she is his sweet, most kinde and loving wife, he will not change, not leave her for a kingdom; so he continues off and on, as the toy takes him, the object moves him, but most part brauling, fretting, unquiet he is, accusing and suspecting not strangers only, but Brothers and Sisters, Father and Mother, nearest and dearest friends. He thinks with those Italians,

Chi non tocca parentado, Tocca mai e rado.

And through fear, conceives unto himself things almost incredible and impossible to be effected. As an Hearn when she fishes, still prying on all sides; or as a Cat doth a Mouse, his eye is never off hers; he glotes on him, on her, accurately observing on whom she looks, who looks at her, what she saith, doth, at dinner, at supper, sitting, walking, at home, abroad, he is the same, still enquiring, mandring, gazing, listning, affrighted with every small object; why did she smile, why did she pity him, commend him? why did she drink twice to such a man? why did she offer to kiss, to dance? &c. a whore, a whore, an arrant whore. All this he confesseth in the Poet,

Omnia me terrent, timidus sum, ignosce timori, Et miser in tunica suspicor esse virum. Me lædit si multa tibi dabit oscula mater, Me soror, & cum qua dormit amica simul.

Each thing affrights me, I do fear, Ah pardon me my fear, I doubt a man is hid within The cloathes that thou dost wear,

Is ’t not a man in womans apparel? is not some body in that great chest, or behinde the door, or hangings, or in some of those barrels? May not a man steal in at the window with a ladder of ropes, or come down the chimney, have a false key, or get in when he is asleep? If a Mouse do but stir, or the winde blow, a casement clatter, that’s the villaine, there he is; by his good will no man shall see her, salute her, speak with her, she shall not go forth of his sight, so much as to do her needs.

Non ita bovem Argus, &c. Argus did not so keep his Cow, that watchfull dragon the golden fleece, or Cerberus the coming in of Hell, as he keepes his wife. If a dear friend or neer kinsman come as guest to his house, to visit him, he will never let him be out of his own sight and company, lest peradventure, &c.

If the necessity of his business be such that he must go from home, he doth either lock her up, or commit her with a deal of injunctions and protestations to some trusty friends, him and her he sets and bribes to oversee: one servant is set in his absence to watch another, and all to observe his wife, and yet all this will not serve, though his business be very urgent, he will when he is half way, come back again in all post hast, rise from supper, or at midnight, and be gone, and sometimes leave his business undone, and as a stranger court his own wife in some disguised habit.

Though there be no danger at all, no cause of suspition, she live in such a place, where Messalina her self could not be dishonest if she would, yet he suspects her as much as if she were in a bawdy house, some Princes Court, or in a common Inne, where all comers might have free accesse. He cals her on a sudden all to naught, she is a strumpet, a light huswife, a bitch, an arrant whore. No perswasion, no protestation can divert this passion, nothing can ease him, secure or give him satisfaction.

It is most strange to report what outragious acts by men and women have been committed in this kind, by women especially, that will run after their husbands into all places and companies, as Jovianus Pontanus wife did by him, follow him whithersoever he went, it matters not, or upon what business, raving like Juno in the Tragœdy, miscalling, cursing, swearing, and mistrusting every one she sees.

Gomesius in his third book of the life and deeds of Francis Ximenius, sometime Archbishop of Toledo, hath a strange story of that incredible jealousie of Ioane Queen of Spain, wife to King Philip, mother of Ferdinand and Charles the 5. Emperours; when her husband Philip, either for that he was tyred with his wives jealousie, or had some great business, went into the Low-countries; she was so impatient and melancholy upon his departure, that she would scarce eat her meat, or converse with any man;

and though she were with child, the season of the yeer very bad, the winde against her, in all haste she would to sea after him. Neither Isabella her Queen mother, the Archbishop, or any other friend could perswade her to the contrary, but she would after him. When she was now come into the Low-countries, and kindly entertained by her husband, she could not contain her self, but in a rage ran upon a yellow hair’d wench, with whom she suspected her husband to be nought, cut off her hair, did beat her black and blew, and so dragged her about.

It is an ordinary thing for women in such cases to scrat the faces, slit the noses of such as they suspect; as Henry the seconds importune Juno did by Rosamond at Woodstock: for she complains in a moderne Poet, she scarce spake,

But flies with eager fury to my face, Offering me most unwomanly disgrace. Look how a Tigresse, &c. So fell she on me in outragious wise, As could Disdain and Jealousie devise.

Or if it be so they dare not or cannot execute any such tyrannical injustice, they will miscall, rail and revile, bear them deadly hate and malice, as Tacitus observes, The hatred of a jealous woman is inseparable against such as she suspects.

Nulla vis flammæ, tumidique venti Tanta, nec teli metuenda torti, Quanta cum conjux viduata tædis Ardet & odit.

Windes, weapons, flames make not such hurly burly, As raving women turn all topsie turvy.

So did Agrippina by Lollia, and Calphurnia in the dayes of Claudius. But women are sufficiently curbed in such cases, the rage of men is more eminent, and frequently put in practice. See but with what rigour those jealous husbands tyrannize over their poor wives.

In Greece, Spain, Italy, Turkie, Africk, Asia, and generally over all those hot countries, Mulieres vestræ terra vestra, arate sicut vultis; Mahomet in his Alcoran gives this power to men, your wives are as your land, till them, use them, intreat them fair or foul, as you will your selves.

(Necastor lege durâ vivunt mulieres,) they lock them still in their houses, which are as so many prisons to them, will suffer no body to come at them, or their wives to be seen abroad,

——nec campos liceat lustrare patentes.