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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men And…

Let Simonides, Mantuan, Platina, Pietro Aretino and such woman-haters bear the blame if anything has been said amiss. I have not written a tenth of what might be brought forward from them and others: “All the invectives and satires written against women cannot be contained in one volume.”

And, to tell the truth, what I have said concerns women no more than men, though women are named more often in this treatise. To make my defence once and for all, I am neither prejudiced against them nor bitter on that account. What is said of one sex, “with the name changed,” may for the most part be understood of the other.

My words are like the picture by Passus in Lucian. A fellow commissioned him to paint a horse with its heels in the air, rolling on its back; he painted it walking. When the man came for his picture, he was very angry and said that it was the exact opposite of what he wanted. But Passus immediately turned the picture upside down, showing him the horse in the position he had requested, and so satisfied him. If anyone objects to my words, let him change the name, read “him” for “her,” and the meaning is just the same.

But to my point: if women in general are so bad, and men worse than they are, what a risk it is to marry! Where will a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband? A man may avoid a woman, but not a wife. A wedding is an undoing, some say; marrying is marring, wooing is woeing. “A wife is a wasting fever,” as Scaliger calls her, “cured only by death.” As Athenaeus adds, quoting Menander:

You throw yourself into a sea of troubles— Not the Libyan or Aegean, where out of thirty ships Not three are lost: no man who takes a wife is saved at all.

You wade into a very sea of woes; In the Libyan and Aegean seas everyone knows That fewer than three ships out of thirty are wrecked, But on this rock, I say, not one escapes.

For the worldly cares, miseries and discontents that accompany marriage, please learn from those who have experience; I have none. “I have begotten writings as my children”; “books are the mind’s children.” For my part, I will pretend along with the poet:

Keep far away, nymphs; keep away, girls, deceitful race: A life under the yoke does not suit my nature. I delight in—etc.

Many married men cry out against its miseries and rail openly at wives. I have never tried it, but I hear some of them say:

The sea is no sea; you are the fiercest sea.

An Irish Sea is less turbulent and raging than a quarrelsome wife.

Scylla and Charybdis, churning the Sicilian straits, Are less to be feared; every wild beast is better.

Scylla and Charybdis are less dangerous; No beast is so harmful.

This presumably made the Devil—as most interpreters maintain—leave Job his wicked wife after taking away his possessions, “the goods of body and fortune,” his health, children and friends, so as to persecute him still more. Pineda proves this from Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom, Prosper, Gaudentius and others: “so that a new kind of calamity might arise for the man from this,” to vex and torment him worse “than all hell,” worse than all its devils, knowing as he did the character of a bad woman.

“Jupiter has given man no more destructive evil,” says Simonides. “Better to dwell with a dragon or a lion than to keep house with a wicked wife,” Ecclesiasticus 25:18; “better to live in a wilderness,” Proverbs 21:19. “No wickedness is like hers,” Ecclesiasticus 25:22. “She causes a grieving heart, a sorrowful face, a wounded mind, weak hands and feeble knees,” verse 25. “A woman and death are the two bitterest things in the world.”

“I must take a wife today: he seemed to me to be saying, ‘Go home and hang yourself,’” Terence, Andria 1.5. Yet for all this, we bachelors wish to marry; like that Vestal virgin, we long for it:

Happy married women! May I die if marrying is not sweet.

“It is the sweetest thing in the world; I wish I had a wife,” he says:

For gladly would I leave the single life, If I could find myself a good wife.

“Heigh-ho for a husband!” she cries. A bad husband—indeed, the worst that ever was—is better than none. O blissful marriage, O most welcome marriage! Happy are those who are joined in this way. We eagerly seek it and are never at ease until we have achieved it.

But with what outcome? We are like the birds in the emblem that fed around a cage: as long as they could fly away whenever they wished, they liked it well enough. But once they were caught and could not get free, although they had the same food, they pined away in dejection and would not eat. So we praise marriage:

While we poor wretches are still free And gaze upon our mistress; but once, alas, the door is shut, What was honey becomes gall within.

As long as we are wooers, free to kiss and embrace whenever we please, nothing is so sweet: we think ourselves in heaven. But once we are bound and have lost our liberty, marriage is a hell: “Give me my yellow stockings again!” A mouse in a trap lives just as merrily; some of us are in purgatory, if not hell itself.

“War is sweet to those who have not experienced it,” as the proverb goes. It is fine to talk of war, and marriage is sweet to contemplate until it is tried. Then, just as war is terribly dangerous and distressing, with death at the door every minute, so is—etc.

When those wild Irish noblemen, says Stanihurst, were entertained by King Henry II when he kept Christmas in Dublin, they tasted his princely hospitality, fine wines and delicate food; they saw his heavy silver and gold plate, enamelled and set with jewels, golden candlesticks, splendid rich hangings and magnificent furnishings; they heard his trumpets, fifes and drums and his exquisite music of every kind.

10829.The named writers function as authorities for the invective Burton claims merely to report. Mantuan is the poet Baptista Mantuanus; Pet. Aratine is Pietro Aretino. The Fonseca passage and the individual charges borrowed from these writers remain uncollated.

10830.“Apologize” means defend one’s position, not express regret. Burton explicitly extends the criticism to men, an instruction repeated in the reversible-picture anecdote.

10832.The Demosthenes encomium transmitted with Lucian, sections 23–24, names the painter Pauson and describes a galloping horse. Burton prints Passus and calls the horse “passant,” walking. Both substantive readings are preserved here; “site” means position.

10834.“Marrying marring” and “wooing woing” are puns on marriage as ruin and wooing as woe. “Woeing” recreates the latter in modern spelling. A hectic fever was a persistent wasting fever; this is an analogy, not a medical diagnosis. Scaliger’s exact passage remains unlocated.

10835.Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.8 in the consulted division, quotes Menander on a sea of troubles. The Libyan and Aegean seas provide ordinary dangers against which marriage is exaggerated. Burton’s Latin and his separate four-line English version are both retained.

10837.The Greek says that writings have been begotten as children; the Latin plays on libri, books, and liberi, children. Compare Synesius, Letter 1 to Nicander. Burton’s Lipsius reference supplies no book number. Greek ligatures and accent forms are normalized; fine typographical collation remains open.

10838.“Jugata” means yoked, with marriage implied. Burton breaks off after “Me juvat,” “I delight in”; the missing continuation is not supplied. The poem is unattributed here. “Dissemble” preserves Burton’s suggestion of a pose rather than a simple declaration of settled preference.

10840.Plautus, Asinaria 134: the speaker is Argyrippus, reproaching the women who have excluded him, not a husband complaining of his wife. Burton omits “est” and varies the spelling. The following Irish Sea comparison is his own application.

10842.Hercules Oetaeus 235–236, transmitted under Seneca’s name. Scylla and Charybdis are the paired maritime dangers of the Sicilian straits; in the drama the Nurse speaks of a wife’s jealous rage. Burton’s looser English couplet remains distinct from the Latin translation.

10843.This judgment of Job’s wife is presented as a line of interpretation, mediated by Juan de Pineda and his patristic authorities. It is not a quotation from the biblical narrator. Exact locations in Pineda and the named authors remain to be checked.

10844.Burton’s scriptural numbering is retained; the warnings cluster in Sirach 25, whose verse divisions vary. The saying attributed to “Simonides” has a parallel near the end of Semonides of Amorgos, poem 7, in its attack on women. The comparison is through an English translation; Burton’s Latin intermediary remains unidentified.

10845.Terence, Andria 254–255, has Pamphilus interpreting his father’s order that he marry. Burton changes the order’s second person into the first person, “I must take a wife.” It is a character’s comic expression of distress.

10847.Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 6.8, gives this verse in an imaginary legal case about a Vestal virgin accused after writing it. It is not evidence of an actual prosecution. “Nuptæ” means married women; the speaker envies them. Burton then changes to a male bachelor’s voice.

10849.An emblem combines an image with explanatory words. Burton’s abbreviated reference gives no author or emblem number. “Meat” here is food, not specifically animal flesh.

10850.This unattributed verse continues the sentence from the preceding page. “Fel” is bitter gall and “mel” is honey; the Latin compresses the reversal into a rhyme. The couple’s enclosure follows the birdcage image.

10851.“Koll” means embrace. The yellow-hose saying asks for the former condition back in this context; its precise proverbial background remains unidentified. The literal clothing image is retained.

10852.The proverb contrasts imagined pleasures with experience. Burton deliberately leaves the parallel with marriage unfinished at “so is, &c.”; the modernization does the same.

10855.Richard Stanihurst’s On Irish Affairs, book 3, is Burton’s authority. The description of the Irish as wild and their life as squalid belongs to this partisan historical presentation. The Latin marginal list repeats and supplements the luxurious objects in the body.