4 Are you in adversity? She will comfort and assist you, bearing part of your burden to make it more bearable. 5 Are you at home? She will drive away melancholy. 6 Are you abroad? She watches you leave home, longs for you in your absence, and joyfully welcomes your return.

7 Nothing is delightful without companionship; no companionship is so sweet as marriage. 8 The bond of conjugal love is unbreakable. 9 The dear company of relatives increases: the number of parents is doubled, and of brothers, sisters and descendants.

10 You become the father of beautiful, fortunate children. 11 Moses curses barrenness in marriage; how much more a single life? 12 If nature does not escape punishment, surely your will shall not avoid it.

All this is true, you say, and who does not know it? But how easy it is to answer these arguments and construct a counter-parody directly opposed to them! As an exercise, I shall try.

1 Have you means? You have someone to spend them. 2 Have you none? Your poverty is increased. 3 Are you prosperous? Your happiness is ended.

4 Are you in adversity? Like Job’s wife, she will aggravate your misery, torment your soul and make your burden unbearable. 5 Are you at home? She will scold you out of doors. 6 Are you abroad? If you are wise, stay there: perhaps she will give you cuckold’s horns while you are away, and scowl at you when you come home.

7 Nothing gives more contentment than solitude, and no solitude compares with single life. 8 The bond of marriage is unbreakable: there is no hope of loosening it; you are ruined. 9 Your numbers increase: you will be eaten out of house and home by your wife’s relations.

10 An unchaste wife makes you a cuckold, and you will bring up other people’s children instead of your own. 11 Paul commends marriage, yet prefers a single life. 12 Is marriage honourable? What an immortal crown, then, belongs to virginity!

So Sirach himself says all that can be said for and against women; almost every philosopher likewise argues on both sides, and every poet debates the case—though what do “the mass of people” care what they say? Perhaps I can devise such arguments too, and so can you. When all is said, since some are good and some bad, let us take the chance. I therefore conclude with Seneca:

Why do you lie in a lonely bed? Release your sorrowful youth; seize pleasure now, Give the reins free play; keep the best days of life From slipping away.

Why do you lie alone and let your youth and best days pass away? Marry while you can, “while fretful grey age is still absent from your life,” while you are still able and vigorous.

Choose someone to whom you can say, “You alone please me.”

Make your choice freely and at once; do not delay, but take your fortune as it comes. It is true:

Wretched is the man who falls in with A bad wife; happy the one who finds a good one.

There is risk on either side, I confess, whether one lives single or marries.

For both taking a wife and not taking one are an evil.

It may be bad; it may be good. Just as it is an affliction and a calamity on one side, on the other it is a sweet delight, an incomparable happiness, a blessed condition, a benefit beyond expression, a unique contentment. Experience must settle it.

Do not, then, be so contrary, so grasping, so mistrustful, so particular and hard to please. Let us all marry, “cherishing one another’s embraces”: “Take me to yourself, and yourself to me.” Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day; let us keep it as a holiday for Cupid’s sake, for the sake of that great god Love, for Hymen’s sake. Let us celebrate the Vigil of Venus together in our ancestors’ company, singing as they did:

Tomorrow let him love who never loved; and he who has loved, let him love tomorrow. Spring is new, spring now sings; in spring the world was born. In spring loves come into harmony, in spring birds mate, And the woodland loosens its leafy hair, and so on. Tomorrow let him love, and so on.

Anyone averse to marriage should read further in Barbaro, On Marriage, book 1, chapter 1; Lemnius, On Education, chapter 4; P. Godefridus, On Love, book 3, chapter 1; Nevisanus, book 3; Alessandro degli Alessandri, book 4, chapter 8; and the tracts of Tunstall and Erasmus in praise of marriage, and so forth.

I do not doubt that in the end he will be satisfied, recant with Beroaldo, and do penance for his former folly, singing penitential songs. He will seek reconciliation with the divinity of this great god Love, make a pilgrimage to his shrine, offer gifts to his image, sacrifice upon his altar, and at last be as willing to embrace marriage as the rest.

I hope that no one will be found, “not even in that austere family of Stoics, who refuses to submit his solemn beard and haughty looks to a wife’s embrace, or disagrees with his fellows on this point.” For “what would a man in his prime more gladly see,” as Varro holds, “than a beautiful wife, a sweet wife, a loving wife?” Can the world offer a better sight, sweeter contentment, a fairer object, a more pleasing appearance?

Since marriage is the last and best refuge and cure for love melancholy, all doubts are cleared and obstacles removed. I ask again: what remains except that, according to both their desires, they should be happily joined, since there is no other remedy? God send us all good wives, each man his wish in this matter—and me mine!

And may God, who made this whole world, Send him his love, who has paid so dearly for it.

If everyone is content, publish their marriage banns: it is a match. “He enjoys Rhodanthe as his bride, and she Dosicles as her bridegroom.” Rhodanthe and Dosicles shall be joined, Clitiphon and Leucippe, Theagenes and Charicleia; Poliarchus has his Argenis, Lysander his Calista; and, to complete the masque, “the youth Iphis possesses his own Ianthe.”

And Troilus, in pleasure and at peace, Is with Criseyde, his own sweetheart.

And although they have barely passed through the dangers, bringing the match about through many difficulties and delays, let those who marry in this way take comfort from Aristaenetus: “After many troubles and cares, lovers’ marriages are sweeter and more pleasant.”