The Anatomy of Melancholy

If, as Pedro de Ledesma maintains in his Cases of Conscience, every kiss a man gives his wife after marriage is “a mortal sin”; or if Jerome’s saying holds, “Whoever is too ardent a lover of his own wife is an adulterer”; or Thomas’s, in the Second Part of the Second Part, question 154, article 4, that “touching and kissing are a mortal sin”; or Durandus’s, in Rationale, book 1, chapter 10, that “spouses ought to abstain from embracing throughout the period when solemn weddings are forbidden”—what will become of all such immodest kisses and obscene acts, the forerunners of brutish lust, if not lust itself? What will become of those who frequently misuse their own wives? But what have I to do with this?

My aim is to show you the progress of this burning lust. To sum up everything I have said so far with a familiar example from the elegant Musaeus, observe with me the amorous advances of Leander and Hero. They began by looking at one another with lustful eyes—

Looking sideways, then with nods— With answering nods leading the girl’s mind astray. And she in return showed with answering nods That she did not reject young Leander’s love, and so on. Then— He approached in the darkness, silently pressing The girl’s rosy fingers, and from his depths Sighed mightily—then— Kissing the young woman’s sweet-scented neck, Struck by love’s spur, he spoke these words: “Hear my prayers and pity my love,” and so on. Speaking thus, he persuaded the reluctant girl’s mind.

With gestures and nods he first began To test the young woman’s feelings; With gestures and nods and smiles in return He found himself an answer. And in the dark he took her hand, Squeezed it hard, and sighed deeply, Kissed her too, and courted her as best he could, With “Pity me, sweetheart, or else I die.” And with the words and gestures that passed between them, He won his mistress’s favour at last.

The same advances are elegantly described by Apollonius in his Argonautica, between Jason and Medea; by Eustathius in the ten books of the loves of Ismenius and Ismene; by Achilles Tatius between his Clitophon and Leucippe; in Chaucer’s fine poem Troilus and Criseyde; and in Petronius’s notable tale of a soldier and a gentlewoman of Ephesus, famous throughout Asia for her chastity, who was mourning her husband. The soldier courted her with lovers’ customary rhetoric: “Will you resist even a love that pleases you?” and so on. At last “she allowed her obstinacy to be broken”: he gained her consent not only to satisfy his lust but to hang her dead husband’s body on the cross in place of the thief’s body he had been guarding, which had just been stolen while he courted her in her chamber. These are stories, you will say; but they have deeply significant morals, and well express the ordinary conduct of infatuated lovers.

There are many such enticements: nods, jokes, winks, smiles, wrestling, tokens, favours, signs, letters, valentines, and so on. Perhaps for this reason Godfridus, in book 2 of On Love, would not have women taught to write. Many such provocations are used when they meet face to face: they are willing and unwilling.

Playful Galatea pelts me with an apple, Then runs to the willows, hoping to be seen before she hides.

My mistress woos me with an apple, Then hurries into cover To hide herself; but first, God knows, She longs with all her heart to be seen.