The Anatomy of Melancholy

Persistence and opportunity of time and place; meetings, conversation, singing, dancing, music, amorous tales and sights, kissing, familiarity, tokens, gifts, bribes, promises, declarations, tears, and so on.

All the attractions considered so far operate from afar, at a distance. I will come closer to those further stages of love: meetings, kissing, dalliance, conversation, singing, dancing, amorous tales and sights, gifts, and so on. Like so many Sirens, they steal away the hearts of men and women. As Achilles Tatius observes in book 2, “A young woman’s eyes alone do not sufficiently test her affection. You must say something more effective and employ other powerful devices. Take her hand, squeeze her fingers firmly, and sigh as you do so. If she takes this well and seems not greatly averse, then call her your mistress, put your arms about her neck and kiss her,” and so on.

But none of this can happen unless they first have opportunities to live or meet together, to come in, go out and return. Letters, recommendations, outward gestures and actions can do much; but when people live near one another—in the same street or village, or together in a house—love suddenly catches fire. Through such opportunity and persistence, many a serving man entices his master’s daughter; many a gallant loves a slattern; many a gentleman pursues his wife’s maids; many ladies dote on their servants, as Ariosto’s queen doted on the dwarf. Many matches are made hastily in this way, as though necessity compelled the pair to love. Had they been free, mixed with other people, seen the variety available elsewhere or compared each other with someone else, they would never have looked at one another.

Without that opportunity for conversation and familiarity, they would have loathed and despised the people towards whom fate now drives them for want of better choice or other objects of desire. Their hot blood, idle life, rich diet and so on force them to dote on whoever is nearest. Often, too, people who initially feel no liking or affection for one another—who are prickly and quick to quarrel, offended by each other’s behaviour, like Benedick and Beatrice in the comedy, and finding many faults in one another—through sharing a house, talking, kissing, embracing and similar attractions gradually begin to fall in love without noticing it.

This was the strongest inducement for Potiphar’s wife to dote on Joseph, and for Clitophon to love Leucippe, his uncle’s daughter. Because of the plague at Byzantium, he happened to live with her for a time and sit beside her at table, as he tells the story himself in Tatius, book 2. Although it is fiction, it rests on good observation and expresses lovers’ passions well. He had opportunities to take her hand, and after a while to kiss her and touch her breasts, and so on, which almost drove him mad.

Ismenius the orator makes a similar confession in Eustathius, book 1. When he first came to Sosthenes’s house and sat at table with his friend Cratistes, Sosthenes’s daughter Ismene waited on them, with her breasts exposed and her arms half bare—

Barefoot, her dress loosened at the breast, her arms bare—