The Anatomy of Melancholy

A filthy rogue, an ugly hussy, a crooked carcass, a slattern, a witch, a rotten post, a hedge-stake can be dressed and decked out to look as fair and inspire as much love as the rest. Many a foolish fellow is caught in this way. One calls it “lust’s first snare”; Bossus calls it “a snare for souls, a deadly reed”—a fatal reed, the greatest go-between; “a powerful enticement, to be lamented with tears of blood,” says Matenesius, and with tears of blood to be deplored.

This does not mean that becoming clothes and customary ornaments should be condemned. Here, as in other things, there is a propriety and fitness worth observing, suited to different people and their stations. When a style of dress is generally accepted, the person who refuses the fashion is merely eccentric, like an old figure in a tapestry. But when people are so eager for novelty, so changeable, so extravagant in their dress—beyond their means and fortunes, unsuited to their age, position, rank and condition—what else should we think of them?

Why do they adorn themselves with so many plant colours, artificial flowers, elaborate needlework, ingenious designs, sweet perfumes, and the priceless wealth of precious stones—pearls, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and so on? Why do they crown themselves with gold and silver, wear coronets and headdresses of various fashions, and deck themselves with pendants, bracelets, earrings, chains, belts, rings, pins, spangles, embroidery, shading headwear, stiff collars and many-coloured ribbons? Why do they make such splendid displays with scarves, feathers, fans, masks, furs, lace, gauze, ruffs, falling collars, hairnets, cuffs, damask, velvet, glittering fabrics, cloth of gold and silver, and tissue? With the colours of the heavens, stars and planets, and all the resources of metals, stones, scents, flowers, birds, beasts, fish, and whatever Africa, Asia, America, sea, land, art and human industry can supply?

Why do they use and crave such novel inventions and newfangled headdresses, spending incalculable sums on them? “What are those curled, false locks and painted faces for,” as the satirist asks, “and that carefully studied walk, without a step out of place?” Why, like so many Sybarites, or Nero’s Poppaea, or Ahasuerus’s concubines, do they spend so much money and time dressing—as long as Caesar took to marshal his army, or a hawk takes to preen? “While they prepare, while they adorn themselves, a year goes by.” A gardener takes less pleasure and trouble over his garden, a horseman over grooming his horse and polishing his armour, a sailor over his ship, a merchant over his shop and accounts, than they take over their faces and all their other parts. Such raising themselves on cork soles, such squeezing themselves with whalebone! What is it for but to make young men swoop towards them, as a day-net catches larks?

Philocharus, a gallant in Aristaenetus, warned his friend Polyaenus to beware of such enticements: it was the pleasing sound and movement of his mistress’s spangles and bracelets, and the scent of her ointments, that first captivated him.

That was the first downfall of my mind.