The Anatomy of Melancholy

So Hero tripped away from Leander as though displeased:

Yet as she went she often looked behind, And found many flimsy excuses To linger on the way.

But if he happens to catch up with her, she is all resistance, reserve and coyness:

She refuses and fights, but above all desires to be conquered.

She seems unconquered, but is won at last; In wars like these, women use only half their strength.

Sometimes they are open and most accommodating and forward, ready, yielding and willing to embrace, to get a green gown with that shepherdess in Theocritus, Idyll 27, to let their skirts, and so on; to play and dally at such times, and with such men, as they see an advantage. Then they become coy and reserved again, so particular, so unapproachable, so demure that you would have an easier time taming a colt, catching or riding a wild horse, than gaining her favour or winning her love: not a look, not a smile, not a kiss for a kingdom.

Aretino’s Lucretia was a consummate practitioner of this art, as she tells her own story: “Though nature and art had made me very beautiful, these tricks made me seem far more attractive than I was. For what men eagerly seek and cannot attain draws their affection onward with the most furious desire.”

“I had a suitor who loved me dearly,” she says, “and the more he gave me and the more eagerly he courted me, the more I seemed to neglect and scorn him. I would not grant him what I commonly allowed others: to see me, talk to me, or even have a kiss.”

“To dupe him further and get the better of him—for he alone was my target—I had my own servant play the part of a Spanish count’s servant, bringing me a present while my suitor was with me. He performed his part exceedingly well: ‘My lord and master, the Count of Monte Turco, has sent your ladyship a small present, a share of his hunting: some venison, a pheasant, a few partridges, and so on’—all of which she had bought with her own money—‘and sends his love and service, asking you to accept it kindly. He intends to visit you very soon.’”

At the same time she showed him rings, gloves, scarves and coronets supposedly sent by others. There was no truth in it: it was all a scheme to deceive him. “By these means,” she concludes, “I drove the poor gentleman so mad that he was ready to exhaust his means and risk his own lifeblood for my sake.”

Philinna in Lucian had practised all this long before, as her conversation will show you. When her sweetheart Diphilus came to see her, as he did every day, she frowned at him and would not grant him her company, but kissed his rival Lamprias before his very face. Why? To make him more jealous, as she tells her mother, who reproached her for it; to sharpen his love, make him return with a keener appetite, and teach him that her favour was not so easily obtained.