The Anatomy of Melancholy

When they observed his majestic presence, sitting in purple robes on his royal throne, crowned and holding his sceptre, the poor men were so amazed, enchanted and captivated by the sight that they were “weary of their former homely fare,” weary and ashamed of their own squalor and way of life. They would all become English immediately: who mattered but the English? But once they had submitted and lost their former liberty, some began to rebel and others to regret what they had done, when it was too late.

It is the same with us bachelors. When we see those lovely faces and women’s dazzling displays, observe their pleasing gestures and graces, listen to their siren songs, see them dance and so on, we imagine that their characters are as fine as their faces. We are captivated by silent signs; “we rush into their embrace”; we rave, we burn and would gladly be married.

But when we feel the miseries, cares and woes that come with it, many of us lament, cry out at last and cannot be released. If this is true, as some will tell us from experience, then for my part, farewell to taking a wife! As the comic poet says in jest:

May the second man to take a wife perish miserably; I call down no curse upon the first! The first, I think, did not know the evil.

Ill befall the man who made the second match; I wish the first no harm—alas, poor man, He knew neither what he did nor what it was.

What shall I say to the man who marries again and again,

Who puts his foolish head into the marriage halter?

I do not pity him. As for the first time, he must manage as he can, sometimes bear the burden on his head and shoulders and let his next-door neighbour ride, or else run away; or, like that Syracusan in a storm when all heavy things had to be unloaded from the ship, throw his wife into the sea, “because she was the greatest weight.” But I confess that this is said in jest, and I ask you to take it that way.

In sober earnest, marriage is a bondage, a slavery, a yoke, an obstacle to every good undertaking—“he has married a wife and cannot come”—a bar to every advancement, a rock on which many are saved and against which many strike and are wrecked. Not that marriage itself is evil or troublesome: it is full of every satisfaction and happiness, one of the three things that please God, “when a man and his wife agree together.” It is an honourable and happy state—who does not know it?—if they are temperate, wise and virtuous, as the poet concludes:

If they find loves that suit them, No kind of pleasure is missing.

If man and wife are well matched, No pleasure is lacking in their life.

But to imprudent, sensual people, governed wholly by their senses like beasts, it is a deadly plague, often a hell in itself, and can give little or no satisfaction, since their lusts are often so unruly and monstrous and their affections so changeable.