The Anatomy of Melancholy

Good men often have bad wives, as bad as Xanthippe was to Socrates, Elevora to St Lues and Isabella to our Edward II. And good wives are just as often matched with bad husbands, as Mariamne with Herod, Serena with Diocletian, Theodora with Theophilus and Thyra with Gurmunde.

But I will say nothing of dissolute and bad husbands, or of bachelors and their vices. Their good qualities are a fitter subject for a full volume; already too well known in every village, town and city, they need no proclamation. And, lest I spoil any matches or dishearten loving young women, for the present I will let them pass.

Since men and women are so irreligious, depraved by nature, so wandering in their affections, so brutish, so prone to disagreement, so heedless of marriage vows, what shall I say? If you are such a person, or happen upon such a wife, what harmony can there be, what hope of agreement? It is not wedlock but deadlock—as with the reed and fern in the emblem, averse and opposed by nature. The odds are twenty to one against your marrying to your satisfaction. Just as in a lottery forty blanks were commonly drawn for one prize, you will hardly choose a good partner from a multitude. Little relief, then, little comfort comes from it:

Nor will you ever pass a whole day happily.

If he or she is such a person, You would be much better off alone.

If she is barren, she is not—etc. If she has children and your circumstances are poor, however cautious and careful you may be, the expense will ruin you: “She will burden your household with plentiful offspring.” You will not be able to bring them up; and what greater misery can there be than to beget children to whom you can leave no inheritance but hunger and thirst?

“When hunger rules, the cries of those asking for bread ring out, piercing their father’s heart.” What is so grievous as turning them out into the wide world to fend for themselves? No plague equals poverty. And when you have ample means and take great care over their upbringing, they will not obey.

Just think of the old proverb, “Heroes’ children are troubles,” “Heroes’ sons are afflictions”: great men’s sons seldom do well. “Oh, if only I had remained unmarried, or had no offspring!” Augustus exclaims in Suetonius.

Jacob had his Reuben, Simeon and Levi; David an Amnon, an Absalom, an Adonijah. Wise men’s sons are commonly fools, so much so that Spartianus concludes that “scarcely any great man has left behind a thoroughly good and useful son.” They would have been much better off childless.

It is all too common among people of middling rank: your son is a drunkard, a gambler, a spendthrift; your daughter a fool, a whore; your servants lazy drones and thieves; your neighbours devils. They will make you weary of your life.

If your wife is quarrelsome, you would be better off buried alive whenever she cannot have her way. She will be so impatient, constantly raving and roaring like Juno in the tragedy: nothing but storms, everything in uproar. If she is weak-minded and foolish, you would be better off with a block of wood; she will disgrace you and reveal your secrets.