The Anatomy of Melancholy

We see this confirmed all too often in everyday experience. Choresus dearly loved the maiden Callyrrhoe, but the more he loved her, the more she hated him. Oenone loved Paris, but he rejected her. They are unyielding on every side, as if beauty had been created to ruin others or be ruined itself.

I wait on her, pay her every attention, beg and plead: “Gracious one, I pray you, pity me”; fair mistress, pity me. I spend myself, my time, my friends and my fortune to win her favour—as he complains in the eclogue. I lament, sigh, weep and pour out my grief to her, but she is hard as flint:

More unmoving than the rocks of Ismarus.

As beautiful and hard as a diamond, she will neither regard me—“You despise me”—nor hear me:

She flees from me as I call, Pitying none of my tears, unmoved by my complaints.

What shall I do?

I wooed her as a young man should, But “Sir,” she said, “I do not love you.”

But my Caelia is harder than crags, marble, iron, Oak, rock, cave, horn, adamant or ice.

Rock, marble, heart of oak barred with iron, Frost, flint or adamant are not so hard.

I give, I bribe, I send presents, but they are refused.

Corydon is a country bumpkin, and Alexis cares nothing for gifts.

I declare my love, I swear, I weep: “She repays love with hatred”; “She laughed at my tears.” Despite all this, she ignores me, mocks me, despises me, hates me. Phillida scoffs at me: “Eurydice, harder than rock, wild beasts or oak”—unyielding, harsh, stony still.

And it is quite true: many gentlewomen are so fastidious that they scorn all suitors, torment their poor lovers and think nobody good enough for them, as hard to please as Daphne herself:

Many sought her; she scorned those who sought her, And cared nothing for Hymen, love or marriage.

Many wooed her, but she always scorned them, And said she would not marry of her own will.

At one time they will not marry—so they say, at least, though that is the last thing they intend; at another, not yet, when it is their sole desire and they are mad for it. She will marry eventually, but not him: he is certainly a handsome, accomplished man, but he lacks means. Another suitor has ample means, but lacks sense. One is too old; another too young, too ugly; she dislikes his manner. A third is too dissolute; he is rich, but low-born.

She will be a gentlewoman, a lady, as her sister is, as her mother is. She is every bit as beautiful, as well brought up, has as good a marriage portion, and expects as good a match as Matilda or Dorinda. Otherwise, she is resolved to wait for the present. Young maidens are so ready to shy at every object, so easily won or lost by every trifle, so quickly turned aside, so hard to please.