The Anatomy of Melancholy

Meanwhile, “How many lovers has she tormented?” One suitor pines away, languishing in love: “How many, in the end, does she drive to death!” Another sighs and grieves; she does not care. And there is what Strozzi reproached Ariadne with:

You are no more moved by Euryalus’s groans and tears Than the face of the troubled sea is softened by prayer. You scorn a youth, the handsomest in the city, And drive him to die of maddening love.

She is no more moved by her sweetheart’s Sad sighs and tears than the raging sea by prayers. You scorn the handsomest youth in all our city, And drive him almost mad, to die for love.

They take pride in dressing themselves up to make young men fall in love—“to capture men and scorn them once captured”—to make them dote on them and go mad for their sakes.

But she is moved by no tears, Nor will she listen to any plea with a yielding heart.

While they grant their favours grudgingly, They love to be loved, yet scorn the lover.

All courtship and service are too little for them, presents too paltry:

She delights in her lover’s torments—and in the spoils.

Like Atalanta, they must be outrun or cannot be won. On the other side, many young men are just as obstinate and particular in their choice, just as tyrannically proud, overbearing, deceitful and false-hearted, just as unyielding and perverse, like Narcissus:

Many young men and many maidens sought him; But such fierce pride dwelt in his youthful beauty That no young men, no maidens sought him.

Young men and maidens courted him, But in his youth he was so proud, so aloof, That young men and maidens bade him farewell.

More than all the rest, Echo wept and tried every means of wooing him: love me out of pity, or pity me for love. But he was obstinate:

“I would sooner die,” he says, “than let you possess me.”

He would rather die than consent. Psyche ran after Cupid, pleading:

Your beautiful Psyche seeks you, beautiful one; A goddess asks for you, a god; a girl for you, a boy.

Fair Cupid, your fair Psyche pleads with you; A lovely lass woos a handsome young gallant.

But he rejected her nevertheless. In this way many lovers hold out so long, doting on themselves and standing in their own way, that in the end they come to be scorned and rejected, as Strozzi’s Gargiliana was:

Young men hate you, old men hate you; abandoned, you languish, You who were once the common concern of noblemen.

Both young and old now hate and scorn you, Who once were all their joy and comfort too.

As Narcissus himself was:

Who, despising many, Died before he could enjoy the love of any.

They in turn begin to be despised by others, as he was by his reflection, and finally settle for a poor curate or an old servant, though in their youth they might have had their choice of excellent matches. They resemble that well-bred mare in Plutarch who would admit only fine stallions; but when her tail was cut off and her mane shorn close, and she saw herself so disfigured in the water as she came to drink, “she allowed an ass to mount her”: at last she was content to be mated with an ass. Yet this is a common disposition; people will not abandon it, and it cannot be helped.