The Anatomy of Melancholy

They should not be too severe in such matters, especially where no pressing reason or serious impediment exists. It is good for a commonwealth. Plato holds that in making marriage agreements young men should never avoid kinship with poor families or seek it with rich ones. Poverty and low birth may be amply compensated by many other good qualities: modesty, virtue, religion and excellent upbringing.

“I am poor, I confess; but does that make me contemptible, an outcast? Love himself is naked, as are the Graces and the stars, while Hercules is clad in a lion’s skin.” Allow something to virtue, love, wisdom, a pleasing face, beauty and bodily form. Do not think only of money.

Besides, you must consider that “Love cannot be forced”: love cannot be compelled; people must love as they can. “Fate lies in those parts which the fold of the garment conceals.” As the saying goes, marriage and hanging follow destiny; matches are made in heaven.

It is not in our power to love or hate, For our will is overruled by fate.

A servant maid in Aristaenetus loved her mistress’s favourite. When her mistress discovered this, “in furious jealousy,” she dragged her about the house by the hair and tormented her cruelly. The girl cried out, “Oh, mistress, fortune has made my body your servant, but not my soul!” Affections are free and cannot be commanded.

Moreover, God in his just judgement may appoint and permit such marriages to restrain their ambition, pride and greed, and to correct those hereditary diseases of a family. For I agree with Plato and Bodin that families, like kingdoms, have their limits and allotted terms, beyond which they will not extend in power or duration—six or seven hundred years—as those writers illustrate with many examples, and as Peucer and Melanchthon also affirm;

yet they continue on an unbroken course, as we see from many pedigrees of knights, gentlemen and yeomen, remaining as they began for many generations with little change. However that may be, let parents, I say, make some allowance for youth and love. They must not suppose their children can love whomever they appoint.

“Love cannot be commanded: it is an affection as free as any, and demands a return.” This is a free passion, as Pliny said in one of his panegyrics, and cannot be forced. “Love craves liking,” as the saying goes: it requires mutual affection, a response. “It cannot be given or taken away against one’s will.” It cannot be learned. Ovid himself cannot teach us how to love, Solomon cannot describe it, Apelles paint it, or Helen embody it.

Parents must therefore neither compel nor impose: “For who,” as Fabius argues, “can love with another person’s heart?” They should also consider the misery of forced marriages and have pity on the young. Above all, those with daughters to marry should take great care and thought to marry them at the proper time.