Courtship and wooing

Use in the book

Courting appears among fashionable accomplishments as well as formal amorous pursuits. Scholars are mocked for being unable to court a gentlewoman, although the Themistocles margin answers that missing fashionable skills need not exclude practical ability. Elsewhere the gentleman who courts his mistress in broken French exemplifies accomplishments valued above learning; Burton immediately excepts worthy, learned patrons. In his reported national contrasts, paying court to another man’s wife can even be socially unreproached attention. It is not by itself proof of a marriage proposal or adultery. This differs from the later condemnation of husbands courting and dallying with other women before their wives. The contrasting national claims remain Burton’s reports, not established characteristics of whole peoples.

Burton moves from beauty perceived at a distance to closer encounters: meetings, conversation, gestures, kisses and shared activities. A passage attributed to Achilles Tatius represents the process as a series of devices for testing another’s reactions. The actual sequence treats apparent lack of resistance as an opening for more contact. This is a literary technique under description, not a sound rule of consent. Burton elsewhere exposes a related misreading himself: the foolish lover interprets an ordinary smile or courteous words as proof that the woman is willing and receptive towards him.

Opportunity is more than a free moment. Living in the same street or household makes repeated contact possible, and limited alternatives can direct affection towards people previously disliked or overlooked. Burton illustrates the claim with romances and Benedick and Beatrice; he expressly defends fiction as observing the passions. The Ismene–Ismenius scene makes the woman an active participant, speaking through her eyes, smiles, shared cup and touch. In another example a mutual backward glance starts an acquaintance. The assertion that cohabiting young people almost inevitably fall in love is qualified by almost and especially by idle, comfortable households; it remains Burton’s rhetorical explanation, not a statistical finding.

Restrictions on access shape the reported conduct. Burton contrasts opportunities in Italy and Turkey with freer northern sociability, using broad historical generalizations. He permits greeting kisses, conversation, play, music, dancing and tavern visits when conducted modestly: modo absit lascivia, provided there is no lewdness. He interprets the Fathers’ prohibitions as attacking drunken and disorderly abuse. Jerome’s banquet scene then displays the dangers he means, with people enticing or being enticed in turn. The account therefore combines permission for social meeting with warnings about particular conduct.

Courtship can also become a staged performance. Hero and Leander communicate by nods, smiles, hand-pressure and pleas; Galatea initiates a pastoral exchange with an apple. Burton then gathers the convention that apparent resistance conceals desire. Its presence in a poem cannot make actual refusal consent. The Lucretia material shows calculated withholding, fictitious wealthy rivals and manufactured gifts designed to sharpen a suitor’s eagerness. Burton recasts Philinna’s conduct in Lucian as calculated jealousy; the edition notes that her original explanation concerns retaliation for Diphilus’s attentions to another woman. He endorses Ampelis’s jealous-love maxim, but the edition also records the dialogue’s questioning response and violence, which his paraphrase suppresses. These are historically situated representations of manipulation, not reliable tests of love.

Promises can be equally theatrical. Wealth, pedigree, servants, clothing and imagined luxuries furnish a role the pursuer plays. Burton’s Volpone example presents extravagant promises without the intention to fulfil them, while the Lucretia merchant compares verbal persuasion with conjuring and siegecraft. His Jupiter–Juno narrative includes attempted sexual force before the promise of marriage; it cannot be reduced to an uncomplicated successful suit. The point of these examples is often deception and vulnerability, even when Burton’s manner imitates the language of instruction. The unit beginning res est operosa has a further difficulty: its printed Latin calls deception laborious, but the following English says it is easy. The contradiction belongs to the supplied text.

Burton distinguishes illustration from proof at important moments. Asked whether the hermit and disguised devil story is true, he declines to decide and says it serves his explanation. The Petronian widow story likewise enters as a morally significant tale, although the edition shows that Burton moves a maid’s quoted verse into the soldier’s wooing and combines different stages of persuasion. The examples cannot simply be read as observed social history.

Wooing can also be redirected as a proposed cure. After the campaign of disparagement, Burton recommends arranging for the sufferer either to be courted or to court someone else, so that affection takes another direction. His English includes either sex, although the preceding Latin specifies another woman to be introduced. Jason Pratensis supports redirection, while Valesius proposes diminishing attachment by dividing it among several. The adjoining literary illustrations and proposed alternatives do not prove efficacy; the edition identifies Burton’s altered Lucian example and his selective use of Jerome. These are historical strategies, not present-day advice.

Wooing may fail. The later impediments include unequal affection, parental and legal restrictions, poverty and women’s inability to speak first without shame. The imagined unmarried woman wishes to initiate a suit but feels forbidden to do so. A short verse gives a different obstacle plainly: the young man woos, and the woman says she does not love him. Nor does the proverb praising quick wooing remove the need for knowledge: Burton immediately requires that the parties know each other sufficiently. His final marriage recommendation specifies both their desires. Against this stands the earlier dissuasive pun wooing woing, which makes pursuit into woe. These belong to different stages of an argumentative debate.

The vocabulary finally extends beyond human courtship. God woos through beauty, gifts and promises; Scripture becomes a love letter inviting its readers to him. The person addressed is not initiating this particular suit: the divine lover seeks a response. The later declaration that God himself woos the reader continues that devotional application.

Related entries

Love: The broader passion and the divine extension of wooing.

Beauty: The attraction preceding or accompanying an approach.

Kissing and embracing: Bodily gestures and their qualified uses.

Dancing: Sociability, display and qualified recreation.

Gifts and liberality: Tokens, expense and efforts to win favour.

Bawd: Procurement and intermediaries.

Mistress: The beloved addressed by the suitor.

Jealousy: Manufactured rivalry and suspicious interpretation.

Marriage: Mutual desire and impediments to union.

Places to read

1. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 33–35; Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 17–20courting as a social accomplishment; note 3401’s practical-ability counterargument and the explicit worthy-patron exception.
2. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraphs 35–38ordinary smiles and the lover’s mistaken inference of willingness.
3. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 17–38approaches and access, romance examples, household opportunity, national comparisons, modest sociability and Jerome’s banquet warning.
4. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 49–52Hero and Leander’s sequence and Burton’s defence of literary examples; note 9522 distinguishes stages and speakers in the Petronian widow story.
5. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 1–20tokens, the apple, coyness, fictitious rivals and jealousy; the notes qualify Burton’s readings of Lucian.
6. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 24–30combined enticements, resistance and tales, ending in Burton’s explicit suspension of judgment about the hermit story’s truth.
7. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 1–30lying promises, coercion in the Jupiter narrative, the Latin–English contradiction at Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 16–17, pretended status, broken oaths and extravagant wooing.
8. Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraphs 51–56; Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraphs 1–10; Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraph 16the disparagement campaign followed by passive or active replacement wooing, divided attachment and literary examples. note 10654 preserves the Latin–English gender difference; note 10669 and note 10682 identify the altered or selective examples.
9. By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraphs 13–15the dissuasive marriage argument and wooing–woe pun.
10. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 16–21modesty, inability to initiate a suit and the woman’s unspoken desire.
11. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 26–34unreciprocated love and the woman’s explicit refusal at Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraph 33.
12. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 27–33the altered Acontius–Cydippe example, short wooing, and the condition that the parties know each other.
13. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraph 48the concluding marriage cure specifies both parties’ desires.
14. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 8–11; Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 19–21socially unreproached paying court in a reported national custom, contrasted with condemned courting and dallying.
15. Its Object, God; What His Beauty Is; How It Attracts. The Parts and People Affected · paragraphs 35–37God’s wooing and Scripture as a love letter; note 12002 identifies the printed up and the modern repair us.
16. Its Object, God; What His Beauty Is; How It Attracts. The Parts and People Affected · paragraphs 8–9the devotional invitation, God himself wooing, and the requested response.

In this edition

“Opportunity to wooe” becomes “opportunity to court”; “the more eagerly he woed me” becomes “the more eagerly he courted me.” The merchant’s “manner of woing” is rendered by a clause saying he courted the speaker through music, banquets and poems. “To prefer their suites” becomes “to further their courtship.” These are pursuit terms, not promises of success. “Wooing woing” becomes “wooing is woeing,” making the pun legible.

The replacement-courtship construction keeps its alternatives: to be woed becomes “to be courted,” while woe becomes “court.” Helpers arrange the situation; the person suffering may receive an approach or make one. The Latin’s feminine replacement and the following English “him or her” are not silently made identical.

The modern column translates the printed res est operosa literally as “is a laborious business,” then preserves Burton’s contrary English gloss. The note reports Ovid’s different wording with a negative. No negative should be supplied silently to Burton’s Latin. By contrast, the modern column explicitly repairs “he wooes up” to “He woos us,” as the context and the preceding divine subject require. The two treatments have different textual purposes: preserving a meaningful contradiction and identifying an evident local printing error.

Becks

Printed “becks” (English; family).

Nods or beckoning signs.

Here: A suitor communicates by gestures what he fears to say aloud, within a banquet scene of mutual temptation.

Context: Jerome’s scene expanded and rearranged by Burton; enticing or being enticed leaves agency reciprocal.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: one speaks by becks and signs

Modern rendering: One speaks through nods and signs

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Becks supplies nods; signs is the broader accompanying noun.

Brief wooing

Printed “Blessed is the wooing” (English; phrase).

Courtship pronounced fortunate or desirable.

Here: The proverb praises a short courtship only when the parties are sufficiently known to each other, as the next sentence explains.

Context: Burton’s pro-marriage argument; the adjacent literary examples are shortened and do not establish universally fortunate outcomes.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Blessed is the wooing, That is not long a doing

Modern rendering: Blessed is the wooing That is quickly done

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The whole proverb contrasts long delay with completion; it must be read with the knowledge condition.

Court; gallant social accomplishment

Printed “court” (English; family).

Pay amorous or gallant attention to another person.

Here: Courting a mistress in broken French appears among fashionable accomplishments valued above substantial learning.

Context: Burton’s satirical gentleman, followed by the explicit exception for worthy learned patrons. The converse scholar example the passage is qualified by the Themistocles margin’s claim of practical ability.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: can court his Mistris in broken French

Modern rendering: can court his mistress in broken French

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The construction is retained, including can as ability and in broken French as the medium of the suit. Court is not a noun for a royal household here.

Further local use

Printed “court” (English; family).

Citation key: Court; socially unreproached attention.

Pay gallant attention to someone.

Here: Paying court to another man’s wife is described as socially unreproached in the reported French custom, alongside visits and walking arm in arm.

Context: Burton’s national comparison citing Fynes Moryson, not an independently verified national practice, a marriage proposal or proof of adultery. The later courting and dallying is explicitly condemned in a different setting.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: it is usual to court other mens wives

Modern rendering: it is customary to pay court to other men’s wives

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Court becomes pay court to; usual becomes customary, with the married recipients retained.

Sense relation: Related gallant attention whose local social judgment is explicit, rather than a necessarily marital proposal.

Courting eyes

Printed “courting eyes” (English; phrase).

Eyes represented as soliciting affection through their looks.

Here: Ismene’s gaze, smiles and gestures convey desire within a romance scene narrated through Ismenius’s experience.

Context: Burton’s adaptation of Eustathius, with an inserted Ovidian glimpse of Daphne; literary characters’ gestures do not establish general rules.

Source: original body

Source wording: courting eyes

Original wording: those speaking eyes, courting eyes, inchanting eyes

Modern rendering: those speaking, courting, enchanting eyes

Alignment scope: Equal-scope coordinated description; the modern text shares the noun eyes among three modifiers.

Word and construction: The modern sequence those speaking, courting, enchanting eyes shares eyes across its three modifiers; courting alone does not mean eyes.

Courtship devices

Printed “forcible engins” (English; phrase).

Powerful devices or stratagems.

Here: Burton moves from distant attractions to meetings and bodily contact, quoting a technique attributed to Achilles Tatius.

Context: The sequence is a reported literary prescription that treats apparent lack of aversion as a cue for further approach; it is not evidence of consent.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: such other forcible engins

Modern rendering: other powerful devices

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Forcible means effective or powerful here; engines are devices, not machines in a narrow modern sense.

Qualification: The body says say something where the marginal Latin says do something, and expands kissing the neck into embracing and kissing.

Divine wooing

Printed “he wooes up” (English; phrase).

He woos us, in the evident sense supplied by the modern text: God seeks to draw human beings towards him.

Here: Beauty, gifts and promises become divine invitations; Scripture is described as a love letter in the continuation.

Context: Burton’s Christian devotional application, supported by an Augustinian Latin phrase in the same body.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: he wooes up by his beauty, gifts, promises, to come unto him

Modern rendering: He woos us with his beauty, gifts and promises to come to him

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The print up is retained in the original; modern us is an explicitly identified contextual repair.

Qualification: the accompanying note identifies up as a printed reading corrected to us in the modern column. The divine agent is not the human seeker.

Make suit

Printed “make sute” (English; phrase).

Initiate an amorous request or advance.

Here: Women are described as confined to a passive role by modesty, despite having desires they wish to express.

Context: Burton’s account of social impediments; may not concerns permission, not absence of desire.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: they may not make sute

Modern rendering: they may not make advances

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Make sute is an idiom for initiating the request; may not retains the restriction.

Misread receptiveness

Printed “coming” (English; family).

Receptive or ready to respond to an approach.

Here: The foolish lover takes an ordinary smile or pleasant words as evidence of willingness directed specifically towards him.

Context: The assurance sure she loves them belongs to the mistaken lover whom Burton is describing, not a reliable inference endorsed by the article.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: she is willing, coming

Modern rendering: she is willing, yielding

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Coming contributes yielding or receptive; willing is a separate adjective.

Modest sociability

Printed “modo absit lascivia” (Latin; phrase).

Provided lewdness is absent: modo introduces a condition; absit means let it be absent or provided it is absent; lascivia is lewdness.

Here: Burton permits conversation, games, singing, dancing, tavern visits and greeting kisses under a condition of modest conduct.

Context: Burton’s own qualified permission, using Boemus and interpreting patristic censure as directed at abuse.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: modo absit lascivia

Modern rendering: provided there is no lewdness

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Equal-scope condition; no lewdness renders the absence of lascivia, not a prohibition of all social contact.

Opportunity and importunity

Printed “opportunity and importunity” (English; phrase).

Access or favourable occasion, joined with persistent solicitation.

Here: Living nearby or in one household supplies repeated occasions for familiarity; Burton connects this with limited alternatives and hasty attachments.

Context: Burton’s generalization, with literary illustrations and an almost qualification in the later near-inevitability claim.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: opportunity and importunity

Modern rendering: opportunity and persistence

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Importunity contributes persistence in pressing a suit, while opportunity supplies access or occasion.

Prefer their suits

Printed “prefer their suites” (English; phrase).

Advance or further their requests, here their courtship.

Here: Pretended wealth and staged household luxury are means of making a suit appear attractive.

Context: Burton’s exposure of deception, illustrated through fictional seducers such as Volpone; not a recommendation to deceive.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to prefer their suites

Modern rendering: to further their courtship

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Prefer means advance, not choose between alternatives; suites are requests or amorous suits.

Res est operosa

Printed “res est operosa” (Latin; phrase).

It is a laborious business: res means affair or business, operosa laborious.

Here: The printed Latin says deceiving a trusting girl is difficult, contradicting Burton’s immediate English claim that it is soon done and no great feat.

Context: A line attributed to Ovid; the supplied edition distinguishes Burton’s printed wording, his following gloss and Ovid’s differing negative construction.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Fallere credentem res est operosa puellam

Modern rendering: To deceive a trusting girl is a laborious business

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The whole clause is matched; fallere supplies deceive, credentem trusting, and puellam girl. No negative is printed in Burton’s line.

Qualification: the accompanying note reports Heroides 2.63–64 with non est operosa … gloria, no difficult glory. The discrepancy remains visible rather than silently changing the original.

Suitor

Printed “sutor” (English; family).

A person seeking another’s affection or favour, here an amorous pursuer.

Here: Lucretia’s suitor is deliberately frustrated and shown fictitious evidence of a wealthy rival.

Context: Lucretia’s account as retold by Burton; the count and gifts form a staged deception.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: I had a sutor lov’d me dearly

Modern rendering: I had a suitor who loved me dearly

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Sutor becomes suitor, and who makes the relative connection explicit.

Unsuccessful wooing

Printed “wooed” (English; phrase).

Sought the woman’s affection; past tense of woo.

Here: The speaker says he courted conventionally, but the woman directly replies that she does not love him.

Context: A short verse dialogue within examples of unreciprocated attachment; her refusal is explicit.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: I wooed her as a young man should do

Modern rendering: I wooed her as a young man should

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The omitted do is recoverable from the preceding verb; no successful outcome is implied.

Woed and woe; redirected wooing

Printed “woed, or woe” (English; family).

Woed is the past participle courted; woe is the active infinitive woo or court.

Here: Helpers are to arrange either for the sufferer to receive courtship or for the sufferer to pursue another person, redirecting existing attachment.

Context: Burton’s historical proposed cure after disparaging the former beloved. Jason Pratensis recommends redirection, Valesius division; the literary examples do not establish efficacy.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: set him or her to be woed, or woe some other

Modern rendering: Arrange for him or her to be courted, or to court someone

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Set becomes arrange for. Him or her is the person whose situation helpers arrange; to be woed is passive, while woe some other is active with another person as object. The two alternatives must not both become the sufferer initiating courtship.

Qualification: The preceding Latin alteram inducere means introduce another woman: alteram is feminine accusative singular, with woman understood, and inducere is introduce. Burton’s following English includes him or her. The subsequent division of affection among several and likely change after seeing alternatives are proposed strategies, not proof. Burton’s Lucian example differs from the source, and his Jerome excerpt omits the source’s opposition between replacing a fault and overcoming it through virtue.

Woo; wooe; woed; woing

Printed “wooe” (English; family).

Seek another person’s affection or agreement to a relationship or marriage.

Here: The available occasions for wooing differ in Burton’s reported contrasts among countries.

Context: Burton’s broad comparative account, citing intermediaries whose exact passages remain uncollated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: opportunity to wooe

Modern rendering: opportunity to court

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Wooe is rendered court; the larger phrase names an occasion for doing so.

Qualification: The national generalizations are historical claims, not verified descriptions of whole populations.

Further local use

Printed “woed” (English; family).

Citation key: Woo; wooe; woed; woing.

Here: The suitor intensifies pursuit while Lucretia deliberately withholds access.

Context: The literary Lucretia’s own retrospective tale, as attributed by Burton to Aretino.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the more eagerly he woed me

Modern rendering: the more eagerly he courted me

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The same pursuit sense in a changed tense or nominal construction.

Sense relation: Printed inflection or spelling of the same wooing family, with its own speaker and local action.

Further local use

Printed “woing” (English; family).

Citation key: Woo; wooe; woed; woing.

Here: Music, banquets and poems are the reported means of the merchant’s suit.

Context: Lucretia’s account of an extravagant suitor; the relative clause supplies me from context.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: his manner of woing was with exquisite musick, costly banquets, poems

Modern rendering: who courted me with exquisite music, costly banquets, poems

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The same pursuit sense in a changed tense or nominal construction.

Sense relation: Printed inflection or spelling of the same wooing family, with its own speaker and local action.

Wooing as woe

Printed “wooing woing” (English; phrase).

A pun turning courtship into woe or suffering.

Here: The phrase joins wedding as undoing and marrying as marring in an argument against marriage.

Context: A saying deployed in Burton’s dissuasive case, not the work’s final verdict; later argument supports marriage by mutual desire.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: wooing woing

Modern rendering: wooing is woeing

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern text inserts is and respells the second word to expose the pun.

Wooing through a token

Printed “with an apple wooes me” (English; phrase).

Courts the speaker by throwing or offering an apple as a sign.

Here: The female beloved initiates the signal and retreats while wishing to be seen, in Burton’s adaptation of Virgil.

Context: A pastoral speaker describing his mistress, not a rule that retreat or refusal always conceals willingness.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: My Mistress with an apple wooes me

Modern rendering: My mistress woos me with an apple

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern word order preserves the mistress as agent, speaker as object, apple as means.