Jealousy

Use in the book

A cause, a symptom and a proposed species

Burton begins by refusing to let one existing classification exhaust the subject. Medical writers have treated jealousy as a cause of melancholy; others as a symptom, since melancholy people are particularly exposed to it. He proposes treating it as a species apart because of its range, intensity and importance. This is an organizational and explanatory decision within his historical account. It does not cancel the causal and symptomatic relations: the causes subsection later says both that melancholy people are apt to become jealous and that jealous people are apt to become melancholy.

The rest of the book supplies those other perspectives. The First Partition includes jealousy among passions that can consume the spirits and cause melancholy when excessive, and among the general symptoms of suspicious, irritable apprehension. There it includes reading a joke as an insult or taking another person's conversation personally, rather than only fearing sexual betrayal. The Third Partition's outline assigns heroic love chiefly to the period before marriage and jealousy to the period after it. Burton's fuller introduction calls these the common or usual positions of the two, while still discussing unmarried rivals. A common arrangement is not an assertion that marriage automatically produces jealousy or that jealousy cannot precede it.

His stated purpose is corrective. The jealous reader is to see an error as in a mirror; a reader not yet affected is to learn avoidance and help others. The section therefore repeats the medical architecture of causes, symptoms, prognostics and cures. But it applies that architecture to domestic relations, legal practices, political suspicion, anecdotes, poems and moral argument as well as bodily distress.

What changes when the object changes

The opening survey shows how similar fear and watchfulness can attach to different objects. A parent's anxious waiting for an absent child need not concern sexual possession. The old man in Terence fears what may have happened to his adopted son; Aegeus fears the outcome of Theseus's expedition. Political jealousy concerns power and reputation. Burton's rulers suspect rivals and successors, punish perceived competitors and become frightened of the people they themselves frighten. In the Alexander example, killing a friend is followed by an alienation of subjects and a fear of retaliation: hostility and suspicion perpetuate each other.

Burton explicitly calls these extended uses outside the distinction he intends to treat. Yet they prepare its structure: care for a valued object becomes fear of losing it, and the supposed means of protecting it can become destructive. His animal examples then connect sexual exclusiveness with rivalry. Bulls defend a pasture, and a reported swan pursues a rival and then kills its own mate. Burton leaves responsibility for substantiating the swan story with its reporter before saying it may be true. The episode is a narrated example, not an observation newly verified by this lexicon. The political motto about a kingdom admitting no two rulers shows how readily the analogies move between government, property and mating.

Among unmarried lovers, shared access is precisely what the rival cannot bear. Burton explains the river-derived name of rivals through people participating in a common resource, then gives injuries, duels and broken friendships as consequences. The Propertius passage is extreme: the speaker will share possessions and even accept bodily harm from his friend, but will not tolerate him, or Jupiter himself, as a rival. The claim to exclusiveness, rather than love alone, makes these stories relevant to marital jealousy.

An earlier discussion of erotic enticements gives jealousy a further role: something deliberately produced to renew or intensify desire. Burton's Philinna kisses the rival Lamprias before Diphilus “to whetten his love,” to sharpen his appetite and make her favour seem harder to obtain. Burton then explicitly endorses the jealous-love maxim before relaying Ampelis's advice to Crisis: an angry, jealous lover is supposedly a true lover, whereas the assurance of possessing someone without a rival makes desire languish. Ampelis's staged preference for another man is said to bring her suitor back in submission; withholding access will make him pay generously and accept her conditions. Her aim is command over the suitor through uncertainty. This complicates the dedicated section's effort to correct the passion: jealousy can be used as an instrument by the person desired. The supplied notes also distinguish Burton's versions from Lucian: Philinna's kiss is retaliatory in a comparison reported by one editorial note, while another note identifies the questioning voice that Burton's endorsement leaves out.

Causes within the relationship and outside it

The causes range from bodily constitution and habitual occupation to actual marital conduct and accidental circumstances. Astrologers make the stars either a cause or sign, offering a probable conjecture from the horoscope; Burton's wording does not reduce this to an unequivocal causal assertion. Bodin's climatic explanation then associates southern heat with lust and jealousy. Burton asserts that northern peoples are less troubled and expresses surprise at Góis and Herberstein for attributing jealousy to them against other geographers. His surprise concerns the contrary reports, not a withdrawal of his own north–south claim. The ensuing comparisons of baths, dancing, visiting and mixed church seating treat similar conduct as innocent in one society and suspect in another. These are Burton's and his authorities' historical generalizations, not measured facts about national character.

His discussion of sex and temperament is similarly uneven. He first claims that women are more outrageous in jealousy and repeats a hostile catalogue of female traits, then draws back from the comparison and says that men and women are both too subject to the infirmity. Idleness combined with melancholy is offered as a particular susceptibility. Sexual incapacity, unequal age, long absence and a sense of one's own unattractiveness or inadequacy can furnish more particular occasions. A person who thinks his wife supremely beautiful assumes everyone must desire her; another, absorbed in his own defects, assumes she must prefer someone else. In both cases the move from an estimate of value to a conclusion about another person's conduct is central.

The account also turns blame towards husbands. Harsh treatment, confinement, unnecessary absence and sexual neglect can damage the relationship and, Burton argues, help produce the conduct the husband fears. In the story built around a complaint from Apuleius, Burton adds that confinement made the wife unfaithful; the supplied note distinguishes that extension from the cited complaint itself. The scholar who continually repairs difficult passages in Festus or Pollux but neglects his wife becomes the subject of a sexual pun about another passage needing correction. These are part of Burton's case that husbands sometimes have the remedy in their own hands. His criticism of excessive indulgence does not prevent him from calling harshness the worse extreme.

Previous misconduct offers another route: someone who has deceived another husband imagines being treated in the same way. The Tibullan speaker has taught the beloved how to deceive her guards and is caught by the skill he taught. But Burton's examples do not support the sweeping verse assertion that every jealous husband has himself committed adultery. Some suspicions have grounds, some arise without wrongdoing by either spouse, and other people's conduct can create appearances that the spouses did not intend.

The lengthy catalogue of male infidelity gives women reasons for jealousy. Burton asks how a neglected wife is to moderate her passion when her husband courts others before her and lets another woman wear her jewels. The corresponding account of wives describes attraction to another man, contempt for a husband, deceptive protestations of fidelity and secret meetings. It also includes literary stories and hostile travel allegations, whose status should remain attached to their narrators. At the end he says both men and women can give just occasions, but most of the principal causes proceed from external accidents and circumstances even when both spouses are innocent. One example is a woman who rejects a suitor yet receives a legacy from him; her husband expels her on suspicion. The legacy is a fact within the story, but adultery is his inference.

Time, place, company and opportunity can intensify or diminish suspicion. Parties, dances, flattering gestures, sexual double meanings and unwanted visitors supply possible occasions; drunkenness and encouraging company are offered as occasions of actual misconduct. Burton closes the causes with a deliberately suspicious inference about a friar entering a woman's chamber by ladder at midnight. The subsection moves between real danger, hostile stereotypes, ambiguous conduct and a jealous person's amplifications. Preserving those differences is more accurate than treating the entire catalogue as either proof of infidelity or proof that all suspicion is delusion.

Symptoms: interpreting, watching and assaulting

Jealousy intensifies fear and sorrow already associated with melancholy. Burton adds anxiety, restless thought, pallor, wasting and neglected business. His images make it a fire and a gall that spoils life's honey. “a pernicious curiosity” means destructive prying: the jealous person hunts after every word and whisper, magnifies it and interprets what others do in the worst way. Wealth, a luxurious table and distinguished family connections cannot restore the lost good of peace. The symptoms are not confined to a private feeling; they become habits of interpretation and action.

The gestures are concrete: staring, frowning, rolling the eyes, threatening looks, interrupted movement, sighing, crying and angry speech. More seriously, Burton describes a sequence of slander, threats, fighting and assault, followed by an apology, kisses, embraces and promises never to repeat it, then renewed rage. The husband beats his wife's sides, drags her about and drives her out; he then entreats her to return and declares that he would not exchange her for a kingdom. Reconciliation within this sequence does not mean the violence has stopped. Burton makes its repetition explicit.

Surveillance expands to every place and relation. A smile, a compliment, a dance or a drinking salute is turned into evidence. The imagined rival may be hidden in a chest, behind a hanging or in a barrel, or may enter by a window, chimney or false key. Friends and close relations become suspects. The husband locks his wife up, recruits watchers, sets servants to watch one another, abruptly returns from necessary business or disguises himself to test her. The narrative then expressly allows a case with no danger and no cause of suspicion at all: accusation and verbal abuse continue even where the suspected conduct could not occur.

Women also watch, pursue and attack. Burton reports Joan of Spain following her husband and assaulting a suspected rival, cutting off her hair, beating and dragging her. He uses Daniel's literary Rosamond for another jealous assault and follows it with cases of enduring hatred. Yet his account changes emphasis: although he has called women especially outrageous, he now says women's power is checked while men's rage is more conspicuous and more often put into practice. The ensuing pages concern husbands' power to confine and punish wives. The difference between his rhetorical claims about intensity and his observation about opportunities to act should not disappear.

The household becomes a court

Burton calls confinement, guards, genital mutilation, supposed virginity tests, oaths, ordeals and harsh laws symptoms of jealousy. The enlargement is striking: an institution or procedure can embody the same suspicious demand for certainty as an individual's watchfulness. His geographical claims are often sweeping and polemical. The account of Muslim husbands, for example, expands a scriptural agricultural image into a hostile claim about arbitrary power; it should not be repeated as a verified statement of Islamic law. The relevant object of analysis here is the role those reports play in Burton's argument.

The discussion of bodily tests records disagreement rather than one settled medical verdict. Burton lists physicians who deny that the proposed signs are sufficient and others who defend them. His own language calls astrological inquiries and tests by stones or fumigations strange and absurd, and attributes their invention to a jealous brain. Reported fire ordeals and a sieve carrying water add miraculous certification to the same desire for proof. Some authorities attribute such marvels to devils, others to good angels; demanding an oath supplies still another attempted guarantee. The catalogue finally reaches forced confession by beating and killing. These practices are part of the tyranny the section describes, not reliable means of determining fidelity.

Prognosis with conditions

The prognostic opening predicts that jealous people “most part, if they be not otherwise relieved” pass from suspicion to hatred, frenzy, violence, murder and despair. Both the generalizing qualification and the condition of lacking relief matter. This is not an inevitable sequence applying to every jealous person. The Ariosto stanza likewise says that groundless and justified suspicion can both lead towards extreme distress. Whether a betrayal occurred and what the jealous passion does to someone are separate questions.

The examples distinguish accomplished violence, threats and despair. In Guainerio's anecdote the caul surrounding a newborn resembles a friar's hood; the father infers that a visiting Franciscan fathered the child and threatens to kill him. That episode does not say the killing occurred. Platter's merchant, by contrast, kills his wife and then throws himself from a height. Another case concerns a painter's wife, married twenty-seven years and mother of nine children, who refuses food and drink at home for fear of poisoning. Burton's account of Joan and Philip attributes deaths to jealousy, but its phrase about her ending her miseries does not itself establish suicide. The section's harm is severe without making every despairing person or every threat a completed death.

The argument for cure and mitigation

Burton starts treatment by staging the objection that jealousy cannot be removed once it has occupied a person, like hired soldiers holding a castle. The Ovid couplet says the jealous lover will scarcely be saved by Machaon's medical help; the Ariosto stanza calls the wound incurable and denies the efficacy of medicines, astrology and magic. These are not identical degrees of pessimism. Burton's “Yet” then announces his answer: it may be cured, or at least mitigated, if resisted early, through a contrary passion, good counsel and persuasion. Trimming the passion's nails before they grow too long figures timely intervention.

Serious occupation opposes the idleness in which fears and fancies multiply. Friends should offer counsel and help the sufferer consider the injury jealousy does to himself and his household. Burton's Joan is temporarily eased by Ximenius's conversation, although the broader story remains unhappy. That temporary benefit is consistent with mitigation; it does not have to be rewritten into a permanent recovery.

The next argument intentionally diminishes what the earlier chapters made terrifying. Burton calls the jealous wound insensible, a hurt not physically felt, and asks why suspicion should be allowed to deepen it. If the wife is innocent, the husband torments himself without cause; if she has been unfaithful, public rage may increase his misery rather than repair it. Stories of other cuckolded men and jokes about horns seek to reduce the sense of uniquely unbearable disgrace. To dissemble here can mean concealing one's knowledge or reaction; to contemn means disregarding or making light of it. The vocabulary describes Burton's proposed response to a supposed or actual betrayal, not a denial that the preceding assaults and sufferings occurred.

Burton also challenges the unequal rule by which a wandering husband demands fidelity from his wife. His imagined husband objects that his children's paternity makes the cases different; Burton answers provocatively, then asks whether the accusation is even true. A birth date, a child's resemblance, a laugh or familiar conversation does not warrant the leap made by the suspicious interpreter. A charitable mind would interpret circumstances favourably. He does not excuse a wife's wrongdoing by accusing her husband, but tells the husband to reform himself first. The passage is an exchange of objection, reply and renewed inquiry, not a single uninterrupted statement of one position.

Why locks cannot produce fidelity

Surveillance does not secure the mind. Argus's hundred eyes and other vigilant guardians cannot guarantee what the husband demands. The maxim attributed to Jerome says an unchaste wife cannot be kept and a chaste wife ought not to be kept; “necessity” is compulsory restraint, an unreliable guardian of chastity. Burton agrees that locking wives up is tyrannical and may sharpen the desire to do what is forbidden. Voluntary love, a vow, virtue and religion are offered as stronger keepers than locks, eunuchs or prisons. His examples include Penelope, Theano refusing to make her person public property, and Tigranes's wife attending only to the husband who offered to die for her.

Gentle treatment and persuasion are extended to both sexes: people wish to be led rather than forced. Nevertheless, the counsel includes deeply unequal accommodations, including wives supplying other women to their husbands and the ideal of patient Griselda. Burton's preference for fair means thus coexists with arrangements that preserve the husband's advantage. Jesting, discretion and toleration furnish still other strategies. A “wittall” is a husband who knows of and tolerates infidelity, not merely one who is deceived. Burton's particular concession to such toleration is restricted to some times, cases and people, especially where material advantage or a powerful patron is involved. The social pressure in those qualifications belongs to the meaning of the passage.

The subsection ends with patience and time. The household becomes a school or training ground of philosophy; forgetting an injury is imagined through a draught of Lethe, the mythic water of oblivion. The assertion that there is no other cure belongs to this late argument about enduring what cannot be remedied. It should be read beside, rather than substituted for, the earlier permission of timely cure or mitigation.

Prevention, marriage and the unresolved ending

The second cure subsection surveys proposed ways of preventing jealousy. Community of wives, alleged sexual customs, marrying someone whose infidelity would cause no surprise, self-castration and tolerated brothels are considered in a mixture of political, religious and anecdotal arguments. A place in this catalogue is not a recommendation. Burton distinguishes the civic case for toleration from his religious objection. He also explicitly rejects most of the philters, spells and charms prescribed to secure fidelity as pagan, impious, irreligious, absurd and ridiculous. “philters” are love potions, separately listed from spells and charms.

His preferred preventive course returns to causes and occasions: choose a partner deliberately, consider character and upbringing, and avoid disparities likely to generate discontent. The satire of an old husband with a young wife can be ferocious, and a later passage plainly applies a more permissive standard to an older man than to an older woman. But Burton expressly allows marriage in old age for mutual society, help and comfort. The permission is not an incidental detail to discard after the hostile examples: it identifies purposes of marriage other than sexual gratification and procreation.

Nor does he simply prescribe beauty or ugliness. He attacks choosing by appearance alone, then supplies an adulterous wife as a counterexample to the supposed safety of unattractiveness. Choosing solely for wealth is another error. His stated recommendation of moderation is followed by a personal preference for a beautiful wife when other conditions are equal. Moral character and upbringing remain the repeated practical tests in the argument. The marriage prescriptions are historical and class-bound; their shifts and exceptions are part of their interest.

After marriage, husbands should treat wives well, provide adequate maintenance and allow a discretion appropriate to time and place. Burton says deprivation and ill-treatment can drive women into misconduct. He then also insists upon housekeeping, silence, obedience and patience, including the story in which holding water in the mouth restrains an argument because the wife stays silent. These limitations coexist with his rejection of the philosopher who would allow a woman out only for baptism, marriage and burial. His eventual formula is “private, not in prison”. Domestic retirement is still prescribed, but confinement by bars and bolts is censured.

Friends are to attend to the particular people, places, times and company that disturb the jealous person, refrain from ridicule and adding grief to grief, and use persuasion or mediation. The reported Roman temples supply an image of spouses heard before impartial arbitrators and reconciled. The final sequence then moves through alleged gemstone powers, astrological compatibility, magical seals, divorce, the self-blinding story of Democritus, and a supposedly sovereign antidote Burton refuses to reveal. The withheld remedy remains unidentified. The ending combines practical counsel, reported remedies and extravagant alternatives before a prayer for deliverance; it does not provide a final universally effective technique.

Related entries

Melancholy: jealousy as possible cause, symptom and separately treated kind

Imagination: retained images, amplification, apprehension and reason

Spirits: the bodily account of passions and their effects

Charms and Philters: supposed fidelity remedies and Burton's rejection of most of them

Related articles and topics: Love; Heroical love; Fear; Emulation; Epichairekakia; Corrosive; Wittal and cuckold; Suspicion; Marriage; Patience. Wittal and cuckold distinguishes being deceived from knowing toleration

Places to read

1. A potentially causal passionJealousy among passions that cause melancholy when excessive
2. A general symptomSuspicious interpretation, offence taken and social watchfulness beyond sexual rivalry
3. The Third Partition outlinePremarital love, marital jealousy, extended and strict senses, and the causes–symptoms–prognosis–cures map
4. The earlier love classificationDisordered love before and after marriage and its extension to rivals
5. Jealousy deliberately inducedStaged rivals, Philinna's kiss, Burton's endorsement of the maxim and Ampelis's tactics for intensifying desire and securing the suitor's submission
6. Definition and classification, 3.3.1.1Cause, symptom and proposed species; mirror and offshoot; suspicion and exclusive desire
7. The extended sensesParents, guardians, divine and godly jealousy, rulers, honour, power and the reciprocal fears following tyranny; the Alexander example is at 32
8. Animals and competing loversSexual exclusiveness, the qualified swan story, rivals, the Propertius poem and the final narrowing to marital jealousy
9. Causes, 3.3.1.2Astrological cause or sign, climate, contrary geographical reports, national customs, gender claims and idleness
10. Capacity, age, treatment and absenceSexual incapacity, unequal age, confinement, over-indulgence, harshness, absence and neglect; the scholar's story is at 51–55
11. Self-estimation and projectionBeauty, a sense of inadequacy, barrenness, previous misconduct and variable circumstances
12. Grounds given, grounds inferredMale and female misconduct, literary and travel reports, the explicit possibility of innocent spouses, the apple and the rejected suitor's legacy
13. Occasions and circumstancesOpportunity, importunity, company, festivities, alcohol, places and inference
14. Symptoms, 3.3.2.1Loss of peace, destructive prying, bodily signs, assault and apology, surveillance and causeless accusation
15. Women's acts and men's powerJoan's reported assault, literary Rosamond, and the transition to husbands' greater opportunity to act
16. Guards, tests, laws and ordealsSeclusion, bodily tests and disputed signs, absurd magical trials, violent laws, oaths, confession by force and killing
17. Prognostics, 3.3.3The conditional opening, groundless and grounded suspicion, threats, acts of violence and despair; the caul and friar are at 10, Platter's cases at 12
18. Cure objections and Burton's answer, 3.3.4.1The castle, Ovid's scarcely cured, Ariosto's incurability, Burton's early cure or mitigation, occupation and consoling conversation
19. Making the injury bearableShared misfortune, concealment, the husband's objection about paternity, criticism of his own misconduct and charitable interpretation
20. The failure of compulsory custodyThe mind's freedom, Argus, locks, virtue, voluntary fidelity and gentler treatment
21. Accommodation, toleration and timeGendered concessions, jokes, the wittall's qualified toleration, patience and the household as a school of philosophy
22. Preventives surveyed, 3.3.4.2Community, alleged customs, extreme expedients, the civic/religious distinction and rejection of most fidelity magic
23. Choosing and treating a spouseDeliberate choice, inequality and character; old-age companionship at 19; the unequal age standard at 24; the appearance-and-wealth argument at 30–43; maintenance, liberty and silence at 53–62; privacy without imprisonment at 64–65
24. Friends and the final alternativesBurton's concluding reading list, particular occasions, compassionate mediation, reported remedies, divorce, extravagant alternatives and the undisclosed antidote

In this edition

The modern text keeps jealousy as the main name. At the passage, “a bastard-branch or kinde of Love Melancholy” becomes an illegitimate offshoot or kind of love melancholy. At the passage, “a pernicious curiosity” becomes a destructive inquisitiveness. These renderings preserve the classification and the harmful activity of prying rather than reducing the passage to a feeling of insecurity. The source's “honest” and “honesty” repeatedly concern sexual fidelity or chastity, while “use their wives well” means treat them well, not make use of them.

“Prognosticks” are forecasts of a condition's course; “injurie” in the opening forecast includes wrongdoing or violence. The modern column renders the generalization as generally, retains the condition unless otherwise relieved, and uses groundless in its rendering of the following Ariosto stanza. It renders “vix” as scarcely, preserving the distinction from the next poem's absolute declaration of incurability. At the passage, “maturely” means promptly or in good time, not at a late stage. These small words are necessary to the sequence of objection and answer.

The outline and continuous prose should also be read together without automatic harmonization. The synopsis places animals under the extended senses of jealousy, whereas the body first excludes political and protective senses, then says that the sexually exclusive jealousy belongs to animals as well as humans. The body's further narrowing to married men is followed by extensive discussion of wives' jealousy. The framework organizes the inquiry without making every example obey an exclusive taxonomy.

The supplied apparatus sometimes distinguishes Burton's version from the work he cites. It says that his confinement-causes-adultery extension goes beyond the Apuleius complaint, identifies Daniel's Rosamond and Octavia as literary speakers, and notes that the physiological, historical and scriptural examples can contain altered names, numbers or applications. The body itself explicitly describes a threat against the friar, rather than an accomplished killing; an editorial note explains the caul/cowl resemblance. Another editorial note warns against making every desperate state a suicidal act. These are reasons to read the precise narrative, not to collapse its anecdotes into a modern diagnostic case series.

This article has checked Burton's supplied original text throughout the jealousy section, its notes and the particular modern expressions discussed here. The notes labelled Burton contain both quoted historical material and modern editorial translations; those layers are not treated as one continuous authorial statement. No fresh collation of every classical, medical, legal or travel source is claimed. The article selects significant lexical uses and arguments, rather than promising a complete occurrence concordance or endorsing Burton's remedies and judgments.

a bastard-branch or kinde of Love Melancholy

Printed “a bastard-branch or kinde of Love Melancholy” (English).

An irregular offshoot or kind of love melancholy.

Source: original body

Source wording: For these causes I will dilate, and treat of it by it self, as a bastard-branch or kinde of Love Melancholy, which, as Heroical Love goeth commonly before marriage, doth usually follow, torture, and crucifie in like sort,

Modern rendering: an illegitimate offshoot or kind of love melancholy

Layer: paired modern rendering

a pernicious curiosity

Printed “a pernicious curiosity” (English).

Destructive prying or inquisitiveness.

Source: original body

Source wording: vehement passion, a more furious perturbation, a bitter pain, a fire, a pernicious curiosity, a gall corrupting the honey of our life, madness, vertigo, plague, hell, they are more than ordinarily disquieted

Modern rendering: a destructive inquisitiveness

Layer: paired modern rendering

bastard-branch

Printed “bastard-branch” (English).

Irregular offshoot or kind of love melancholy.

Source: original body

Source wording: For these causes I will dilate, and treat of it by it self, as a bastard-branch or kinde of Love Melancholy, which, as Heroical Love goeth commonly before marriage, doth usually follow, torture,

Modern rendering: illegitimate offshoot

Layer: paired modern rendering

cause or sign

Printed “cause or sign” (English).

Citation key, Printed form, Modern rendering: cause or sign

Alternative astrological causal or indicative roles, offered as probable conjecture.

Source: original body

Source wording: Astrologers make the stars a cause or sign of this bitter passion, and out of every mans Horoscope will give a probable conjecture whether he will be jealous

Layer: paired modern rendering

causlesse

Printed “causlesse” (English).

Without grounds; opposed to just suspicion.

Source: original body

Source wording: sought, By which a man to madness neer is brought, As well with causlesse as with just suspect.

Modern rendering: groundless

Layer: paired modern rendering

contemn

Printed “contemn” (English).

Disregard or make light of the supposed or actual injury.

Source: original body

Source wording: own misery. How much better were it in such a case to dissemble or contemn it? why should that be feared which cannot be redressed? multæ tandem deposuerunt (saith Vives) quum flecti maritos

Modern rendering: disregard

Layer: paired modern rendering

corrivals

Printed “corrivals” (English).

Competing lovers.

Source: original body

Source wording: If it appear amongst Batchelors, we commonly call them rivals or corrivals, a metaphor derived from a River, rivales à rivo; for as a river, saith Acron in Hor. art. Poet. and Donat. in Ter

Modern rendering: fellow rivals

Layer: paired modern rendering

Desperate

Printed “desperate” (English). Citation key: desperate.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: desperate

In despair or desperation. The condition does not by itself specify a suicidal act; Burton’s distinct narratives must be read individually.

Source: original body

Original wording: became desperate

Modern rendering: fell into despair

Layer: paired modern body

Qualification: The whole predicate became desperate is rendered fell into despair; this is an idiomatic construction, not an adjective-to-noun equivalence.

dissemble

Printed “dissemble” (English).

Conceal knowledge or reaction to alleged or actual betrayal.

Source: original body

Source wording: aggravates his own misery. How much better were it in such a case to dissemble or contemn it? why should that be feared which cannot be redressed? multæ tandem deposuerunt (saith Vives) quum flecti

Modern rendering: conceal

Layer: paired modern rendering

honest

Printed “honest” (English).

Sexually faithful in this marital argument.

Source: original body

Source wording: If she be honest as Lucretia to Collatinus, Laudamia to Protesilaus, Penelope to her Ulysses, she will so continue her honour, good

Modern rendering: faithful

Layer: paired modern rendering

honesty

Printed “honesty” (English).

Chastity in Burton’s English verse.

Source: original body

Source wording: First I desire the earth to swallow mee, Before I violate mine honesty, Or thunder from above drive me to hell, With those pale ghosts, and ugly nights to dwell.

Modern rendering: chastity

Layer: paired modern rendering

injurie

Printed “injurie” (English).

Wrongdoing or violence.

Source: original body

Source wording: proceed from suspition to hatred, from hatred to frenzie, madness, injurie, murder and despair.

Modern rendering: violence

Layer: paired modern rendering

Jealousie

Printed “Jealousie” (English).

Suspicion of a beloved’s attachment to another or desire for exclusive enjoyment.

Source: original body

Source wording: Jealousie is described and defined to be a certain suspition which the lover hath of the party he chiefly loveth, lest he or

Modern rendering: Jealousy

Layer: paired modern rendering

lest he or she should be enamoured of another

Printed “lest he or she should be enamoured of another” (English).

The definition allows a beloved of either sex; the later treatment narrows its focus.

Source: original body

Source wording: certain suspition which the lover hath of the party he chiefly loveth, lest he or she should be enamoured of another: or any eager desire to enjoy some beauty alone, to have it proper to himself only: a fear or doubt, lest any forrainer

Modern rendering: lest he or she should fall in love with someone else

Layer: paired modern rendering

maturely

Printed “maturely” (English).

Promptly or in good time.

Source: original body

Source wording: good counsel and perswasion, if it be withstood in the beginning, maturely resisted, and as those Ancients hold, the nailes of it be pared before they grow too long.

Modern rendering: in good time

Layer: paired modern rendering

most part, if they be not otherwise relieved

Printed “most part, if they be not otherwise relieved” (English).

Generally, if not otherwise relieved; a conditional forecast, not an inevitable sequence.

Source: original body

Source wording: Those which are jealous, most part, if they be not otherwise relieved, proceed from suspition to hatred, from hatred to frenzie, madness, injurie, murder and despair.

Modern rendering: generally, unless otherwise relieved

Layer: paired modern rendering

necessity

Printed “necessity” (English).

Citation key, Printed form, Modern rendering: necessity

Imposed restraint as a supposedly unreliable keeper of fidelity.

Source: original body

Source wording: dishonew woman cannot be kept, an honest woman ought not to be kept, necessity is a keeper not to be trusted. Difficile custoditur, quod plures amant; That which many covet, can hardly be preserved

Layer: paired modern rendering

philters

Printed “philters” (English).

Love potions, listed separately from spells and charms.

Source: original body

Source wording: Others prescribe philters, spels, charms to keep men and women honest. Mulier ut alienum virum non admittat præter suum: Accipe fel hirci, &

Modern rendering: love potions

Layer: paired modern rendering

private, not in prison

Printed “private, not in prison” (English).

Domestic retirement distinguished expressly from imprisonment.

Source: original body

Source wording: Howsoever ’tis good to keep them private, not in prison;

Modern rendering: in private life, not in prison

Layer: paired modern rendering

Prognosticks

Printed “Prognosticks” (English).

Forecasts of jealousy’s course or outcome.

Source: original body

Source wording: Prognosticks of Jealousie, Despair, Madness, to make away themselves and others.

Modern rendering: Prognostics

Layer: paired modern rendering

suspect

Printed “suspect” (English).

Suspicion; a noun here.

Source: original body

Source wording: to madness neer is brought, As well with causlesse as with just suspect.

Modern rendering: suspicion

Layer: paired modern rendering

suspition

Printed “suspition” (English).

Suspicion, without in itself deciding whether the feared event occurred.

Source: original body

Source wording: Jealousie is described and defined to be a certain suspition which the lover hath of the party he chiefly loveth, lest he or she should be enamoured of another: or any eager desire

Modern rendering: suspicion

Layer: paired modern rendering

to whetten his love

Printed “to whetten his love” (English).

To sharpen or intensify a lover’s desire by deliberately arousing jealousy.

Source: original body

Source wording: him (as she telleth her mother that chid her for it) more jealous; to whetten his love, to come with a greater appetite, and so know that her favour was not so easie to be had;

Modern rendering: to sharpen his love

Layer: paired modern rendering

use their wives well

Printed “use their wives well” (English).

Treat their wives well.

Source: original body

Source wording: After marriage, I can give no better admonitions than to use their wives well, and which a friend of mine told me that was a married man, I will tell you as good cheap, saith Nicostratus in Stobeus

Modern rendering: treat their wives well

Layer: paired modern rendering

vix

Printed “vix” (Latin).

Scarcely, not an absolute denial of cure.

Source: original body

Source wording: Qui timet ut sua sit, ne quis sibi subtrahat illam, Ille Machaonia vix ope salvus erit.

Modern rendering: scarcely

Layer: paired modern rendering

wittall

Printed “wittall” (English).

A husband who knows of and tolerates infidelity.

Source: original body

Source wording:, quam Zelotypiæ curis, saith Erasmus, se conficere, better be a wittall and put it up, then to trouble himself to no purpose. And though he will not omnibus dormire, be an asse, as he is

Modern rendering: knowing cuckold

Layer: paired modern rendering

Yet

Printed “Yet” (English).

Citation key, Printed form, Modern rendering: Yet

Nevertheless; transition from cure objections to Burton’s qualified answer.

Source: original body

Source wording: Yet what I have formerly said of other Melancholy, I will say again; it may be cured or mitigated at least by some contrary

Layer: paired modern rendering

Æquivocations

Printed “Æquivocations” (English).

Different senses of the word, not necessarily deception.

Source: original body

Source wording: Jealousie, its Æquivocations, Name, Definition, Extent, severall kindes; of Princes, Parents, Friends. In Beasts, Men: before marriage, as Corrivals

Modern rendering: different meanings

Layer: paired modern rendering