In truth with an humanity more than human. And which excess of goodness by my consent shall only be left to the gods:
Nec divis homines componier æquum est.
Nor is it meet that men with gods
Should be compar’d, there is such odds. [22]
As for the confusion of children, [23] besides that the gravest lawmakers appoint and affect it in their commonwealths, it concerneth not women, with whom this passion is I wot not how in some sort better placed, fitter seated. [24]
Sæpe etiam Iuno maxima cœlicolum
Coniugis inculpa flagravit quotidiana.
Ev’n Juno, chief of goddesses oft-time,
Hath grown hot at her husband’s daily crime. [25]
When jealousy once seizeth on these silly, weak, and unresisting souls, ’tis pitiful to see how cruelly it tormenteth, insultingly it tyrranizeth them. It insinuateth itself under colour of friendship, but after it once possesseth them, the same causes which served for a ground of good will serve for the foundation of mortal hatred. Of all the mind’s diseases, that is it, whereto most things serve for sustenance and fewest for remedy. The virtue, courage, health, merit, and reputation of their husbands are the firebrands of their despite and motives of their rage.
Nullæ sunt inimicitiæ nisi amoris acerbæ.
No enmities so bitter prove
And sharp as those which spring of love. [26]
This consuming fever blemisheth and corrupteth all that otherwise is good and goodly in them. And how chaste or good a housewife soever a jealous woman is, there is no action of hers but tasteth of sharpness and smacks of importunity. [27] It is a furious perturbation, a moody agitation, which throws them into extremities altogether contrary to the cause. The success of one Octavius in Rome was strange who, having lain with and enjoyed the love of Pontia Posthumia, increased his affection by enjoying her and instantly sued to marry her. But being unable to persuade her, his extreme passionate love precipitated him into effects of a most cruel, mortal, and inexorable hatred; whereupon he killed her. Likewise, the ordinary symptoms or passions of this other amorous disease are intestine hates, sly monopolies, close conspiracies,
Notumque, furens quid fœmina possit.
It is known what a woman may,
Whose raging passions have no stay. [28]
and a raging spite, which so much the more fretteth itself by being forced to excuse itself under pretense of good will.
Now the duty of chastity hath a large extension and far-reaching compass. Is it their will we would have them to bridle? That’s a part very pliable and active; it is very nimble and quick-rolling to be stayed. What if dreams do sometimes engage them too far, as they cannot dissemble nor deny them? It lieth not in them (nor perhaps in Chastity itself, seeing she is a female) to shield themselves from concupiscence and avoid desiring. If only their will interest and engage us, where and in what case are we? Imagine what great throng of men there would be, in pursuit of this privilege, with winged-speed (though without eyes and without tongue) to be conveyed upon the point of every woman that would buy him. [29]
The Scythian women were wont to thrust out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners taken in war, thereby to make more free and private use of them.
Oh what a furious advantage is opportunity! He that should demand of me what the chief or first part in love is, I would answer, To know how to take fit time; even so the second, and likewise the third. It is a point which may do all in all.
I have often wanted fortune but sometimes also enterprise. God shield him from harm that can yet mock himself with it. In this age more rashness is required, which our youths excuse under colour of heat. [30] But should our women look nearer unto it, they might find how it rather proceedeth of contempt. I superstitiously feared to offend, and what I love, I willingly respect. Besides that, who depriveth this merchandise of reverence defaceth all luster of it. I love that a man should therein somewhat play the child, the dastard, and the servant. If not altogether in this, yet in some other things I have some airs or motives of the sottish bashfulness whereof Plutarch speaketh, and the course of my life hath diversely been wounded and tainted by it: a quality very ill-beseeming my universal form. [31] And what is there amongst us but sedition and jarring? Mine eyes be as tender to bear a refusal as to refuse; and it doth so much trouble me to be troublesome to others that, where occasions force me or duty compelleth me to try the will of anyone, be it in doubtful things or of cost unto him, I do it but faintly and much against my will. But if it be for mine own private business (though Homer say most truly that in an indigent or needy man, bashfulness is but a fond [32] virtue), I commonly substitute a third party who may blush in my room. [33] And direct them that employ me with like difficulty, so that it hath sometimes befallen me to have the will to deny when I had not power to refuse.
It is then folly to go about to bridle women of a desire so fervent and so natural in them. And when I hear them brag to have so virgin-like a will and cold mind, I but laugh and mock at them. They recoil too far backward. If it be a toothless beldam or decrepit grandam, or a young dry, tisicke [34] starveling, if it be not altogether credible, they have at least some colour or appearance to say it. But those which stir about and have a little breath left them mar but their market with such stuff. Forsomuch as inconsiderate excuses are no better than accusations. As a gentleman my neighbour, who was suspected of insufficiency, [35]
Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta,
Nunquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam, [36]
to justify himself, [37] three or four days after his marriage, swore confidently that the night before he had performed twenty courses, [38] which oath hath since served to convince [39] him of mere ignorance and to divorce him from his wife. Besides, this allegation is of no great worth, for there is nor continency nor virtue where no resistance is to the contrary. It is true, may one say, but I am not ready to yield. The saints themselves speak so. This is understood of such as boast in good earnest of their coldness and insensibility and would be credited with a serious countenance. For when it is from an affected look (where the eyes give words the lie) and from the faltering speech of their profession (which ever works against the wool [40]), I allow of it. I am a duteous servant unto plainness, simplicity, and liberty, but there is no remedy if it be not merely plain, simple, or infantine; [41] it is fond, inept, and unseemly for ladies in this commerce: it presently inclineth and bendeth to impudency. Their disguisings, their figures, and dissimulations cozen none but fools. Their lying sitteth in the chair of honour; it is a by-way which by a false postern [42] leads us unto truth.
If we cannot contain their imaginations, what require we of them? The effects? Many there be who are free from all strangers’ communication, by which chastity may be corrupted and honesty defiled.
Illud sæpe facit, quod sine teste facit.
What she doth with no witness to it,
She often may be found to do it. [43]
And those whom we fear least are peradventure most to be feared; their secret sins are the worst.
Offendor mœcha simpliciore minus.
Pleas’d with a whore’s simplicity,
Offended with her nicety. [44]
There are effects which without impurity may lose them their pudicity, [45] and which is more, without their knowledge. Obstetrix virginis cuiusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive malevolentia, sive inscitia, suve casu, dum inspicit, per didit. A midwife searching with her finger into a certain maiden’s virginity, either for ill will or of unskilfulness or by chance, whilst she seeks and looks into it, she lost and spoiled it. Some one hath lost or wronged her virginity in looking or searching for it; some other killed the same in playing with it. [46]
We are not able precisely to circumscribe them the actions we forbid them. Our law must be conceived under general and uncertain terms. The very idea we forge unto their chastity is ridiculous. For amongst the extremest examples or patterns I have of it, it i
s Fatua, the wife of Faunus, who after she was married would never suffer herself to be seen of any man whatsoever. And Hieron’s wife, that never felt [47] her husband’s stinking breath, supposing it to be a quality peculiar and common to all men. It were necessary that to satisfy and please us they should become insensible and invisible.
Now let us confess that the knot of the judgement of this duty [48] consisteth principally in the will. There have been husbands who have endured this accident [49] not only without reproach and offence against their wives but with singular acknowledgement, obligation, and commendation to their virtue. Someone that more esteemed her honesty than she loved her life hath prostituted the same unto the lawless lust and raging sensuality of a mortal hateful enemy, thereby to save her husband’s life; and hath done that for him which she never could have been induced to do for herself. This is no place to extend these examples: they are too high and over-rich to be presented in this luster; let us therefore reserve them for a nobler seat.
But to give you some examples of a more vulgar stamp, are there not women daily seen amongst us who, for the only profit of their husbands and by their express order and brokage, [50] make sale of their honesty? And in old times Phaulius the Argian through ambition offered his [51] to King Philip. Even as that Galba, who bestowed a supper on Mecenas, perceiving him and his wife begin to bandy eye-tricks and signs, of civility shrunk down upon his cushion, as one oppressed with sleep, to give better scope unto their love, which he avouched as prettily. [52] For at that instant a servant of his, presuming to lay hands on the plate which was on the table, he cried outright unto him: “How now varlet? Seest thou not I sleep only for Mecenas?”
One may be of loose behaviour yet of purer will and better reformed than another who frameth herself to a precise appearance. As some are seen complain because they vowed chastity before years of discretion or knowledge, so have I seen others unfeignedly bewail and truly lament that they were vowed to licentiousness and dissoluteness before the age of judgement and distinction. The parents’ lewdness may be the cause of it, or the force of impulsive necessity, which is a shrewd counselor and a violent persuader. Though chastity were in the East Indies of singular esteem, yet the custom permitted that a married wife might freely betake herself to what man soever did present her an elephant, and that with some glory to have been valued at so high a rate.
Phedon the philosopher, of a noble house, after the taking of his country, Elides, professed to prostitute the beauty of his youth to all comers, so long as it should continue, for money to live with and bear his charges. And Solon was the first of Greece (say some) who, by his laws, gave women liberty by the price of their honesty to provide for their necessities, a custom which Herodotus reporteth to have been entertained before him in diverse commonwealths.
And moreover, what fruit yield this careful vexation? [53] For what justice soever be in this passion, yet should we note whether it harry us unto our profit or no. [54] Thinks any man that he can ring them [55] by his industry?
Pone seram, cohibe; sed quis custodiet ipsos
Custodes? cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor.
Keep her with lock and key, but from her who shall keep
Her keepers? She begins with them, her wits so deep. [56]
What advantage sufficeth them not, in this so skilfull age?
Curiosity is everywhere vicious but herein pernicious. It is mere folly for one to seek to be resolved of a doubt or search into a mischief for which there is no remedy but makes it worse, but festereth the same. The reproach whereof is increased and chiefly published by jealousy; the revenge whereof doth more wound and disgrace our children than it helpeth or graceth us. You waste away and die in pursuit of so concealed a mystery, of so obscure a verification.
Whereunto how piteously have they arrived who in my time have attained their purpose? If the accuser or intelligencer [57] present not withal the remedy and his assistance, his office is injurious, his intelligence harmful, and which better deserveth a stab than doth a lie. We flout him no less that toileth to prevent it than laugh at him that is a cuckold and knows it not. The character of cuckoldry is perpetual; on whom it once fasteneth, it holdeth forever. The punishment bewrayeth [58] it more than the fault. It is a goodly sight to draw our private misfortunes from out the shadow of oblivion or the dungeon of doubt for to blazon [59] and proclaim them on tragical stages, and misfortunes which pinch us not but by relation. For (as the saying is) she is a good wife and that a good marriage not that is so indeed, but whereof no man speaketh. We ought to be wittily-wary to avoid this irksome, this tedious, and unprofitable knowledge. The Romans were accustomed, when they returned from any journey, to send home before and give their wives notice of their coming, that so they might not surprise them. And therefore hath a certain nation instituted the priest to open the way unto the bridegroom on the wedding day, thereby to take from him the doubt and curiosity of searching in this first attempt whether she come a pure virgin to him or be broken and tainted with any former love.
“But the world speaks of it.” I know a hundred cuckolds, which are so honestly and little undecently. An honest man and a gallant spirit is moaned [60] but not disesteemed by it. Cause your virtue to suppress your mishap that honest-minded men may blame the occasion and curse the cause; that he which offends you may tremble with only thinking of it. And moreover, what man is scot-free, or who is not spoken of in this sense, from the meanest unto the highest?
——tot qui legionibus imperitauit,
Et melior quam tu multis fuit, improbe, rebus.
He that so many bands of men commanded,
Thy better much, sir knave, was much like branded. [61]
Seest thou not how many honest men, even in thy presence, are spoken of and touched with this reproach? Imagine, then, they will be as bold with thee and say as much of thee elsewhere. For no man is spared. “And even ladies will scoff and prattle of it.” And what do they nowadays more willingly flout at than at any well-composed and peaceable marriage? There is none of you all but hath made one cuckold or other: now nature stood ever on this point—Kæ me Ile kæ thee—and ever ready to be even, always on recompenses and vicissitude of things, and to give as good as one brings. The long-continued frequency of this accident should by this time have seasoned the bitter taste thereof; it is almost become a custom.
Oh, miserable passion, which hath also this mischief, to be incommunicable.
Fors etiam nostris invidit quæstibus aures.
Fortune ev’n ears envied,
To hear us when we cried. [62]
For to what friend dare you entrust your grievances, who, if he laugh not at them, will not make use of them, as a direction and instruction to take a share of the quarry or booty to himself? As well the sourness and inconveniences as the sweetness and pleasures incident to marriage are secretly concealed by the wiser sort. And amongst other importunate conditions belonging to wedlock, this one, unto a babbling fellow as I am, is of the chiefest: that tyrannous custom makes it uncomely and hurtful for a man to communicate with anyone all he knows and thinks of it.
To give women advice to distaste them from jealousy were but time lost or labour spent in vain. Their essence is so infected with suspicion, with vanity and curiosity, that we may not hope to cure them by any lawful mean. They often recover of this infirmity by a form of health, much more to be feared than the disease itself. For even as some enchantment cannot rid away an evil but with laying it on another, so when they lose it they transfer and bestow this malady on their husbands.
And to say truth, I wot not whether a man can endure anything at their hands worse than jealousy. Of all their conditions it is most dangerous, as the head of all their members. Pittacus said that every man had one imperfection or other: his wife’s curst pate [63] was his; and but for that, he should esteem himself most happy. It must needs be a weighty inconvenience, wherewith so just, so wise, and worthy a man felt the state of his whole life distempered. What shall we p
etty fellows do then?
The senate of Marseilles had reason to grant and enroll his request who demanded leave to kill himself, thereby to free and exempt himself from his wife’s tempestuous scolding humor; for it is an evil that is never clean rid away but by removing the whole piece and hath no other composition of worth but flight or sufferance—both too-too hard, God knows. And in my conceit, he understood it right that said a good marriage might be made between a blind woman and a deaf man.
♦ ♦ ♦
What Virgil sayeth of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had more suitably said it of a secretly-stolen enjoying between her and Mars,
——belli fera mœnera Mauors
Armipotens regit, in gremium qui sæpe tuum se
Rejicit, æterno devinctus vulnere amoris:
Pascit amore avidos inhians in te Dea visus,
Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore:
Hunc tu Diua tuo recubantem corpore sancto
Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
Funde.
Mars, mighty arm’d, rules the fierce feats of arms,
Yet often casts himself into thine arms,
Oblig’d thereto by endless wounds of love,
Gaping on thee feeds greedy sight with love,
His breath hangs at thy mouth who upward lies,
Goddess thou circling him, while he so lies,
With thy celestial body, speeches sweet
Pour from thy mouth (as any Nectar sweet).
When I consider this, rejicit, pascit, inhians, molli, fovet, medullas, labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and this noble circumfusa, mother of gentle infusus, I am vexed at these small points and verbal allusions which since have sprung up. To those well-meaning people there needed no sharp encounter or witty equivocation: their speech is altogether full and massie, [64] with a natural and constant vigor. They are all epigram, not only tail but head, stomach, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing wrested, nothing limping; all marcheth with like tenor. Contextus totus virilis est, non sunt circa flosculos occupati. The whole composition or text is manly; they are not Bee-busied about rhetoric flowers. [65] This is not a soft quaint eloquence and only without offence; it is sinnowy, material, and solid; not so much delighting, as filling and ravishing; and ravisheth most the strongest wits, the wittiest conceits. When I behold these gallant [66] forms of expressing, so lively, so nimble, so deep, I say not “This is to speak well” but “to think well.” It is the quaintness [67] or liveliness of the conceit that elevateth and puffs up the words. Pectus est quod disertum facit: It is a man’s own breast that makes him eloquent. Our people term judgement, language; and full conceptions, fine words.
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