The most famous of the anatomists, Robert Burton, did not publish his great compendium The Anatomy of Melancholy until 1621, but his picture of the war between men and women is best studied at this stage. Although he ransacks Renaissance and classical literature to find testimony to the wiles of women, this indefatigable divine has more of a sense of humour than Nashe and Stubbes, ‘I confess I am but a novice, a contemplator only,' he says, artlessly. 'I know not what is love, nor am I in love.' Often it is difficult to know how much of Burton's knowledge of the ways of lovers comes from firsthand observation and how much is accepted at second hand from Tully and Saint Jerome and Aretino. 'If I see a monk or a friar climb up by a ladder at midnight into a virgin's or widow's window I shall hardly think he then goes to administer the Sacraments or to take her Confession,' says Burton. No one will quarrel with the deduction, but was Burton ever a witness of such irregular wooings? Or have his readings convinced him that this is how priests behave?
Burton recognizes in dancing, singing and playing of music indispensable aids to courtship. A gentlewoman learns such arts 'before she can say her Paternoster or Ten Commandments'. As a result, from tender years her thoughts run on unchastity. Once a husband is secured, however, these expensively acquired arts are abandoned. After marriage women 'will scarce touch an instrument, they care not for it'.
The young suitor of the day is an abject fellow. He spends two hours of the day mooning over his lady's portrait. 'He wisheth himself a saddle for her to sit on, a posy for her to smell to, and it would not grieve him to be hanged if he might be strangled in her garters.. ..' (A garter is 'more precious to him than any saint's relic'.) On seeing his sweetheart approaching, he 'smugs himself up, pulls up his cloak now fallen about his shoulders . . . slicks his hair, twires his beard....' He affects a long love-lock, a flower in his ear and perfumed gloves; and he walks (in a delightful phrase) 'as if he trod upon eggs'. In the hope of catching his sweetheart's eye he will pass seven or eight times a day through the street where she dwells, and make empty excuses to see her. Many men, says Burton, will hire clothes especially to impress their sweethearts, cause 'scavenger or pricklouse tailors' to dance attendance on them, and unscrupulously feign and forge as the occasion requires.
Burton, like Castiglione, is impressed by the amorous power of the eye. As men catch dotterelss by putting out a leg or an arm, so with their mutual glances do lovers inveigle one another. They can copulate with their eyes. Once in each other's exclusive company they 'cannot contain themselves'. Not only will they join hands and kiss, they will embrace, tread on each other's toes, dive into each other's bosoms (libenter et cum delectatione) and bite each other's lips. They are fond of hearing lascivious tales; fond, too, of writing their names on trees, and tiresomely addicted in their conversation to 'pretty diminutives', like bird, mouse, lamb, puss, pigeon, pigsney, kid, honey, love, dove and chicken (of which several are still hard-worked today).
Propinquity, according to Burton, cannot fail to foster passion.
This opportunity of time and place, with their circumstances, are so forcible motives, that it is impossible almost for two young folks equal in years to live together and not be in love, especially in great houses, princes' courts, where they are idle, fare well, live at ease and cannot tell otherwise how to spend their time.
Burton's favourite authority on the wiles of women is Aretino's Lucretia, a past mistress in luring men on by refusing them what they want (though, when the occasion demands, she will subdue them by sheer weight of kissing). She likes to have two or three suitors hovering about her- one to pick up her glove, kiss it and hand it back, another to take her arm, a third to buy her whatever fruits she fancies. Burton, one feels, is fatally fascinated by Aretino's Lucretia; he is Samson to her Delilah.
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