[6027] “Tu mihi vel ferro pectus, vel perde veneno,
          A domina tantum te modo tolle mea: 
        Te socium vitae te corporis esse licebit,
          Te dominum admitto rebus amice meis. 
        Lecto te solum, lecto te deprecor uno,
          Rivalem possum non ego ferre Jovem.”

       “Stab me with sword, or poison strong
          Give me to work my bane: 
        So thou court not my lass, so thou
          From mistress mine refrain. 
        Command myself, my body, purse,
          As thine own goods take all,
        And as my ever dearest friend,
          I ever use thee shall. 
        O spare my love, to have alone
          Her to myself I crave,
        Nay, Jove himself I’ll not endure
          My rival for to have.”

This jealousy, which I am to treat of, is that which belongs to married men, in respect of their own wives; to whose estate, as no sweetness, pleasure, happiness can be compared in the world, if they live quietly and lovingly together; so if they disagree or be jealous, those bitter pills of sorrow and grief, disastrous mischiefs, mischances, tortures, gripings, discontents, are not to be separated from them.  A most violent passion it is where it taketh place, an unspeakable torment, a hellish torture, an infernal plague, as Ariosto calls it, “a fury, a continual fever, full of suspicion, fear, and sorrow, a martyrdom, a mirth-marring monster.  The sorrow and grief of heart of one woman jealous of another, is heavier than death,” Ecclus. xxviii. 6. as [6028]Peninnah did Hannah, “vex her and upbraid her sore.”  ’Tis a main vexation, a most intolerable burden, a corrosive to all content, a frenzy, a madness itself; as [6029]Beneditto Varchi proves out of that select sonnet of Giovanni de la Casa, that reverend lord, as he styles him.

SUBSECT.  II.—­Causes of Jealousy.  Who are most apt.  Idleness, melancholy, impotency, long absence, beauty, wantonness, naught themselves.  Allurements, from time, place, persons, bad usage, causes.

Astrologers make the stars a cause or sign of this bitter passion, and out of every man’s horoscope will give a probable conjecture whether he will be jealous or no, and at what time, by direction of the significators to their several promissors:  their aphorisms are to be read in Albubater, Pontanus, Schoner, Junctine, &c.  Bodine, cap. 5. meth. hist. ascribes a great cause to the country or clime, and discourseth largely there of this subject, saying, that southern men are more hot, lascivious, and jealous, than such as live in the north; they can hardly contain themselves in those hotter climes, but are most subject to prodigious lust.  Leo Afer telleth incredible things almost, of the lust and jealousy of his countrymen of Africa, and especially such as live about Carthage, and so doth every geographer of them in [6030]Asia, Turkey, Spaniards, Italians.  Germany hath not