HOW TO WOO A RENAISSANCE WOMAN.

• It’s your wedding night. Your wife is a virgin. Better give her instructions, such as: Now take pleasure in what I do and let me know that you do. Then go about consummating the marriage, and if all goes well, she will clasp you and swoon.
• She doesn’t return your feelings? Make her feel guilty. Tell her you are dying of love for her. Your life is in her hands. And whoever can save someone and refrains from doing so is a murderer.
• Explain the advantages of an active sex life: I see many girls who before marriage were pale, run-down, and as good as gone.  The sexual side of marriage brightened them so much that they began to bloom at last.
• Do NOT follow this man’s example: He sits at table like one who is mute, speaking to his wife only when he decides to rattle her ears and reprimand whatever she has said or done.
• Here is another method that didn’t succeed:He climbed up a tree to my bedroom window…I rushed to the window naked as on the day I was born, and slammed it in his face.

But even if you can’t win her heart, do not go to extremes like this unhappy lover:

He concentrated his thought on his long love for her, on her present coldness towards him and resolved not to go on living. He clenched his fists and held his breath until finally he expired.

(Sources: Gherardi da Prato, Erasmus, Boccaccio)