The name is absent

4 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
nevertheless. As Cymbeline himself remarks when he hears
of the evil Queen’s machinations, “O most delicate fiendl
Who is ^,t can read a woman?”¹⁶ These remarks clearly ac-
count for the facile way in which Robert Burton can speak of
“the vices of their minds, their pride, envy, inconstancy,
weakness, malice, self-will, lightness, insatiable lust, jeal-
ousy”¹⁷ and for the all-inclusive sentence of Leonard Wright:
“Most women, by nature, are sayd to be light of credit, lusty
of stomacke, vnpatient, full of words, apt to lye, flatter &
weep; whose smiles are rather of custome than of courtesie,
and their teares more of dissimulation, then of grief, all in
extremes, without meane, either Iouing deerly, or hating
deadly, desirous rather to rule, then to be ruled, despising
naturally that is offered to them, and halfe at death to be
denied of that they demaund.”¹⁸ One of the most interesting
of these anti-feminist pieces is an unpublished manuscript
ballad in the Folger Shakespeare Library, dating from
around 1550;¹⁹ the refrain reminds us of ChauntecleeFs telling
Pertelote that he knows nothing detrimental to women but
is merely quoting old authors, and the last lines are explicit in
stating that women will never change their evil natures.

Thes wamen all
bothe great & small
they wandre to & fro
nowe here nowe there
they wot not were
but I will not say so
they Rune they Range
theyr myndes do change
they make ther frend y^r foo
as Iouers trewe
Euery Daye a newe
but I will not saye soo
wythin their brest
their loue Doth Rest

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