MARIA: Why so? What have I to do with Mars?
PAMPHILUS: You slay men for sport, as the god does. Except that you’re more pitiless than Mars: you kill even a lover.
MARIA: Mind what you’re saying. Where’s this heap of men I’ve slain? Where’s the blood of the slaughtered?
PAMPHILUS: You’ve only to look at me to see one lifeless corpse.
MARIA: What do I hear? You speak and walk about when you’re dead? I hope I never meet more fearsome ghosts!
PAMPHILUS: You’re joking, but all the same you’re the death of poor me, and you kill more cruelly than if you pierced with a spear. Now, alas, I’m just skin and bones from long torture.
MARIA: Well, well! Tell me, how many pregnant women have miscarried at the sight of you?
PAMPHILUS: But my pallor shows I’ve less blood than any ghost.
MARIA: Yet this pallor is streaked with lavender. You’re as pale as a ripening cherry or a purple grape.
PAMPHILUS: Shame on you for making fun of a miserable wretch!
MARIA: But if you don’t believe me, bring a mirror.
PAMPHILUS: I want no other mirror, nor do I think any could be brighter, than the one in which I’m looking at myself now.
MARIA: What mirror are you talking about?
PAMPHILUS: Your eyes.
Pamphilus opens by greeting Maria not by name but as “you cruel, hardhearted, unrelenting creature”: he finds her cruel because she is hard-hearted, and hard-hearted because she is unrelenting. From the man’s point of view, the woman’s crime in love is her steadfast refusal to yield sexually to a wooer’s importunings. Indeed, after Maria greets him by name and playfully reminds him of her own, Pamphilus sees in her name not mainly the Virgin but rather the pagan deity Mars: Maria appears to him not merely unrelenting but positively warlike, martially aggressive in defense of her virginity.
Maria’s lighthearted defense and skillful repartee soon make Pamphilus blush (“You’re as pale as a ripening cherry”) and then be embarrassed by this involuntary self-revelation (“Shame on you for making fun of a miserable wretch!”); blushing and embarrassment are good signs, indicating that a man seeks not only a woman’s acquiescence but also her esteem and approval. Yet even in this respect Pamphilus remains self-absorbed. In looking at Maria’s eyes, he literally and figuratively sees only himself. Trafficking in his own wretched, lovelorn state, he seems as much in love with love as he does with Maria.
Despite her steady resistance, Maria is obviously attracted to Pamphilus – just listen to the way she eggs him on – but, serious in her playfulness, she never forgets who she is or what she wants, not only here and now but especially hereafter. Exploiting his ardor and her self-restraint, she employs her considerable wit to bring Pamphilus round to seeing things from her point of view.
MARIA: . . . But how do you prove you’re lifeless? Do ghosts eat?
PAMPHILUS: Yes, but they eat insipid stuff, as I do.
MARIA: What do they eat, then?
PAMPHILUS: Mallows, leeks, and lupines.
MARIA: But you don’t abstain from capons and partridges.
PAMPHILUS: True, but they taste no better to my palate than if I were eating mallows, or beets without pepper, wine, and vinegar.
MARIA: Poor you! Yet all the time you’re putting on weight. And do dead men talk, too?
PAMPHILUS: Like me, in a very thin, squeaky voice.
MARIA: When I heard you wrangling with your rival not long ago, though, your voice wasn’t so thin and squeaky. But I ask you, do ghosts even walk? Wear clothes? Sleep?
PAMPHILUS: They even sleep together – though after their own fashion.
MARIA: Well! Witty fellow, aren’t you?
PAMPHILUS: But what will you say if I demonstrate with Achillean proofs that I’m dead and you’re a murderer?
MARIA: Perish the thought, Pamphilus! But proceed to your argument.
PAMPHILUS: In the first place, you’ll grant, I suppose, that death is nothing but the removal of soul from body?
MARIA: Granted. . . .
PAMPHILUS: Then you won’t deny that whoever robs another of his soul is a murderer?
MARIA: I allow it.
PAMPHILUS: You’ll concede also what’s affirmed by the most respected authors and endorsed by the assent of so many ages: that man’s soul is not where it animates but where it loves.
MARIA: Explain this more simply. I don’t follow your meaning well enough. . . .
PAMPHILUS: Men seized by a divine inspiration neither hear nor see nor smell nor feel, even if you kill them.
MARIA: Yes, I’ve heard that.
PAMPHILUS: What do you suppose is the reason?
MARIA: You tell me, professor.
PAMPHILUS: Obviously because their spirit is in heaven, where it possesses what it ardently loves, and is absent from the body.
MARIA: What of it?
PAMPHILUS: What of it, you unfeeling girl? It follows both that I’m dead and that you’re the murderer.
MARIA: Where’s your soul, then?
PAMPHILUS: Where it loves.
MARIA: But who robbed you of your soul? – Why do you sigh? Speak freely; I won’t hold it against you.
PAMPHILUS: Cruelest of girls, whom nevertheless I can’t hate even if I’m dead!
MARIA: Naturally. But why don’t you in turn deprive her of her soul – tit for tat, as they say?
PAMPHILUS: I’d like nothing better if the exchange could be such that her spirit migrated to my breast, as my spirit has gone over completely to her body.
MARIA: But may I, in turn, play the sophist with you?
PAMPHILUS: The sophistress.
MARIA: It isn’t possible for the same body to be living and lifeless, is it?
PAMPHILUS: No, not at the same time.
MARIA: When the soul’s gone, then the body’s dead?
PAMPHILUS: Yes.
MARIA: It doesn’t animate except when it’s present?
PAMPHILUS: Exactly.
MARIA: Then how does it happen that although the soul’s there where it loves, it nevertheless animates the body left behind? If it animates that body even when it loves elsewhere, how can the animated body be called lifeless?
PAMPHILUS: You dispute cunningly enough, but you won’t catch me with such snares. The soul that somehow or other governs the body of a lover is incorrectly called soul, since actually it consists of certain slight remnants of soul – just as the scent of roses remains in your hand even if the rose is taken away. . . .
MARIA: Now don’t begrudge an answer to this, too: do you love willingly or unwillingly?
PAMPHILUS: Willingly.
MARIA: Then since one is free not to love, whoever loves seems to be a self-murderer. To blame the girl is unjust.
PAMPHILUS: