The Art of Seduction

At the beginning of this semester I was tasked by Dr. Sexson, to grab an attractive girl in the Strand Union Building and recite Shakespeare's sonnet 18 to her. I took my assignment to heart and proceeded to the SUB. I managed to locate an attractive girl and with a little convincing managed to get her to listen to the 14 lines of Shakespeare's sonet 18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Now to be honest, I expected a phone number or at least a good explanation as to why she was not going to give me her number (I mean I did recite one of Shakespeare's most famous love poems). But instead she thanked me and went upon her way. I decided to treat this as a learning experience and an oppertunity to delve into the history of seduction.

After some extensive but not unpleasant research on the subject, I learned that Seduction is a popular motif in both legend and literature. Female seductresses have included: Eve, who enticed Adam to eat the forbidden fruit; the Sirens of Greek myth lured sailors to their death, and Cleopatra who beguiled both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.

Being a man this research was interesting but not very useful, so I decided to focus more on famous male seducers both real and fictitious. Giacomo Casanova was a famous Venetian adventurer, writer, and womanizer. His charm, intelligence, and looks to ensorcelled scores of women all across Europe. Don Juan is a fictional womanizer whose mythos has inspired artists such as Molière, Lord Byron, and Alexandre Dumas recount his notorious story. That mythos, as stated by Wikipeia, is as follows:

"The legend says that Don Juan either raped or seduced a young girl of noble family, and killed her father. Later, he came across a statue of the father in a cemetery and impiously invited it home to dine with him, an invitation which the statue gladly accepted. The ghost of the father arrived for dinner as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The Statue asked to shake Don Juan's hand, and when he extended his arm, he was dragged away to Hell.
In Hell, Don Juan was met by the Devil. The Devil informs him that everyone in Hell was cast in a role. The Devil then presents him with a Jester's suit -- "You'll make an excellent fool", he is told. Don Juan is insulted by this, protesting that no other man was his equal, "I am the man who made a thousand conquests!" Intrigued by the claim, the Devil tells him that if he can correctly name one of his conquests, he would not have to wear the suit. Thus the parade of women began, and not once could he name one correctly. Finally, one woman stands before him, tears on her face. Yes," the Devil says, "this is the one woman who truly loved you." Don Juan looks into her eyes helplessly, then turns to the Devil and says, "Give me the suit."

After concluding my investigations I came to the conclusion that seduction requires one thing above all else, deception. Perhaps my approach in the SUB was a little too straightforward. If Casanova had been in my place he probably would have broken down and started to cry in the middle of the sonnet or faked a phone call from a desperately ill relative. Sadly I have a useless poker face and a very unforgiving conscience when it comes to lying about sick relatives. So I guess I'll have to stick to the hopeless romantic angle and a healthy supply of Shakespearian sonnets.