This essay traces a neglected strain of early modern English
neo-Ovidianism, showing how Ovid's claim in Ars Amatoria that women
enjoy rape gains currency through lyrics in popular miscellanies
and song collections. Some of the lyrics include a female voice to
provide quasi-legal testimony of consent, while others adopt Ovid's
erotodidacticism, with a male sexual preceptor instructing the uninitiated
in the paradoxical lesson that women's "no" means "yes." The anonymous
writers of these lyrics use the Ars to license comic treatment of sexual
assault, circulating Ovid's precept as a secret lesson in a contemporary
school of love.