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SHAKESPEARE AND PRECIOUS STONES

So wide is the range of the immortal verse of Shakespeare, and so many and various are the subjects he touched upon and adorned with the magic beauty of his poetic imagery, that it will be of great interest to refer to the allusions to gems and precious stones in his plays and poems. These allusions are all given in the latter part of this volume. What can we learn from them of Shakespeare's knowledge of the source, quality, and use of these precious stones?

The great favor that pearls enjoyed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is, as we see, reflected by the frequency with which he speaks of them, and the different passages reveal in several instances a knowledge of the ancient tales of their formation and principal source. Thus, in Troilus and Cressida (Act i, sc. 1) he writes: "Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl"; and Pliny's tales of the pearl's origin from dew are glanced at indirectly when he says:

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed Shall come again, transform'd to orient pearl. Richard III, Act iv, sc. 4.
First Folio, "Histories", p. 198, col. A, line 17.

This is undoubtedly the reason for the comparison between pearls and tears, leading to the German proverb, "Perlen bedeuten Tränen" (Pearls mean tears), which was then taken to signify that pearls portended tears, instead of that they were the offspring of drops of liquid. The world-famed pearl of Cleopatra, which she drank after dissolving it, so as to win her wager with Antony that she would entertain him with a banquet costing a certain immense sum of money, is not even noticed, however, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. In the poet's time pearls were not only worn as jewels, but were extensively used in embroidering rich garments and upholstery and for the adornment of harnesses. To this Shakespeare alludes in the following passages:

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl. Henry V, Act iv, sc. 1.
First Folio, "Histories", p. 85 (page number repeated),
col. B, line 13.

Their harness studded all with gold and pearl. Taming of the Shrew, Introd., sc. 2.
"Comedies", p. 209, col. B, line 33.

Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl. Ibid., Act ii, sc. 1.
"Comedies", p. 217, col. B, line 32.

Laced with silver, set with pearls. Much Ado About Nothing, Act iii, sc. 4.
"Comedies", p. 112, col. B, line 65.

Moreover, we have a simile which might almost make us suppose that Shakespeare knew something of the details of the pearl fisheries, when the oysters are piled up on shore and allowed to decompose, so as to render it easier to get at the pearls, for he makes one of his characters say, speaking of an honest man in a poor dwelling, that he was like a "pearl in your foul oyster". (As You Like It, Act v, sc. 4.)

In the strange transformation told of in Ariel's song, the bones of the drowned man have been turned to coral, and his eyes to pearls (Tempest, Act i, sc. 2). The strange and sometimes morbid attraction of opposites finds expression in a queer old English proverbial saying given in the Two Gentlemen of Verona: "Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes". The likeness to drops of dew appears where we read of the dew that it was "Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass" (Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i, sc. 1), and a little later in the same play we read the following injunction:

I most go seek some dewdrops here And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii, sc. 1.
First Folio, "Comedies", p. 148, col. A, line 38.

And later still we have the lines:

That same dew, which sometime on the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls. Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iv, sc. 1.
"Comedies", p. 157, col. B, line 10.

The pearl as a simile for great and transcendent value, perhaps suggested by the Pearl of Great Price of the Gospel, is used of Helen of Greece in the lines (Troilus and Cressida, Act ii, sc. 2):

She is a pearl Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships. At end of "Histories", page unnumbered
(p. 596 of facsimile), Col. A, line 19.

This being an allusion to the Greek fleet sent out under Agamemnon and Menelaus to bring back the truant wife from Troy. The idea of a supremely valuable pearl is also apparent in the lines embraced in Othello's last words before his self-immolation as an expiation of the murder of Desdemona, where he says of himself: [1]

Whose hand Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe. Othello, Act v, sc. 2.
"Tragedies", p. 338, col. B, line 53.

Although the term "Orient pearl" is that used by Shakespeare, and undoubtedly many of the older pearls of his day were really of Cinghalese or Persian origin, the principal source of supply was then the Panama fishery discovered by the Spaniards about a century earlier and actively exploited by them. [2] However, through the old inventories made by experts familiar with the real sources of precious stones and pearls—though not always correctly with those of the latter—the term "Orient pearl" came in time to denote one of fine hue, so that the "orient" of a pearl is still spoken of as signifying a sheen of the first quality.