Shakespeare and Precious Stones Part 2

[Footnote 7: "Lucrece", l. 1251.]

The emeralds of Shakespeare's age had been brought from Peru by the Spaniards and had originally come from Colombian mines, such as those at Muzo, which are still worked in our day. The location of some of the early deposits here appears to have been lost sight of since the Spanish Conquest. The emeralds of Greek and Roman times, and of the Middle Ages, came from Mount Zabara (Gebel Zabara), near the Red Sea coast, east of a.s.suan, where traces of the old workings were found in 1817; these mines were reopened by order of Mehemet Ali, and were worked for a brief period by Mons. F. Cailliaud.

There can be no doubt that Shakespeare must have seen many fine jewels and glittering gems in pageants and processions during his residence in London. On certain special occasions the players were summoned to a.s.sist at royal functions, provision being made by the royal treasury for rich materials to be used in making special doublets and mantles for wear on these occasions. It has been suggested that the rich jewelling of many of the court portraits by Holbein and others must have impressed the poet by their wealth of color spread before his eyes; but it is nowise sure that he ever had special opportunity to closely examine such portraits, the smaller details of which may not have interested him greatly.

While it is not unlikely that some of the royal or n.o.ble ladies who attended the performances of Shakespeare's plays, while he was connected with the Globe Theatre, wore brilliant jewels, it is improbable that they were bedecked with the most valuable of their gems. The danger of being waylaid and robbed was much greater in those days than it is to-day, and it was probably only within palace or castle doors, or at some great State function, that the costliest jewels were worn. Hence nothing distantly approaching the rather excessive splendor of a New York or London opera night could ever have dazzled the poet-actor's eyes.

In the case of plays acted before the court, however, the royal and n.o.ble ladies, undoubtedly, wore many of their finest jewels, as did also the sovereign and courtiers. Still, preoccupied as Shakespeare must have been with the presentation, or representation of the dramatic performance, he probably had little time or inclination to devote especial attention to these jewels.

No museum collections, properly so called, existed in Shakespeare's day, from which he could have acquired any closer knowledge of precious stones or gems, although the conception of a great modern museum of art and science found expression in the "New Atlantis" of his great contemporary, Lord Bacon. The modest beginnings of the Royal Society of London, founded in 1662, cannot be traced back beyond 1645.

The French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666, was preceded by earlier informal meetings of French scientists, to which allusion is even made by Lord Bacon, who died in 1626. The Berlin Academy came much later, in 1700, and the St. Petersburg Academy was first established in 1725 by Catherine I, widow of Peter the Great. One society, the Academia Secretorum Naturae of Naples, goes back to 1560, and the Accademia dei Lincei of Prince Federico Cesi was founded at Rome in 1603. But of these Shakespeare could have known little or nothing.

That the poet knew, more or less vaguely, of America as a source of precious stones, as were the Indies, comes out in the farcical lines from _The Comedy of Errors_ (Act iii, sc. 2), when one of the Dromios, in locating the various lands of the world on parts of his mistress's body, to the query of Antipholus: "Where America, the Indies?" replies: "Oh, sir, upon her nose, all o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires". This is the only mention of America in the plays.

A coincidence having its own significance is that April 23, the day of Shakespeare's death and also his birthday, was the day dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of Merry England. The war-cry of England is given several times by Shakespeare, as, for example:

Cry, G.o.d for Harry, England and Saint George!

_Henry V_, Act iii, sc. 1.

First Folio, "Histories", p. 77, col. B, line 51.

G.o.d and Saint George! Richmond and Victory!

_Richard III_, Act v, sc. 3.

First Folio, "Histories", p. 203, col. A, line 31.

And in _I Henry VI_ (Act i, sc. 1) we read:

Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make, To keep our great Saint George's feast withal.

First Folio, "Histories", p. 97, col. B, line 97.

We find no trace in Shakespeare's works of any belief in the many quaint and curious superst.i.tions current in his day regarding the talismanic or curative virtues of precious stones. This is quite in keeping with the thoroughly sane outlook upon life that const.i.tuted the strong foundation of his incomparable mind. Not but that, like every true poet, the sense of mystery, and even the vague impression of the existence of occult powers, of the "Unknowable" in Nature, was strongly developed, but this is always in a broad and earnest spirit, far removed from all petty superst.i.tion.

Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, sacrificed her heart and diamond jewel, as a symbol of her sorrow and her love, when a tempest beat back the ship that was bearing her from the continent to the English coast. Her act, as described in the following verses, seems almost an attempt to propitiate the storm (_II Henry VI_, Act iii, sc. 2):

When from thy sh.o.r.e the tempest beat us back, I stood upon the hatches in the storm, And when the dusky sky began to rob My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view, I took a costly jewel from my neck, A heart it was, bound in with diamonds, And threw it towards thy land: the sea received it, And so I wish'd thy body might my heart.

First Folio, "Histories", p. 134, col. A, lines 41-48.

The idea of the sacredness of a ring as a love-token is voiced by Portia in Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_ where she says (Act v, sc. 1):

I gave my love a ring and made him swear Never to part with it; and here he stands; I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth That the world masters.

First Folio, "Comedies", p. 183, col. B, lines 12-16.

The nearest approach to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in "A Lover's Complaint", lines 204-217.

Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give the entire pa.s.sage here consecutively:

And, lo, behold these talents of their hair, With twisted metal amorously impleach'd, I have received from many a several fair, Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd With the annexions of fair gems enrich'd, And deep-brain'd sonnets that did amplify Each stone's dear nature, worth and quality.

The diamond,--why, 'twas beautiful and hard, Whereto his invised[8] properties did tend; The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend; The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend With objects manifold: each several stone, With wit well blazon'd, smiled or made some moan.

[Footnote 8: Rare word, only known in this pa.s.sage. Century Dictionary gives "invisible", "unseen", "uninspected", noting that some commentators suggest "inspected", "tried", "investigated".]

Had Shakespeare felt much interest in the lore of gems, he had before him most of the then available material in a book of which he seems to have made some use.[9] This was an English rendering of the "De Proprietatibus Rerum" of Bartholomaeus Anglicus (fl. ca. 1350), by Stephan Batman, or Bateman (d. 1587), an English divine and poet, who in the later years of his life was chaplain and librarian to the famous Archbishop Parker, and thus had free access to the latter's fine library. His rendering, published in 1582, bears the following quaint t.i.tle: "Batman uppon Bartholome his Book De Proprietatibus Rerum"; it was published in 1582, and appears to have been widely read in England among those still interested in the learning of the scholastic period. A much earlier English version, made by John of Trevisa in 1396, was published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, and is considered to be the finest production of his press.[10]

[Footnote 9: See H.R.D. Anders, "Shakespeare's Books", Berlin, 1904, pp. 238-248, and the New Shakespeare Soc. Trans., 1877-79, pp. 436 sqq.]

[Footnote 10: In the author's library is a fourteenth century MS. of the "De Proprietatibus Rerum", which belonged to the Carthusian Monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Dijon.]

A rarely noted source for some of Shakespeare's knowledge regarding curious customs has been sought in the rambling treatise on heraldry written by Gerard Legh and issued, in 1564, under the t.i.tle: "Accedens of Armorie" (approximately, Introduction to Heraldry). This is cast in the form of a dialogue between Gerard the Herehaught (Herold) and the Caligat Knight, the latter term designating an inferior kind of knight with no claim to n.o.bility; indeed, an old writer renders it "a souldior on foot". The writer manages to weave in much material slightly or not at all connected with his main theme. Legh was the son of a Fleet Street draper. He seems to have studied a variety of subjects and gathered together many sc.r.a.ps of curious information. He died of the plague, October 13, 1563. His book went through several editions during Shakespeare's lifetime. Following the first edition of 1562 came successive ones in 1576, 1591, 1597, and one bearing the imprint of J. Jaggard in 1616. The author is believed to have been intentionally obscure in his treatment of heraldic questions lest he might earn the ill-will of the College of Arms by violating certain of their privileges.

While both Shakespeare and his great contemporary Cervantes died on April 23 of the year 1616, it strangely happens that Cervantes had been dead ten days when Shakespeare expired. This apparent paradox is due to the fact that while in Spain the Gregorian calendar had already been introduced, the "Old Style", or Julian reckoning, was still used in England; indeed, it was not totally abandoned until 1752, in the reign of George II, 170 years after the first use of the Gregorian reckoning on the Continent. In the seventeenth century the error to be corrected amounted to ten days, so that Shakespeare's death, under the New Style, occurred on May 3, while Cervantes died on April 13 of the Old Style.

In commemoration of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, the Shakespearean scholar, Miss H.C. Bartlett, prepared for the New York Public Library an exhibition of Shakespearean books, including all the early editions of the quartos; the various editions of the folios; the works of contemporaneous authors whom Shakespeare had consulted; and also the early works that mention Shakespeare, or cite from his plays or poems, including Greene's "Groat's Worth of Wit", published in 1592 by Henry Chettle and containing the earliest printed allusion to Shakespeare under the name of "Shake-scene".

One of the contemporary books containing citations from Shakespeare's works, shown at the New York Public Library, is "The Woman Hater", by Francis Beaumont (?1585-1615 or 1616), printed in 1607.[11] The citation, from _Hamlet_, Act i, sc. 5,[12] is apropos of the disappearance of a "fish head". It is put into the mouths of two of the characters, as follows:

_Lazarello_. Speak, I am bound to hear.

_Count_. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.

[Footnote 11: "The Woman Hater, as it hath beene lately acted by the children of Paules, London, printed and to be sold by John Hodgers in Paules Church-yard, 1607".]

[Footnote 12: First Folio, p. 257, col. B, lines 15, 16.]

In the s.p.a.cious hall of the beautiful Hispanic Museum in New York City there has recently been displayed, in commemoration of the tercentenary of Cervantes's death, an exceptionally fine collection of editions of his works and of rare plates ill.u.s.trating episodes from them. Notable among the books was a first edition of his earliest published poems, four redondillas, a copla and an elegy, on the death, October 3, 1568, of Elizabeth de Valois, third wife of Philip II, and sister of Charles IX of France.[13] Dark rumors were afloat for some time that she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the other treasures in the Hispanic Museum exhibition was the earliest imprint of Cervantes's masterpiece, the immortal "Don Quixote". This was printed in Madrid, in 1605, by Juan de la Cuesta.

[Footnote 13: The compilation containing these poems is ent.i.tled: "Hystoria y relacio verdadera de la enfermedad felicissimo transito y sumptuosas exequias funebres de la Serenissima Reyna de Espana Isabel de Valoys nuestra Senora", Madrid, 1569. The opening lines of Cervantes are:

A quien yra mi doloroso canto O en cuya oreja sonara su acento?

(To whom will my sad song go, and in whose ears will its accents sound?) ]

A rather attractive bit of verse, purporting to have been written by Shakespeare and dedicated to the woman who became his wife in 1582, when he was but eighteen years old (she was eight years his senior), alludes in its third stanza to "the orient list" of gems, diamond, topaz, amethyst, emerald, and ruby. This little poem, with its play upon the lady-love's name, can find a place here, although many readers are already familiar with it.

TO THE IDOL OF MINE EYES AND THE DELIGHT OF MINE HEART,

ANNE HATHAWAY

Would ye be taught, ye feathered throng, With love's sweet notes to grace your song, To pierce the heart with thrilling lay, Listen to mine Anne Hathaway!