NATURE 
THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1917. 
=——— = — es 
SHAKESPEARE AND PRECIOUS STONES. 
Shakespeare and Precious Stones. By Dr. G. F. 
Kunz. Pp. 101. (Philadelphia and London: 
J. B. Lippincott Co., 1916.) Price 6s. net. 
HE author of this contribution to the literature 
of the Shakespeare Tercentenary has long 
been known as the most prominent expert autho- 
rity on gems and jewelry in the United States. 
He has acquired a wide knowledge of the various 
sources of origin of precious stones from the 
earliest times up to the present day, and is 
familiar with the pedigree of every jewel which 
has made itself famous among the generations of 
mankind. It was fitting, therefore, that, among 
the various essays in connection with the Shake- 
speare celebration last year, Dr. Kunz should 
discourse on the knowledge which the great 
dramatist possessed of precious stones. He has 
compiled a daintily printed volume in which he 
has collected all the poet’s references on this sub- 
~ ject, and he adds comments on the probable 
sources from which the gems of Elizabethan 
and earlier, as well as later, times have been 
obtained. His reverence for the memory of 
Shakespeare has led him to make all his quota- 
tions from the First Folio of 1623—an affectation 
which, with no compensating advantage, gives his 
readers a little additional trouble in finding the 
passages cited. The number of those who can 
refer to the First Folio must be extremely limited, 
even in New York. 
It was inevitable that Shakespeare should be 
much less familiar with precious stones than with 
the living things of natural history of which he 
has made so much use. At Court functions 
and entertainments by the leaders of society 
he must have seen, at least from a distance, great 
ladies “walled about with diamonds,” or ‘“ decked 
with diamonds and Indian stones.” It is to the 
distant sheen and glitter of the gems that he 
usually alludes in his plays and poems, rather than 
to their individual character whe seen close at 
hand. He refers, for instance, mure than twenty 
times to the diamond, without much indication that 
he knew what was the special quality which has 
given that gem its deserved pre-eminence. Out of 
the seven references to the diamond in. “Cym- 
beline,” there is only one where this distinctive 
quality is recognised—‘“ that diamond of yours out- 
lustres many I have beheld.” 
The names of the gems are often used by the 
poet as adjectives of colour, and with no reference 
to the other qualities of the stones. Thus in the 
only mention of the emerald in the Plays the name 
is simply a synonym for green. Mrs. Quickly tells 
her fairies to 
write 
In emerald: tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white. 
The ruby also is chiefly used as a colour-epithet, 
applied more especially to lips and cheeks. This 
NO. 2465, VoL. 98] 
405 
gem is introduced, however, with delicate effect 
into the fairy world, where around the queen 
The cowslips tall her pensioners be; 
In their gold coats spots you see: 
These be rubies, fairy favours. 
The jewel most often alluded to by Shakespeare 
is the pearl, which he mentions upwards of thirty 
times. Yet in no single passage does he, by a 
descriptive epithet, indicate the peculiar kind of 
beauty which has made this gem to be so prized 
in every age. One of his favourite similes is to 
compare tears to pearls. When Proteus in “The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona” was banished, his 
Silvia was said to have poured forth on his behalf 
“a sea of melting pearl, which some call tears.” 
Again, when Cordelia in “King Lear” heard of the 
indignities put on her father, her eyes filled with 
tears, : 
which parted thence 
As pearls from diamonds dropp’d. 
Another comparison of which the poet makes 
effective use is to liken dewdrops to pearls, and 
nowhere with more exquisite delicacy than in his 
fairy world, where it is one of the functions of 
the fays to : 
seek some dewdrops here, 
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. 
Further, when Oberon saw the garlands with 
which Titania had bedecked the hairy scalp of the 
transformed Bottom, he could not but exclaim : 
That same dew, which sometime on the buds - 
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, 
Stood now within the pretty flowerets’ eyes, 
Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail. 
There is an allusion to the origin of the pearl 
in “As You Like It,” where, among his s_ntentious 
remarks, Tot.‘ ~ one tells the Duke that “rich 
honesty dweli a miser, sir, in a poor house; 
as your pearl in ycur fov! wyster.”’ Dr. Kunz, on 
rather slender grounds, is inclined to believe from 
this passage that the poet may have been ac- 
quainted with some of the repulsive details of the 
pearl fishery. 
Shakespeare could sometimes put the names of 
precious stones to a contemptuous purpose. In 
“The Comedy of Errors” we hear of a kitchen- 
wench who had a “nose, all o’er embellished with 
rubies, carbuncles, sapphires”—a_ portraiture 
which in later days was imitated by a Scots ballad- 
monger, who wrote that 
many a Cairngorm pimple 
Blazed upon the face of Kate Dalrymple. 
It is seldom that Shakespeare’s references to 
gems indicate that he was probably making use 
of his own personal acquaintance with them. 
Perhaps the best example of this knowledge occurs 
in “Twelfth Night,” where the Clown, in taking 
leave of the Duke, exclaims: “Now the melan- 
choly god protect thee; and the tailor make thy 
doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a 
very opal.” The singular variability of colours 
in this stone as it is turned round in the light 
makes it a good illustration of mental vacillation. 
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