| Title | : | Shakespeare and Precious Stones |
|---|---|---|
| Author | : | George Frederick Kunz |
| Release | : | 1932-06-29 |
| Kind | : | ebook |
| Genre | : | Historical Fiction, Books, Fiction & Literature |
| Size | : | 429028 |
| This is a story book. 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: 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. |
