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Page 7
We have in _Richard II_ (Act i, sc. 2) the terms "fair and crystal"
applied to a clear sky, and in _Romeo and Juliet_ (Act i, sc. 2) the
word is used to denote superlative excellence, where a lady's love is
to be weighed against her rival on "crystal scales".
Rock-crystal was much more highly valued in the England of Elizabeth
and of James I than it is to-day, and was freely used as an adjunct to
more precious material, and still was employed to some extent in the
adornment of book-covers, although this usage, so common in medi�val
times, was fast passing away.
In Shakespeare's poems, "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "Lucrece"
(1594), as well as in his "Sonnets" (1609), in the "Lover's Complaint"
and in the almost certainly spurious "Passionate Pilgrim", containing
two sonnets and three poems from _Love's Labour's Lost_, and
which has been included in most collections of his works, there are
perhaps relatively more frequent mentions of precious stones than in
the plays, a few of them being of special interest. Where we have
twice "ruby lips" (and once "coral lips") in the plays, the poems
speak thrice of "coral lips" or a "coral mouth";[4] a belt has "coral
clasps" ("Passionate Pilgrim", l. 366). This belt bears also "amber
studs", and in the "Lover's Complaint", l. 37, are "favours of amber",
and also of "crystal, and of beaded jet".
[Footnote 4: "Venus and Adonis", l. 542; "Lucrece", l. 420; Sonnet
cxxx, l. 2.]
Coming to the really precious stones, sapphire finds a single mention,
also in the "Lover's Complaint", l. 215, where it is termed
"heaven-hued". The same poem says of the diamond that it was
"beautiful and hard" (l. 211), thus symbolizing a heartless beauty.
More interesting are the following lines regarding the emerald (213,
214):
The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend.
This proves the poet's familiarity with the idea that gazing on an
emerald benefited weak sight, an idea expressed as far back as 300
B.C. by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, and repeated by the Roman
Pliny in 75 A.D. The "Lover's Complaint" furnishes another pretty line
(198) contrasting the different beauties of rubies and pearls:
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood.
In "Venus and Adonis", honey-tongued Shakespeare writes of a
"ruby-colored portal".
Pearls are noted six times, usually as similes for tears, and tears
are likened to "pearls in glass" ("Venus and Adonis", l. 980). A
tender line is that in the "Passionate Pilgrim" (hardly from
Shakespeare's hand, however):
Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded.
More varied are the allusions to rock-crystal or crystal, as the poet
calls it. In one place ("Venus and Adonis", l. 491) there are
"crystal tears", and these form "a crystal tide" that flows down the
cheeks and drops in the bosom (_Idem_, l. 957). On the other
hand, the eyes are likened to this stone, as in "crystal eyne"
("Venus and Adonis", l. 633), or "crystal eyes" (Sonnet xlvi, l. 6).
There are also "crystal favours",[5] a "crystal gate",[6] and "crystal
walls",[7] the two characteristics of brilliancy and transparency
suggesting these uses of the term.
[Footnote 5: "Lover's Complaint", l. 37.]
[Footnote 6: "Idem", l. 286.]
[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 Assuan, 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.
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