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Page 8
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 assist 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 noble 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
noble 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 Natur� 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, God for Harry, England and Saint George!
_Henry V_, Act iii, sc. 1.
First Folio, "Histories", p. 77, col. B, line 51.
God 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 superstitions 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 constituted
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 superstition.
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