Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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Deliver them, and your appeal to us
There make before them.”
This custom, too, was not confined to royalty, for in “Richard II.” (ii. 2), the Duke of York gives this order to his servant:
Bid her send me presently a thousand pound:—
Hold, take my ring.”
There is an interesting relic of the same custom still kept up at Winchester College.[754] When the captain of the school petitions the head-master for a holiday, and obtains it, he receives from him a ring, in token of the indulgence granted, which he wears during the holiday, and returns to the head-master when it is over. The inscription upon the ring was, formerly, “Potentiam fero, geroque.” It is now “Commendat rarior usus” (Juvenal, “Sat.” xi. 208).
Token Rings date from very early times. Edward I., in 1297, presented Margaret, his fourth daughter, with a golden pyx, in which he deposited a ring, as a token of his unfailing love.
In “Richard III.” (i. 2) when Gloster brings his hasty wooing to a conclusion, he gives the Lady Anne a ring, saying:
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.”
In “Cymbeline” (i. 1) Imogen gives Posthumus a ring when they part, and he presents her with a bracelet in exchange:
This diamond was my mother’s; take it, heart;
But keep it till you woo another wife,
When Imogen is dead.
You gentle gods, give me but this I have,
And sear up my embracements from a next
With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here,
(Putting on the ring)
While sense can keep it on.”
Yet he afterwards gives it up to Iachimo (ii. 4)—upon a false representation—to test his wife’s honor:
It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on’t.”
The exchange of rings, a solemn mode of private contract between lovers, we have already referred to in the chapter on Marriage, a practice alluded to in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 2), where Julia gives Proteus a ring, saying:
and he replies:
Death’s-head rings. Rings engraved with skulls and skeletons were not necessarily mourning rings, but were also worn by persons who affected gravity; and, curious to say, by the procuresses of Elizabeth’s time. Biron, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), refers to “a death’s face in a ring;” and we may quote Falstaff’s words in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death’s head; do not bid me remember mine end.” We may compare the following from “The Chances” (i. 5), by Beaumont and Fletcher:
To cry ‘memento’ to me.”
According to Mr. Fairholt, “the skull and skeleton decorations for rings first came into favor and fashion at the obsequious court of France, when Diana of Poictiers became the mistress of Henry II. At that time she was a widow, and in mourning, so black and white became fashionable colors; jewels were formed like funeral memorials; golden ornaments, shaped like coffins, holding enamelled skeletons, hung from the neck; watches, made to fit in little silver skulls, were attached to the waists of the denizens of a court that alternately indulged in profanity or piety, but who mourned for show.”[755]
Posy-rings were formerly much used, it having been customary to inscribe a motto or “posy” within the hoop of the betrothal ring. Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), Gratiano, when asked by Portia the reason of his quarrel with Nerissa, answers:
That she did give me; whose posy was
For all the world like cutlers’ poetry
Upon a knife, ‘Love me, and leave me not.’”
In “As You Like It“ (iii. 2), Jaques tells Orlando, “You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?”
Again, “Hamlet” (iii. 2) asks:
Many of our old writers allude to the posy-rings. Thus Herrick, in his “Hesperides,” says:
What gloves we’ll give, and ribbonings.”
Henry VIII. gave Anne of Cleves a ring with the following posy: “God send me well to kepe;” a most unpropitious alliance, as the king expressed his dislike to her soon after the marriage.
Thumb-rings. These were generally broad gold rings worn on the thumb by important personages. Thus Falstaff (“1 Henry IV.” ii. 4) bragged that, in his earlier years, he had been so slender in figure as to “creep into an alderman’s thumb-ring;” and a ring thus worn—probably as more conspicuous—appears to have been considered as appropriate to the customary attire of a civic dignitary at a much later period. A character in the Lord Mayor’s Show, in 1664, is described as “habited like a grave citizen—gold girdle, and gloves hung thereon, rings on his fingers, and a seal ring on his thumb.”[756] Chaucer, in his “Squire’s Tale,” says of the rider of the brazen horse who advanced into the hall, Cambuscan, that “upon his thumb he had of gold a ring.” In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), Mercutio speaks of the
On the forefinger of an alderman.”
It has been suggested that Shakespeare, in the following passage, alludes to the annual celebration, at Venice, of the wedding of the Doge with the Adriatic, when he makes Othello say (i. 2):
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea’s worth.”
This custom, it is said, was instituted by Pope Alexander III., who gave the Doge a gold ring from his own finger, in token of the victory by the Venetian fleet, at Istria, over Frederick Barbarossa, in defence of the Pope’s quarrel. When his holiness gave the ring, he desired the Doge to throw a similar ring into the sea every year on Ascension Day, in commemoration of the event.
Agate. This stone was frequently cut to represent the human form, and was occasionally worn in the hat by gallants. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2) Falstaff says: “I was never manned with an agate till now”—meaning, according to Johnson, “had an agate for my man,” was waited on by an agate.
Carbuncle. The supernatural lustre of this gem[757] is supposed to be described in “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 3), where, speaking of the ring on the finger of Bassianus, Martius says:
A precious ring, that lightens all the hole,
Which, like a taper in some monument,
Doth shine upon the dead man’s earthy cheeks,
And shows the ragged entrails of the pit.”
In Drayton’s “Muses’ Elysium” (“Nymphal.” ix.) it is thus eulogized:
The carbuncle that’s named,
Which from it such a flaming light
And radiancy ejecteth,
That in the very darkest night
The eye to it directeth.”
Milton, speaking of the cobra, says:
Crested aloof, and carbuncle his eyes.”
John Norton,[758] an alchemist in the reign of Edward IV., wrote a poem entitled the “Ordinal,” or a manual of the chemical art. One of his projects, we are told, was a bridge of gold over the Thames, crowned with pinnacles of gold, which, being studded with carbuncles, would diffuse a blaze of light in the dark. Among the other references to it given by Shakespeare may be mentioned one in “Henry VIII.” (ii. 3), where the Princess Elizabeth is spoken of as
To lighten all this isle.”
And Hamlet (ii. 2) uses the phrase, “With eyes like carbuncles.”
Chrysolite. This stone was supposed to possess peculiar virtues, and, according to Simon Maiolus, in his “Dierum Caniculares” (1615-19), Thetel the Jew, who wrote a book, “De Sculpturiis,” mentions one naturally in the form of a woman, which was potent against fascination of all kinds. “Othello” (v. 2) thus alludes to this stone in reference to his wife:
If heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,
I’d not have sold her for it.”
Pearls. The Eastern custom of powdering sovereigns at their coronation with gold-dust and seed-pearl is alluded to in “Antony and Cleopatra”[759] (ii. 5):
Rich pearls upon thee.”
So Milton (“Paradise Lost,” ii. 4):
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.”
Again, to swallow a pearl in a draught seems to have been common to royal and mercantile prodigality. In “Hamlet” (v. 2) the King says:
And in the cup an union[760] shall he throw.”
Further on Hamlet himself asks, tauntingly:
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?”
Malone, as an illustration of this custom, quotes from the second part of Heywood’s “If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody:”
Instead of sugar. Gresham drinks this pearl
Unto the queen, his mistress.”
In former times powdered pearls were considered invaluable for stomach complaints; and Rondeletius tells us that they were supposed to possess an exhilarating quality: “Uniones quæ a conchis, et valde cordiales sunt.”
Much mystery was, in bygone days, thought to hang over the origin of pearls, and, according to the poetic Orientals,[761] “Every year, on the sixteenth day of the month Nisan, the pearl oysters rise to the sea and open their shells, in order to receive the rain which falls at that time, and the drops thus caught become pearls.” Thus, in “Richard III.” (iv. 4) the king says:
Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl,
Advantaging their loan with interest
Of ten times double gain of happiness.”
Moore, in one of his Melodies, notices this pretty notion:
Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.”
Turquoise. This stone was probably more esteemed for its secret virtues than from any commercial value, the turquoise, turkise, or turkey-stone, having from a remote period been supposed to possess talismanic properties. Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 1), Shylock says: “It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.” Mr. Dyce[762] says that Shylock valued his turquoise, “not only as being the gift of Leah, but on account of the imaginary virtues ascribed to it: which was supposed to become pale or to brighten according as the health of the wearer was bad or good.” Thus, Ben Jonson, in “Sejanus” (i. 1), alludes to its wonderful properties:
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