Nerissa:
What talk you of the posy or the value? You swore to me, when I did
give it you, That you would wear it till your hour of death, And that
it should be with you in your grave.
Portia, joining in Nerissa's feigned rebuke, says:
You
are to blame, I must be plain with you, To part so lightly with your
wife's first gift ; A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger And so
riveted with faith unto your flesh. I gave my love a ring and made him
swear Never to part with it; and here he stands; I dare be sworn for
him he would not leave it, Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth That the world masters.
Bassanio,
however, is forced to confess that he, too, has relinquished his ring.
Of course, as all readers of Shakespeare know, both Portia and Nerissa
have these rings in their own possession, since they themselves were,
in disguise, the judge and the clerk to whom Bassanio and Gratiano
unwillingly yielded them.
While
the finger-ring was known to the Chinese from a very early period, it
never seems to have enjoyed great favor with them. According to
primitive court etiquette in that land, the Emperor's " leading lady
"—for the time being—had to wear a silver ring at court. In case she
presented her sovereign with a descendant, she was rewarded by the gift
of a gold ring, which she wore on one of the fingers of her left hand.
About the mid-period of the Han dynasty (206 b.c-221 a.D.) nephrite (jade) rings were known as well as those with stone setting but they were only rarely used as ornaments.64
64 T.
Wada, " Die Schmuck- und Edelsteine bei den Chinesen," Tokyo, 1904,
reprint from the " Mitteilungen " of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Natur- und Volkeskunde Ostasiens, vol. x, Pt. I.
