Shakespeare and Precious Stones
Laced with silver, set with pearls.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act iii, sc. 4. "Comedies," p. 112, col. B, line 65.
Moreover, we have a simile which might almost make us suppose that Shakespeare knew something of the details of the pearl fisheries, when the oysters are piled up on shore and allowed to decompose, so as to render it easier to get at the pearls, for he makes one of his characters say, speaking of an honest man in a poor dwelling, that he was like a "pearl in your foul oyster." {As You Like It, Act v, sc. 4.)
In the strange transformation told of in Ariel's song, the bones of the drowned man have been turned to coral, and his eyes to pearls (Tempest, Act i, sc. 2). The strange and sometimes morbid attraction of opposites finds expression in a queer old English proverbial saying given in the Two Gentlemen of Verona: "Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes." The likeness to drops of dew appears where we read of the dew that it was "Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass" {Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i, sc. 1), and a little later in the same play we read the following injunction:
I most go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii, sc. 1. First Folio, "Comedies," p. 148, col. A, line 38. 2
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