Shakespeare and Precious Stones
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 mediaeval 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," 1. 366). This belt bears also "amber studs," and in the "Lover's Complaint," 1. 37, are "favours of amber," and also of "crystal, and of beaded jet."
Coming to the really precious stones, sapphire finds a single mention, also in the " Lover's Com-
4 "Venus and Adonis," 1. 542; "Lucrece," 1. 420; Sonnet cxxx, 1. 2.
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