Shakespeare and Precious Stones
plaint," 1. 215, where it is termed " heaven-hued." The same poem says of the diamond that it was "beautiful and hard" (1. 211), thus symbolizing a heartless beauty. More interesting are the following lines regarding the emerald (213, 214):
The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend.
This proves the poet's familiarity with the idea that gazing on an emerald benefited weak sight, an idea expressed as far back as 300 b.c. by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, and repeated by the Roman Pliny in 75 a.d. The "Lover's Complaint" furnishes another pretty line (198) contrasting the different beauties of rubies and pearls:
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood.
In "Venus and Adonis," honey-tongued Shakespeare writes of a "ruby-colored portal."
Pearls are noted six times, usually as similes for tears, and tears are likened to "pearls in glass" ("Venus and Adonis," 1. 980). A tender line is that in the "Passionate Pilgrim" (hardly from Shakespeare's hand, however):
Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded.
More varied are the allusions to rock-crystal or crystal, as the poet calls it. In one place
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