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Shakespeare and Precious Stones
And in / Henry VI (Act i, sc. i) we read:
Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make, To keep our great Saint George's feast withal.
First Folio, "Histories," p. 97, col. B, line 97.
We find no trace in Shakespeare's works of any belief in the many quaint and curious superstitions current in his day regarding the talismanic or curative virtues of precious stones. This is quite in keeping with the thoroughly sane outlook upon life that constituted the strong foundation of his incomparable mind. Not but that, like every true poet, the sense of mystery, and even the vague impression of the existence of occult powers, of the "Unknowable" in Nature, was strongly developed, but this is always in a broad and earnest spirit, far removed from all petty superstition.
Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, sacrificed her heart and diamond jewel, as a symbol of her sorrow and her love, when a tempest beat back the ship that was bearing her from the continent to the English coast. Her act, as described in the following verses, seems almost an attempt to propitiate the storm (II Henry VI, Act iii, sc. 2):
When from thy shore the tempest beat us back, I stood upon the hatches in the storm,
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