Shakespeare and Precious Stones
centenary of Cervantes's death, an exceptionally fine collection of editions of his works and of rare plates illustrating episodes from them. Notable among the books was a first edition of his earliest published poems, four redondillas, a copla and an elegy, on the death, October 3,1568, of Elizabeth de Valois, third wife of Philip II, and sister of Charles IX of France.13 Dark rumors were afloat for some time that she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the other treasures in the Hispanic Museum exhibition was the earliest imprint of Cervantes's masterpiece, the immortal "Don Quixote." This was printed in Madrid, in 1605, by Juan de la Cuesta. A rather attractive bit of verse, purporting to have been written by Shakespeare and dedicated to the woman who became his wife in 1582, when he was but eighteen years old (she was eight years his senior), alludes in its third stanza
13 The compilation containing these poems is entitled: "Hystoria y relacio verdadera de la enfermedad felicissimo transito y sumptuosas exequias funebres de la Serenissima Reyna de Espana Isabel de Valoys nuestra Sefiora," Madrid, 1569. The opening lines of Cervantes are:
A quien yra mi doloroso canto O en cuya oreja sonara su acento? (To whom will my sad song go, and in whose ears will its accents sound ?) 40
