When this ring
Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence;
O, then be bold to say, Bassanio’s dead.
Solemn betrothal was sometimes adopted by lovers, who were about to separate for long periods. Thus Chaucer, in ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ describes the heroine as giving her lover a ring, and receiving one from him in return:—
Soon after this they spake of sundry things,
As fell to purpose of this aventure,
And, playing, interchangeden their rings,
Of which I cannot tellen no scripture.
Half of broken
betrothal ring.
Shakspeare has more than one allusion to this custom, which is absolutely enacted in the ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ when Julia gives Proteus a ring, saying: ‘Keep you this remembrance for thy Julia’s sake,’ and he replies: ‘Why, then we’ll make exchange:—here, take you this.’ A ritual of Bordeaux (1596) gives a form of betrothal by public ceremony, when rings were interchanged. Kleist, in his ‘Kate of Heilbron,’ makes Frederick say:—
To tally close,
As joints of rings dissever’d,
alluding to the custom sometimes practised by lovers, among the common people, plighting a faith, when a ring is broken in two, one half of which was kept by each party, that if from time to time, or at the day of marriage, the two pieces agree with each other, proof may be thus afforded that they have not been transferred, and consequently that both bride and bridegroom remain still of the same mind; otherwise, the engagement is annulled.
A ring of pure gold she from her finger took,
And just in the middle the same then she broke;
Quoth she: ‘As a token of love you this take,
And this, as a pledge, I will keep for your sake.’
(‘Exeter Garland.’)
De Laet, writing in 1647, states that he remembers when it was the custom (and an ancient one) for the gentleman to present the lady on their betrothal with two rings, the one set with a diamond, the other with a ruby table-cut. This gift went by the French name ‘Mariage.’