That a turquoise, presumably set in a ring, was given to Shylock by Leah before their marriage, perhaps at their betrothal, is all that Shakespeare has found occasion to write of this pretty stone, one of the earliest used for adornment in the world's history, as the great mines of Nishapur, in Persia, and those of the Sinai Peninsula were worked at a very early time, the latter by the Egyptians as far back as 4000 B.C. With the opal, the poet has seized upon its most characteristic quality, its changeableness of hue, where he says in Twelfth Night (Act ii, sc. 4): "Thy mind is a very opal".
A luminous ring is poetically described in one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, Titus Andronicus, written in or about 1590. The lines referring to the ring are highly expressive. After the murder of Bassianus, Martius searches in the depths of a dark pit for the dead body, and suddenly cries out to his companion Quintus that he has discovered the bloody corpse. As the interior of the pit is pitch dark, Quintus can scarcely believe what he hears, and he asks Martius how the latter could possibly see what he has described. The answer is given in the following lines:
Upon his bloody finger he doth wear A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, Which, like a taper in some monument, Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks, And shows the ragged entrails of the pit. Titus Andronicus, Act ii, sc. 3.
First Folio, "Tragedies", p. 38, col. B, lines 53-57.
This certainly was suggested by the common belief in naturally luminous stones, a belief partly due to a superstitious explanation of the ruddy brilliancy of rubies and garnets as resulting from a hidden fire in the stone, and partly, perhaps, to the occasional observation of the phenomena of phosphorescence or fluorescence in certain precious stones.
It will have been seen that the text of Shakespeare's plays gives no evidence tending to show any greater familiarity with precious stones than could be gathered from the poetry of his day, and from his intercourse with classical scholars, such as Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and others of those who formed the unique assemblage wont to meet together at the old Mermaid Tavern in London. That a diamond could cost 2000 ducats ($5000), a very large sum in Shakespeare's time, is noted in one of his earliest plays, the Merchant of Venice (Act iii, sc. 1), and the following injunction emphasizes the great value of a fine diamond:
Set this diamond safe In golden palaces, as it becomes. I Henry VI, Act v, sc. 3.
"Histories", p. 116, col. B, line 54.
In Pericles we read (Act iii, sc. 2):
The diamonds of a most praisèd water Do appear, to make the world twice rich. Third Folio, 1664, p. 7, col. B, line 38;
separate pagination.
In Shakespeare's time but few of the world's great diamonds were in Europe, though two, at least, were in his native country. All of them must have been of East Indian origin, as this was before the discovery of the Brazilian mines (1728). In 1547, Henry VIII of England bought of the Fuggers of Augsburg—the great money-lending bankers and jewel setters, or royal pawnbrokers, who generally sold or forced some jewels upon those who obtained a loan—the jewel of Charles the Bold, called the "Three Brethren", from three large balas-rubies with which it was set; the central ornament was a "great pointed diamond"; of its weight nothing is known. This jewel was lost by Duke Charles on the field of Granson, March 2, 1476, where it was secured by the Swiss victors; it was eventually bought by the Fuggers. The other fine English diamond was that known as the Sancy, weighing 53-3/4 carats (55.23 metric carats), acquired by James I from Nicholas Harley de Sancy, in 1604, for 500,000 crowns. This is also stated to have belonged to Charles the Bold. In 1657 it was redeemed by Cardinal Mazarin, after having been pledged for a loan by Queen Henrietta Maria, and at Mazarin's death, in 1661, was bequeathed, with his other diamonds, to the French Crown. After passing through many vicissitudes, it has recently come into the possession of Baron Astor of Hever (William Waldorf Astor).