Shakespeare and Precious Stones / Treating of the Known References of Precious Stones in Shakespeare's Works, with Comments as to the Origin of His Material, the Knowledge of the Poet Concerning Precious Stones, and References as to Where the Precious Stones of His Time Came from

by George Frederick Kunz

[10] In the author's library is a fourteenth century MS. of the "De Proprietatibus Rerum", which belonged to the Carthusian Monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Dijon.

A rarely noted source for some of Shakespeare's knowledge regarding curious customs has been sought in the rambling treatise on heraldry written by Gerard Legh and issued, in 1564, under the title: "Accedens of Armorie" (approximately, Introduction to Heraldry). This is cast in the form of a dialogue between Gerard the Herehaught (Herold) and the Caligat Knight, the latter term designating an inferior kind of knight with no claim to nobility; indeed, an old writer renders it "a souldior on foot". The writer manages to weave in much material slightly or not at all connected with his main theme. Legh was the son of a Fleet Street draper. He seems to have studied a variety of subjects and gathered together many scraps of curious information. He died of the plague, October 13, 1563. His book went through several editions during Shakespeare's lifetime. Following the first edition of 1562 came successive ones in 1576, 1591, 1597, and one bearing the imprint of J. Jaggard in 1616. The author is believed to have been intentionally obscure in his treatment of heraldic questions lest he might earn the ill-will of the College of Arms by violating certain of their privileges.

While both Shakespeare and his great contemporary Cervantes died on April 23 of the year 1616, it strangely happens that Cervantes had been dead ten days when Shakespeare expired. This apparent paradox is due to the fact that while in Spain the Gregorian calendar had already been introduced, the "Old Style", or Julian reckoning, was still used in England; indeed, it was not totally abandoned until 1752, in the reign of George II, 170 years after the first use of the Gregorian reckoning on the Continent. In the seventeenth century the error to be corrected amounted to ten days, so that Shakespeare's death, under the New Style, occurred on May 3, while Cervantes died on April 13 of the Old Style.

In commemoration of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, the Shakespearean scholar, Miss H.C. Bartlett, prepared for the New York Public Library an exhibition of Shakespearean books, including all the early editions of the quartos; the various editions of the folios; the works of contemporaneous authors whom Shakespeare had consulted; and also the early works that mention Shakespeare, or cite from his plays or poems, including Greene's "Groat's Worth of Wit", published in 1592 by Henry Chettle and containing the earliest printed allusion to Shakespeare under the name of "Shake-scene".

One of the contemporary books containing citations from Shakespeare's works, shown at the New York Public Library, is "The Woman Hater", by Francis Beaumont (?1585-1615 or 1616), printed in 1607. [11] The citation, from Hamlet, Act i, sc. 5, [12] is apropos of the disappearance of a "fish head". It is put into the mouths of two of the characters, as follows:

Lazarello. Speak, I am bound to hear. Count. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.

[11] "The Woman Hater, as it hath beene lately acted by the children of Paules, London, printed and to be sold by John Hodgers in Paules Church-yard, 1607".

[12] First Folio, p. 257, col. B, lines 15, 16.

In the spacious hall of the beautiful Hispanic Museum in New York City there has recently been displayed, in commemoration of the tercentenary 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.

[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 España Isabel de Valoys nuestra Señora", Madrid, 1569. The opening lines of Cervantes are: