In “Cymbeline” (i. 1) Imogen gives Posthumus a ring when they part, and he presents her with a bracelet in exchange:
“Look here, love;
This diamond was my mother’s; take it, heart;
But keep it till you woo another wife,
When Imogen is dead.
Posthumus. How! how! another?—
You gentle gods, give me but this I have,
And sear up my embracements from a next
With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here,
(Putting on the ring)
While sense can keep it on.”
Yet he afterwards gives it up to Iachimo (ii. 4)—upon a false representation—to test his wife’s honor:
“Here, take this too;
It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on’t.”
The exchange of rings, a solemn mode of private contract between lovers, we have already referred to in the chapter on Marriage, a practice alluded to in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 2), where Julia gives Proteus a ring, saying:
“Keep this remembrance for thy Julia’s sake;”
and he replies:
“Why, then we’ll make exchange: here, take you this.”
Death’s-head rings. Rings engraved with skulls and skeletons were not necessarily mourning rings, but were also worn by persons who affected gravity; and, curious to say, by the procuresses of Elizabeth’s time. Biron, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), refers to “a death’s face in a ring;” and we may quote Falstaff’s words in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death’s head; do not bid me remember mine end.” We may compare the following from “The Chances” (i. 5), by Beaumont and Fletcher: