Where we have
twice "ruby lips" (and once "coral lips") in the plays, the poems
speak thrice of "coral lips" or a "coral mouth";[4] a belt has "coral
clasps" ("Passionate Pilgrim", l. 366). This belt bears also "amber
studs", and in the "Lover's Complaint", l. 37, are "favours of amber",
and also of "crystal, and of beaded jet".
[Footnote 4: "Venus and Adonis", l. 542; "Lucrece", l. 420; Sonnet
cxxx, l. 2.]
Coming to the really precious stones, sapphire finds a single mention,
also in the "Lover's Complaint", l. 215, where it is termed
"heaven-hued". The same poem says of the diamond that it was
"beautiful and hard" (l. 211), thus symbolizing a heartless beauty.
More interesting are the following lines regarding the emerald (213,
214):
The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend.
This proves the poet's familiarity with the idea that gazing on an
emerald benefited weak sight, an idea expressed as far back as 300
B.C. by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, and repeated by the Roman
Pliny in 75 A.D. The "Lover's Complaint" furnishes another pretty line
(198) contrasting the different beauties of rubies and pearls:
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood.
In "Venus and Adonis", honey-tongued Shakespeare writes of a
"ruby-colored portal".
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