Book-bot.com - 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 Sto by Kunz, George Frederick

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 Sto by George Frederick Kunz
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attraction of opposites finds expression in a queer old English
proverbial saying given in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_:
"Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes". The likeness to
drops of dew appears where we read of the dew that it was "Decking
with liquid pearl the bladed grass" (_Midsummer Night's Dream_,
Act i, sc. 1), and a little later in the same play we read the
following injunction:

I most go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act ii, sc. 1.
First Folio, "Comedies", p. 148, col. A, line 38.

And later still we have the lines:

That same dew, which sometime on the buds
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act iv, sc. 1.
"Comedies", p. 157, col. B, line 10.

The pearl as a simile for great and transcendent value, perhaps
suggested by the Pearl of Great Price of the Gospel, is used of Helen
of Greece in the lines (_Troilus and Cressida_, Act ii, sc. 2):

She is a pearl