Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships.
At end of "Histories", page unnumbered
(p. 596 of facsimile), Col. A, line 19.


This being an allusion to the Greek fleet sent out under Agamemnon and
Menelaus to bring back the truant wife from Troy. The idea of a
supremely valuable pearl is also apparent in the lines embraced in
Othello's last words before his self-immolation as an expiation of the
murder of Desdemona, where he says of himself:[1]


Whose hand
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.
_Othello_, Act v, sc. 2.
"Tragedies", p. 338, col. B, line 53.


[Footnote 1: For a Venetian tale that may have suggested these lines
to Shakespeare, see the present writer's "The Magic of Jewels and
Charms", Philadelphia and London, 1915, p. 393. The text of the First
Folio gives "Iudean", instead of "Indian".]

Although the term "Orient pearl" is that used by Shakespeare, and
undoubtedly many of the older pearls of his day were really of
Cinghalese or Persian origin, the principal source of supply was then
the Panama fishery discovered by the Spaniards about a century earlier
and actively exploited by them.[2] However, through the old
inventories made by experts familiar with the real sources of precious