special opportunity to closely examine such portraits, the smaller
details of which may not have interested him greatly.

While it is not unlikely that some of the royal or noble ladies who
attended the performances of Shakespeare's plays, while he was
connected with the Globe Theatre, wore brilliant jewels, it is
improbable that they were bedecked with the most valuable of their
gems. The danger of being waylaid and robbed was much greater in those
days than it is to-day, and it was probably only within palace or
castle doors, or at some great State function, that the costliest
jewels were worn. Hence nothing distantly approaching the rather
excessive splendor of a New York or London opera night could ever have
dazzled the poet-actor's eyes.

In the case of plays acted before the court, however, the royal and
noble ladies, undoubtedly, wore many of their finest jewels, as did
also the sovereign and courtiers. Still, preoccupied as Shakespeare
must have been with the presentation, or representation of the
dramatic performance, he probably had little time or inclination to
devote especial attention to these jewels.

No museum collections, properly so called, existed in Shakespeare's
day, from which he could have acquired any closer knowledge of
precious stones or gems, although the conception of a great modern
museum of art and science found expression in the "New Atlantis" of
his great contemporary, Lord Bacon. The modest beginnings of the Royal
Society of London, founded in 1662, cannot be traced back beyond 1645.
The French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666, was preceded by
earlier informal meetings of French scientists, to which allusion is
even made by Lord Bacon, who died in 1626. The Berlin Academy came