And in _I Henry VI_ (Act i, sc. 1) we read:


Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make,
To keep our great Saint George's feast withal.
First Folio, "Histories", p. 97, col. B, line 97.


We find no trace in Shakespeare's works of any belief in the many
quaint and curious superstitions current in his day regarding the
talismanic or curative virtues of precious stones. This is quite in
keeping with the thoroughly sane outlook upon life that constituted
the strong foundation of his incomparable mind. Not but that, like
every true poet, the sense of mystery, and even the vague impression
of the existence of occult powers, of the "Unknowable" in Nature, was
strongly developed, but this is always in a broad and earnest spirit,
far removed from all petty superstition.

Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, sacrificed her heart and diamond
jewel, as a symbol of her sorrow and her love, when a tempest beat
back the ship that was bearing her from the continent to the English
coast. Her act, as described in the following verses, seems almost an
attempt to propitiate the storm (_II Henry VI_, Act iii, sc. 2):


When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,
I stood upon the hatches in the storm,
And when the dusky sky began to rob
My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view,
I took a costly jewel from my neck,