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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There is a curious parallelism between a passage in _Troilus and
Cressida_, 1609, and one in Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_, 1588. Marlowe
wrote (sc. 14, l. 83):

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

This is followed very closely by Shakespeare, with the substitution of
"pearl" for "face".

She [Helen] is a pearl,
Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships.
_Troilus and Cressida_, Act ii, sc. 2, l. 82.
First Folio, at end of "Histories", unnumbered page
(596 of facsimile), col. A, line 19.

The greatest of the world's poets lived in a period midway between the
highest development of Renaissance civilization and the foundation of
our modern civilization, and he was thus at once heir to the rich
treasures of a glorious past, and endowed with a poetic, or we might
say a prophetic insight that makes his works appeal as closely to the
readers of to-day as to those of his own time.

In the four leading European nations of the age--Italy, despite her