_Love's Labour's Lost_, and
which has been included in most collections of his works, there are
perhaps relatively more frequent mentions of precious stones than in
the plays, a few of them being of special interest. Where we have
twice "ruby lips" (and once "coral lips") in the plays, the poems
speak thrice of "coral lips" or a "coral mouth";[4] a belt has "coral
clasps" ("Passionate Pilgrim", l. 366). This belt bears also "amber
studs", and in the "Lover's Complaint", l. 37, are "favours of amber",
and also of "crystal, and of beaded jet".

[Footnote 4: "Venus and Adonis", l. 542; "Lucrece", l. 420; Sonnet
cxxx, l. 2.]

Coming to the really precious stones, sapphire finds a single mention,
also in the "Lover's Complaint", l. 215, where it is termed
"heaven-hued". The same poem says of the diamond that it was
"beautiful and hard" (l. 211), thus symbolizing a heartless beauty.
More interesting are the following lines regarding the emerald (213,
214):

The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend.

This proves the poet's familiarity with the idea that gazing on an
emerald benefited weak sight, an idea expressed as far back as 300
B.C. by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, and repeated by the Roman
Pliny in 75 A.D. The "Lover's Complaint" furnishes another pretty line
(198) contrasting the different beauties of rubies and pearls:

Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood.

In "Venus and Adonis", honey-tongued Shakespeare writes of a
"ruby-colored portal".

Pearls are noted six times, usually as similes for tears, and tears
are likened to "pearls in glass" ("Venus and Adonis", l. 980). A
tender line is that in the "Passionate Pilgrim" (hardly from
Shakespeare's hand, however):

Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded.

More varied are the allusions to rock-crystal or crystal, as the poet
calls it. In one place ("Venus and Adonis", l. 491) there are
"crystal tears", and these form "a crystal tide" that flows down the
cheeks and drops in the bosom (_Idem_, l. 957). On the other
hand, the eyes are likened to this stone, as in "crystal eyne"
("Venus and Adonis", l. 633), or "crystal eyes" (Sonnet xlvi, l. 6).
There are also "crystal favours",[5] a "crystal gate",[6] and "crystal
walls",[7] the two characteristics of brilliancy and transparency
suggesting these uses of the term.

[Footnote 5: "Lover's Complaint", l. 37.]

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