g been customary to
inscribe a motto or "posy" within the hoop of the betrothal ring. Thus,
in the "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), Gratiano, when asked by Portia the
reason of his quarrel with Nerissa, answers:

"About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring
That she did give me; whose posy was
For all the world like cutlers' poetry
Upon a knife, 'Love me, and leave me not.'"

In "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Jaques tells Orlando, "You are full of
pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and
conned them out of rings?"

Again, "Hamlet" (iii. 2) asks:

"Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?"

Many of our old writers allude to the posy-rings. Thus Herrick, in his
"Hesperides," says:

"What posies for our wedding rings,
What gloves we'll give, and ribbonings."

Henry VIII. gave Anne of Cleves a ring with the following posy: "God
send me well to kepe;" a most unpropitious alliance, as the king
expressed his dislike to her soon after the marriage.

_Thumb-rings._ These were generally broad gold rings worn on the thumb
by important personages. Thus Falstaff ("1 Henry IV." ii. 4) bragged
that, in his earlier years, he had been so slender in figure as to
"creep into an alderman's thumb-ring;" and a ring thus worn--probably as
more conspicuous--appears to have been considered as appropriate to the
customary attire of a civic dignitary at a much later period. A
character in the Lord Mayor's Show, in 1664, is described as "habited
like a grave citizen--gold girdle, and gloves hung thereon, rings on his
fingers, and a seal ring on his thumb."[756] Chaucer, in his "Squire's
Tale," says of the rider of the brazen horse who advanced into the
hall, Cambuscan, that "upon his thumb he had of gold a ring." In "Romeo
and Juliet" (i. 4), Mercutio speaks of the

"agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman."

[756] See Jones's "Finger-Ring Lore," 1877, p. 88.

It has been suggested that Shakespeare, in the following passage,
alludes to the annual celebration, at Venice, of the wedding of the Doge
with the Adriatic, when he makes Othello say (i. 2):

"But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea's worth."

This custom, it is said, was instituted by Pope Alexander III., who gave
the Doge a gold ring from his own finger, in token of the victory by the
Ven