Shakespeare and Precious Stones | Page 8

Worde in 1495, and is considered
to be the finest production of his press.[10]
[Footnote 9: See H.R.D. Anders, "Shakespeare's Books", Berlin, 1904,
pp. 238-248, and the New Shakespeare Soc. Trans., 1877-79, pp. 436
sqq.]
[Footnote 10: In the author's library is a fourteenth century MS. of the
"De Proprietatibus Rerum", which belonged to the Carthusian
Monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Dijon.]
A rarely noted source for some of Shakespeare's knowledge regarding
curious customs has been sought in the rambling treatise on heraldry
written by Gerard Legh and issued, in 1564, under the title: "Accedens
of Armorie" (approximately, Introduction to Heraldry). This is cast in
the form of a dialogue between Gerard the Herehaught (Herold) and the
Caligat Knight, the latter term designating an inferior kind of knight
with no claim to nobility; indeed, an old writer renders it "a souldior on
foot". The writer manages to weave in much material slightly or not at
all connected with his main theme. Legh was the son of a Fleet Street
draper. He seems to have studied a variety of subjects and gathered
together many scraps of curious information. He died of the plague,
October 13, 1563. His book went through several editions during
Shakespeare's lifetime. Following the first edition of 1562 came
successive ones in 1576, 1591, 1597, and one bearing the imprint of J.
Jaggard in 1616. The author is believed to have been intentionally
obscure in his treatment of heraldic questions lest he might earn the
ill-will of the College of Arms by violating certain of their privileges.
While both Shakespeare and his great contemporary Cervantes died on
April 23 of the year 1616, it strangely happens that Cervantes had been
dead ten days when Shakespeare expired. This apparent paradox is due

to the fact that while in Spain the Gregorian calendar had already been
introduced, the "Old Style", or Julian reckoning, was still used in
England; indeed, it was not totally abandoned until 1752, in the reign of
George II, 170 years after the first use of the Gregorian reckoning on
the Continent. In the seventeenth century the error to be corrected
amounted to ten days, so that Shakespeare's death, under the New Style,
occurred on May 3, while Cervantes died on April 13 of the Old Style.
In commemoration of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, the
Shakespearean scholar, Miss H.C. Bartlett, prepared for the New York
Public Library an exhibition of Shakespearean books, including all the
early editions of the quartos; the various editions of the folios; the
works of contemporaneous authors whom Shakespeare had consulted;
and also the early works that mention Shakespeare, or cite from his
plays or poems, including Greene's "Groat's Worth of Wit", published
in 1592 by Henry Chettle and containing the earliest printed allusion to
Shakespeare under the name of "Shake-scene".
One of the contemporary books containing citations from Shakespeare's
works, shown at the New York Public Library, is "The Woman Hater",
by Francis Beaumont (?1585-1615 or 1616), printed in 1607.[11] The
citation, from Hamlet, Act i, sc. 5,[12] is apropos of the disappearance
of a "fish head". It is put into the mouths of two of the characters, as
follows:
Lazarello. Speak, I am bound to hear. Count. So art thou to revenge
when thou shalt hear.
[Footnote 11: "The Woman Hater, as it hath beene lately acted by the
children of Paules, London, printed and to be sold by John Hodgers in
Paules Church-yard, 1607".]
[Footnote 12: First Folio, p. 257, col. B, lines 15, 16.]
In the spacious hall of the beautiful Hispanic Museum in New York
City there has recently been displayed, in commemoration of the
tercentenary of Cervantes's death, an exceptionally fine collection of
editions of his works and of rare plates illustrating episodes from them.

Notable among the books was a first edition of his earliest published
poems, four redondillas, a copla and an elegy, on the death, October 3,
1568, of Elizabeth de Valois, third wife of Philip II, and sister of
Charles IX of France.[13] Dark rumors were afloat for some time that
she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the other
treasures in the Hispanic Museum exhibition was the earliest imprint of
Cervantes's masterpiece, the immortal "Don Quixote". This was printed
in Madrid, in 1605, by Juan de la Cuesta.
[Footnote 13: The compilation containing these poems is entitled:
"Hystoria y relacio verdadera de la enfermedad felicissimo transito y
sumptuosas exequias funebres de la Serenissima Reyna de España
Isabel de Valoys nuestra Señora", Madrid, 1569. The opening lines of
Cervantes are:
A quien yra mi doloroso canto O en cuya oreja sonara su acento? (To
whom will my sad song go, and in whose ears will its accents sound?) ]
A rather attractive bit of verse, purporting to have been written