Andrew Sicree
Joined: 24 May 2008
Posts: 4
Location: Boalsburg, Pennsylvania
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 Posted: Jan 16, 2011 19:05 Post subject: Minerals in Shakespeare - Comments Welcome |
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This is the text of a recent article I wrote for Popular Mineralogy. It is a particularly difficult topic to cover because of wide range of Shakespeare's plays and poems. If anyone would like to comment on it, or suggest additions, please do so...
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Minerals in Shakespeare
Crystals may be such stuff as dreams are made of, but Shakespeare, tho’ greatest of bards, was no mineralist. Kings and princes boldly march across the globe on Shakespeare’s stage and his work doth teemth with allusions to characters ancient and mythic. And tho’ he includeth many a passing remark about plants and the animals – birds, reptiles, and insects – only a few bits of the underfoot world of rock and mineral are found in Shakespeare’s plays. In nature, most of these are lapidary.
The Meaning of Mineral
The Elizabethan world in which Shakespeare wrote had a more flexible, but less clear concept of the mineral. Natural history “cabinets” found homes in the mansions of the wealthy and they might house true minerals as well as rocks, fossils, cut stones, “freaks of nature” (which might include natural stones that looked like something – a man’s face, for instance), and a plethora of biological specimens. Shakespeare uses two different senses of the word “mineral” with meanings that the modern reader might not now readily grasp.
For instance, in Hamlet, Queen Gertrude states that Hamlet’s madness is pure, “like some ore Among a mineral of metals base….” (Hamlet, IV, i, 25) because he weeps after killing Polonius. Here Shakespeare uses “mineral” to indicate a mine and “ore” to mean gold. Base metals are those that oxidize readily, as opposed to the noble metals (like gold and silver) that do not rust. Iron, nickel, lead, copper, and zinc are the common base metals. Thus, Queen Gertrude’s line might be better understood as “like some gold found in a lead mine….”
Alternative meanings of “mineral” occur in Othello, The Moor of Venice. Upon finding that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello, Barbantio accuses the Moor of having “Abus’d her delicate Youth, with Drugs or Minerals, That weakens Motion” (Othello, I, ii, 91-92). Here Shakespeare uses “Mineral” to mean some type of drug that, given to Desdemona, has impaired her mental faculties, clouding her judgement and weakening her resistance to Othello’s advances.
A “Mineral” might also be a poison; mineral poisons were thought to corrode their victim’s guts. We hear the word used in this fashion when, later in the play, Iago describes his own envy of Othello as a corrosive “The thought whereof, Doth (like a poysonous Minerall) gnaw my Inwardes” (II, i, 329-330).
The Perfect Chrysolite
One mineral about which Shakespeare talks most specifically is the “Perfect chrysolite” cited in Othello, but it is unfortunately unclear to exactly which gemstone he is referring. The chrysolite (meaning “gold stone”) of the ancient Greeks and Romans may have been our modern-day topaz, while the topaz of the ancient Greco-Roman world was probably our modern-day chrysolite (a variety of olivine or peridot, a green stone, sometimes with a yellow tint). Although Othello was first performed before 1605, the first folio edition of the play was published in 1622. Thus, Shakespeare could have known about a “chrysolite” mentioned by Simon Maiolus in his Dierum Caniculares (1615-1619) which mentions an earlier work, De Sculpturiis, by Thetel the Jew, in which a “chrysolite” in the form of a woman is described as being a potent charm against fascination. Whether that particular stone was in reality an olivine or a topaz or some other mineral remains unclear. But Shakespeare may well have been alluding to Thetel’s stone when he has Othello, speaking of Desdemona’s purported unfaithfulness, claim that “had she been true, If heaven would make me another world, Of one entire and Perfect chrysolite, I’d not have sold her for it.” (Othello, V, ii)
Of Agates and Men
Agates make their appearance in several Shakespeare plays. In Romeo and Juliet (I, iv), Mercutio speaks of an “Agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman.” In Henry IV Part 1, (II, iv, 70), Prince Henry mentions an “agate-ring” meaning a ring set with an agate, looking expensive, but in reality cheap. He employs it as a derogatory term.
In the 1600s, it was fashionable to wear agates, which were carved into human form and set in gold or silver. Typically, they were worn stuck into one’s cap. Shakespeare mentions this fashion in Henry IV Part 2 (I, ii), when Falstaff derides his Page for his stiff and stony service proclaiming that the page was “fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now…”
The Carbuncle
Believed to glow with its own light, the “carbuncle” gets passing mention in several plays. Allusions are made to its self-illumination in Titus Andronicus (II, iii) and Henry VIII (II, iii). This glinting gemstone is specifically mentioned in Hamlet (II, ii) when Hamlet describes the sack of Troy during which “With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus, Old grandsire Priam seeks.” If we understand that “carbuncle” applies to any cabochon-cut red gemstone, we see in Shakespeare’s lines the Greek warrior Pyrrhus as a frenzied, possessed fanatic with red eyes glowing in the flames of burning Troy, seeking out the elderly Trojan King Priam and slaying him in cold blood.
Turquoise
The turquoise, or turkey-stone, was valued particularly because of its supposed talismanic properties, including its supposed ability to brighten or pale depending upon whether the health of the wearer was good or poor. It also had the virtue of keeping peace between a husband and wife. In The Merchant of Venice, (III, i), Shylock mentions that “It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor; and I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.”
Sea-coal
Mistress Quickly, in Henry IV, Part 2 (II, i), reminds Falstaff of “sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire….” The English used “sea coal” to distinguish true coal from charcoal; it was also used for high-grade coal brought by ship from across the sea – which would be worthwhile only for very high quality coal. In Scotland, sea coal indicates coal gathered along the beaches of the Firth of Forth. Coal beds extend out under the seabed and, upon being eroded by wave action, fragments of coal are continuously washed up on the beaches. Locals gather this coal which burns excellently and leaves little ash residue. Which of these three meanings of “sea coal” Shakespeare intended remains unclear.
Of the Stones
A variety of stones and metals make their appearance in the plays. Some are simple and common, such as the whetstone, used to sharpen a sword, mentioned in Macbeth (IV, iii). The “London-stone” is mentioned in Henry VI, Part 2 (IV, vi). Originally set up by the Romans, the London-stone was used as a reference point for distance measurements. (It is now built into the wall of St. Swithin’s Church in London.)
References are made to gemstones such as in Richard III (I, iv) where Clarence talks of a nightmare in which he saw “Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea.” Later in the same play, Richmond calls Richard “Abase foul stone, made precious by the foil Of England's chair, where he is falsely set” (Richard III, V, iii).
Gemstones are likewise mentioned in Shakespeare’s poetry. For example, in Lover’s Complaint, he speaks of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and opals, saying
"The diamond?-why, 'twas beautiful and hard,
Whereto his invised properties did tend;
The deep-green em'rald, in whose fresh regard
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;
The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend
With objects manifold: each several stone,
With wit well blazoned,
smiled or made some moan.”
Other references to stones are more hypothetical. In All’s Well That Ends Well, Lafew tells the King of France that Helena, the heroine, has a medicine “That's able to breathe life into a stone, Quicken a rock” (II, i, 72). The fabled Philosopher’s Stone is alluded to in All’s Well That Ends Well (V, iii) and other plays. Prince Arviragus in Cymbeline (IV, ii) speaks of the “all-dreaded thunder-stone,” the fall of which was thought to accompany lightning and thunder. Whether the “thunder-stone” meant a hailstone (hail-storms often are accompanied by thunder) or a fulgurite (sand or soil fused into a glass by the heat of a lightning strike) or some other phenomenon is uncertain.
Geology in the Age of Shakespeare
If any character in Shakespeare could be said to have geological intentions it is Hotspur in Henry IV. First, he speaks of “villanous salt-petre….digged out of the bowels of the harmless earth…” in Henry IV, Part 1 (I, iii). And then when Owen Glendower cites an earthquake as proof of his supernatural exceptionality claiming that “at my birth the frame and huge foundation of the earth shaked like a coward,” Hotspur ripostes with a more natural, if somewhat anthropomorphic explanation for the earthquake, saying
“O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam earth and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth
Our grandam earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook”
As a young man, Shakespeare (born in 1564) undoubtedly experienced the earthquake of April 6th, 1580, which was felt throughout England. This experience may be responsible for the quakes mentioned in several of his plays, including As You Like It (III, ii), Romeo and Juliet (I, iii), and Macbeth‘s “the earth feverous” (II, iii).
If Hotspur is a geologist, Henry Bolingbroke (King Henry IV), on the other hand, laments his own inability to understand the geological world, saying “O God! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times, Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea!” Henry IV, Part 2 (III, i).
Some mineralogically-sounding terms in the plays of Shakespeare are most decidedly not mineralogical. The carbonado is an unusual black form of diamond, but Shakespeare uses the word as a verb, a cooking term, meaning “to slice and score for broiling.” The verb is used as a threat in King Lear (ii, 2): “I'll so carbonado your shanks,” or as an insult in All’s Well That Ends Well (iv, 5): “it is your carbonadoed face,” and appears in Henry IV, Part I (v, 3), and Coriolanus (iv, 5) as well.
The advent of modern science swept away many of the more fabulous and colorful beliefs about gems, minerals, and rocks that abounded during the Elizabethan era, but Shakespeare’s works, although limited in their mineralogical references, preserve for us a taste of the mix of fable and fact that surrounded minerals in those bygone days.
Refs.: T. F. Thiselton Dyer, Folklore of Shakespeare, 1883 (Kessinger Publishing, 2004); A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, VI, Othello, ed. by H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1886).
©2010, Andrew A. Sicree, Ph.D.
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Dr. Andrew A. Sicree is a professional mineralogist and geochemist residing in Boalsburg, PA. This article first appeared in Popular Mineralogy newsletter supplements and may not be copied in part or full without express permission of Andrew Sicree. Popular Mineralogy newsletter supplements are available on a subscription basis to help mineral clubs produce better newsletters. Write to Andrew A. Sicree, Ph.D., P. O. Box 10664, State College PA 16805, call (814) 867-6263 or email sicree AT verizon DOT net for more info.
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Andrew A. Sicree
Ph.D., Mineralogy and Geochemistry (Penn State)
Editor, Popular Mineralogy
P. O. Box 10664, State College PA 16805
(814) 867-6263 email = sicree (AT) verizon (DOT) net
Consultant: Mineral Education / Demos / Collections / Exhibits |
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