Shakespeare made frequent reference to the gem, sometimes to illustrate the magnificence of wealth and station but more frequently in connection with dew and tears. Oberon says: And that same dew, which some time on the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls. King Richard III. when he argues with Queen Elizabeth for her daughter's hand in marriage, promises with smooth and brazen villainy to so offset the wrongs he had done her, that: The liquid drops of tears that you have shed Shall come again, transformed to orient pearls. In "King John" Elinor speaking to Constance of Arthur, says, "Draw those heaven moving pearls from his poor eyes;" and in "King Lear," one of the gentlemen, speaking of the Queen of France when she received the news he carried, describes her mood thus: Those happy smilets, That played on her ripe lip, seemed not to know What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence, As pearls from diamonds dropp'd. In "Midsummer Night's Dream," Lysander says to Helen: To-morrow night, when Phœbe doth behold Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass. Among his recognitions of pearls as a sign of the luxury of wealth and high position, he makes a lord say, in the "Taming of the Shrew," Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp'd Their harness studded all with gold and pearl. And in "King Henry V," the King while deploring the sorrows incident to kingship, says: 'Tis not The intertissued robe of gold and pearl That beats upon the high shore of this world. These two quotations indicate that the Roman custom of decorating robes and even the harness of horses with pearls was followed in Shakespeare's day by the nobles. A line suggestive of the high-esteem in which the pearl was held in his day, and often quoted, occurs in Othello's grand but heart-broken self-denunciation just before he stabs himself: Of one, whose hand Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe. It is evident also that stories were current then of the western Indian's ignorant prodigality in the disposition of things common to him but very precious among more enlightened people. In "King Richard III," Duke Clarence sees in his dream of drowning, "Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl." Several times the great dramatist puts the gem in somewhat grewsome setting. In "A Sea Dirge" however, the bare horror of the idea which grins at one in similar connections, is transformed by the poetry in which it is draped: These are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.