And in I Henry VI (Act i, sc. 1) we read: 

Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make,
To keep our great Saint George’s feast withal. 
First Folio, “Histories”, p. 97, col.  B, line 97.

We find no trace in Shakespeare’s works of any belief in the many quaint and curious superstitions current in his day regarding the talismanic or curative virtues of precious stones.  This is quite in keeping with the thoroughly sane outlook upon life that constituted the strong foundation of his incomparable mind.  Not but that, like every true poet, the sense of mystery, and even the vague impression of the existence of occult powers, of the “Unknowable” in Nature, was strongly developed, but this is always in a broad and earnest spirit, far removed from all petty superstition.

Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, sacrificed her heart and diamond jewel, as a symbol of her sorrow and her love, when a tempest beat back the ship that was bearing her from the continent to the English coast.  Her act, as described in the following verses, seems almost an attempt to propitiate the storm (II Henry VI, Act iii, sc. 2): 

      When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,
      I stood upon the hatches in the storm,
      And when the dusky sky began to rob
      My earnest-gaping sight of thy land’s view,
      I took a costly jewel from my neck,
      A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,
      And threw it towards thy land:  the sea received it,
      And so I wish’d thy body might my heart. 
        First Folio, “Histories”, p. 134, col.  A, lines 41-48.

The idea of the sacredness of a ring as a love-token is voiced by Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice where she says (Act v, sc. 1): 

I gave my love a ring and made him swear
Never to part with it; and here he stands;
I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth
That the world masters. 

      First Folio, “Comedies”, p. 183, col.  B, lines 12-16.

The nearest approach to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in “A Lover’s Complaint”, lines 204-217.  Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give the entire passage here consecutively: 

And, lo, behold these talents of their hair,
With twisted metal amorously impleach’d,
I have received from many a several fair,
Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech’d
With the annexions of fair gems enrich’d,
And deep-brain’d sonnets that did amplify
Each stone’s dear nature, worth and quality. 
The diamond,—­why, ’twas beautiful and hard,
Whereto his invised[8] properties did tend;
The deep-green emerald, 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 blazon’d, smiled or made some moan.