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Betrothal and Wedding Rings: Bassanio

Graceful mistresse, our nuptiall day holds.' • With happy constancye a wished day.' In the 'Merchant of Venice' Bassanio and Gratiano give the rings received from Portia and Nerissa to the young doctor and his clerk, after the discomfiture of Shylock, although Portia had said :- This house, these servants, and this same myself, Are yours, my lord; I give them with this ring:

Which, when you part from, lose, or give away, Let it presage the ruin of your love, And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

Bassanio answers :- When this ring Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence; O, then be bold to say, Bassanio's dead.

Solemn betrothal was sometimes adopted by lovers, who were about to separate for long periods. Thus Chaucer, in 'Troilus and Cressida,' describes the heroine as giving her lover a ring, and receiving one from him in return :- Soon after this they spake of sundry things, As fell to purpose of this aventure, And, playing, interchangeden their rings, Of which I cannot tellen no scripture.

Shakspeare has more than one allusion to this custom, which is absolutely enacted in the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' when Julia gives Proteus a ring, saying: 'Keep you this remembrance for thy Julia's sake,' and he replies: 'Why, then we'll make exchange :-here, take you this.' A ritual of Bordeaux (1596) gives a form of betrothal by public ceremony, when rings were interchanged. Kleist, in his 'Kate of Heilbron,' makes Frederick say :- To tally close, As joints of rings dissever'd, Half of broken betrothal ring. alluding to the custom sometimes practised by lovers, among the common people, plighting a faith, when a ring is broken in two, one half of which was kept by each party, that if from time to time, or at the day of marriage, the two pieces agree with each other, proof may be thus afforded that they have not been transferred, and consequently that both bride and bridegroom remain still of the same mind; otherwise, the engagement is annulled.

A ring of pure gold she from her finger took, And just in the middle the same then she broke; Quoth she: 'As a token of love you this take, And this, as a pledge, I will keep for your sake.' ('Exeter Garland.') De Laet, writing in 1647, states that he remembers when it was the custom (and an ancient one) for the gentleman to present the lady on their betrothal with two rings, the one set with a diamond, the other with a ruby tablecut. This gift went by the French name 'Mariage.' Among the Germans at the present day the interchange of rings is practised at the publication of the banns among the Lutherans; the minister joins the hands of the couple, and rings are interchanged. 'The Italians,' observes Mr. Wood, 'in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries used betrothing rings, which were generally made of silver, inlaid with niello. The bezel was either oval or circular, and the shoulders of the hoop were shaped so as to form sleeves, from each of which issued a right hand. The hands were clasped together in the Fede. Some of these rings were of a large size, and were worn by men. The diamond was long esteemed by the mediæval Italians as the favourite stone for setting in espousal rings, and it was called " pietra della reconciliazione," from its supposed power to maintain concord between man and wife.' It was also usual, at the periods mentioned, for the Italian ladies to give their lovers rings which contained their portraits. Lovers wore these rings on holidays, as was the practice in England, as we find in 'England's Helicon' (1600) :- My songs they be of Cinthia's prayse, I weare her rings on holly-dayes.

When a noble Venetian married in the seventeenth century, a day was appointed for giving the bride a ring, and the ceremony was performed in her house, in the presence of relations and friends. The ring-giving was followed by the usual sacrament in church. In modern Greece, two rings, one of gold and the other of silver, are interchanged at the betrothal, which takes place as follows:-The priest, remaining in the sacrarium, delivers to the persons to be betrothed, and who are standing without the sacred doors, lighted candles into the hands of each, and then returns with them into the body of the church. Here, after prayers have been said, two rings are brought out, of gold and silver respectively, which had previously been placed upon the altar to be dedicated and consecrated, and the priest gives the gold ring to the man, and the silver ring to the woman, repeating three times this form of words: 'The servant of God, M., espouses the handmaid of God, N., in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, now and ever, and to endless ages, Amen.' After a threefold repetition of the same words to the woman, the rings are put on the right-hand finger, and are taken off, and interchanged by the bridegroom's man, both in order that the woman may not take too deeply to heart her inferiority, which the less costly material of the ring seems to hint at, as also to confirm the mutual right and possession of property, either present or future.