“A smale remembrance”: Elizabethan Posy Rings

As an Artistic Fellow working on a novel, I enjoy exploring the personal effects and realia in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s archives. It is immensely satisfying to hold an item owned by someone long ago, and especially useful for the “world building” and character sketching necessary for writing stories. The more personal the object, the better, and the Folger has some inspiring examples, including a small collection of inscribed rings.

During the Elizabethan era, tokens of love and esteem were wildly popular. Posy rings, so called because they were engraved with small verses, became a common ring style in 16th and 17th century England.

Before explaining the posy phenomenon, let’s first settle on the spelling. Or rather, let’s not. The term posy is also written as posie, poesy, posey, poyseye, and a bunch of other ways, which makes finding references to them, in the Folger catalog or elsewhere, a bit tricky. Add to the confusion our 21st century use of the word poesy, meaning the art of writing poems. Nowadays we tend to think separately of poesy as literary craft, and posies as flowers, but for centuries these two terms were closely linked. In her 1931 book English Posies and Posy Rings, author Joan Evans notes the earliest double use of the word posy in 1430 (Evans, xv). At the time, the giving of nosegays—small bunches of flowers—usually included a verse message. Gifts of flowers and words overlapped so often that their meanings intertwined and quickly became synonymous. Nosegays were thus restyled as posies “for the sake of the amatory couplet that was once given with it,” and allusions to posies became common in the Early Modern period (Evans xix). By the 1590s the term was regularly used for epigrams and short expressions of emotion, with or without a bouquet attached, and posy could mean both (and simultaneously) flowers or any sentimental phrase or aphorism.

Though they vary in design and extravagance, the defining feature of a posy ring is an engraved message, usually verse, on the inside—where it touches the wearer’s skin. Up until the Reformation, inscriptions on European jewelry were mostly on brooches, and occasionally on the outside of other objects. In Rings: Symbols of Wealth, Power, and Affection, author Diana Scarisbrick explains that lovey-dovey turns of phrase were less common than religious messages or personal/official mottos. Then during the 16th and 17th centuries, jewelry design and engraving equipment advanced, and more people had expendable income. Soon there were posies everywhere: Evans and Scarisbrick both note they could be found on knives, garters, sundials, handkerchiefs, bracelets, and, most especially on love and marriage rings (Evans xix). Ann of Cleves famously wore a posy ring from Henry VIII, and William of Orange gave Princess Mary a ring with the posy inside “I’le win and wear you if I can” (Evans xxvi).

The rings became a trendy business in Britain and France; in addition to the robust trade of sentimental objects, popular pamphlets and chapbooks were sold offering suggestions for how to best deploy a posy. The Folger has multiple examples of these little books under various amorous titles, such as Cupid’s Cabinet Unlock’t, available online, which lists scores of suggestions for romantic posies.

Posy rings were not just for lovers, however. A ring could be of any design, and could express friendship, grief, religious faith, family connection, marital vows, inside jokes, lustful thoughts, apologies, or any combination of the above.

Sometimes rings were even won in lotteries and carried pithy puns about the contest. The type and quality of one’s jewelry obviously depends on one’s pocketbook, but posy rings were worn widely by people from all walks of life. They could be made of gold, silver, or enamel, depending on one’s budget.

Multiple factors make these items fascinating to an artist or scholar: First and foremost, posy rings are personal, so they tell us a lot about the individuals who wore them. Further, because they were made and sold at various price points, they are not limited to any class or gender. And best of all, posies are secret. The inscription was hidden, so only the giver and wearer knew their significance. In John Lyly’s Euphues, the dedication notes the intimacy of the practice, and that “the posies on your ring are always next to the finger, not to be seen of him that holdeth you by the hand” (quoted in Evans, xix).

Posy rings are mentioned by many writers, including Shakespeare, often with derision for their simplistic sentimentality. In The Merchant of Venice, the plot hinges in part on the exchange of a “hoop of gold,” and Shylock mentions posy rings and their “paltry” words. Hamlet also mocks them during the staging of The Murder of Gonzago when he snaps, “is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?” Perhaps the most famous literary shout-out is in George Herbert’s poem “The Posie.” These works note the sentimentality, and often the triteness, of posies. Such writerly snark surely reveals how common the practice of exchanging them was at the time, and how they were seen as an essential, albeit occasionally cheesy, social custom.

The posies in the Folger vaults may seem identical or mundane at first. All are made of plain gold and contain verses of similar length and style inside, and they are held together in one box, as part of the James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps collection. Most likely all of these examples were wedding bands from the same period. But when we look closer, we realize how unique and special each one is. Some are smaller, thinner, and made of cheaper gold, while others feel much weightier and of higher quality—signifying the variety of people who might have exchanged them.

Each inscription is also deeply personal in its own way. The inscriptions are:

For my research and writing fiction, such tiny differences offer all kinds of opportunities for costuming characters and revealing their defining traits. Above all, the fact that posies were private, a message meant only for the wearer, makes it easy for me to imagine a plethora of juicy plotlines and illicit back stories.

By the 18th century posy rings fell out of fashion, but the practice of interior engraving and heartfelt messages on rings endures. 

Because posies were so varied, below I list some examples, to illustrate the many types and styles. Note that longer verses might have been inscribed on a multi-layered gimmel ring (see image above).