posted 04-01-2005 03:01 PM            

This was a rather ironic encounter. A few of you out there know why.

Measuring about 2 5/16 by 1 1/4 inches, it is marked only "sterling pat'd" and has a few numbers marked here and there. The applied medallions have a border of stylized leaves or scrolls. One of these contains a brief quote, "'Your heart's desires be with you.' As You Like It, 1-2' ". The other is a somewhat crude portrait medallion of the Bard himself, beneath it is written "SHAKSPEARE" (the typo is intentional, just the way it reads beneath the portrait). Between these two sterling covers are six cards, of a bone or ivory-like material, each marked at the bottom with a day of the week. Sunday is omitted. These cards have a particular grain of slightly lighter and darker striations.

posted 04-01-2005 03:48 PM            

In any event it appears to be some kind of date/appointment book for a fashionable person to keep track of whom they needed to see and what they needed to do for the week. Likely they would have written in it with a pencil which could be easily cleaned off when they needed to plan the coming week. I should imagine that a Sunday card would have been helpful - not only for noting the time of the church service, but more importantly for the Sunday afternoon in the park picnics and such.

I think there is some partial expansion on the meaning of the incribed verse and the use of the object if you read the lines said immediately before it:

Orlando: I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts, wherein I confess me much guilty, to deny so fair and excellent ladies anything. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial: wherein if I be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.

Rosalind: The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.

Celia: And mine, to eke out hers.

Rosalind: Fare you well. Pray heaven I be deceived in you!

posted 04-02-2005 03:16 AM            

Maybe it is excluded for religious reasons.

If you do a search on ivory dance card on Google, you'll turn up some more information.

- rat

posted 04-02-2005 01:13 PM            

Anyway, Kimo, you see that this item, if not exactly intended for use by a lady to keep track of her suitors, certainly derives its inspiration from similar objects that were so intended. With that in mind, some lines before the excerpt you posted above from the play, Rosalind and Celia are speaking to each other alone:

quote:

---

CELIA
[...] therefore, my
sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.

ROSALIND
From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let
me see; what think you of falling in love?

CELIA
Marry, I prithee, do, to make sport withal: but
love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport
neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst
in honour come off again.

---