Footnote 32:
Lilly in one of his Dramas makes a Barber say to his customer, “How,
sir, will you be trimmed? Will you have a Beard like a spade or a
bodkin? A penthouse on your upper lip or an ally on your chin? Your
moustaches sharp at the ends like shoemaker’s awls, or hanging down to
your mouth like goat’s flakes?”
In the reign of James the 1st, Beards continued in fashion, and I
extract two out of many passages from Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays; the
first being, not excepting even that of Butler’s Hudibras, the most
humourous description of a Beard in the language. A banished prince in
disguise, having been elected “King of the Beggars” on account of his
Beard; Higgen the Orator of the Troop proceeds in this fashion:—
“I then presaged thou shortly wouldst be king,
And now thou art so. But what need presage
To us, that might have read it in thy Beard,
As well as he that chose thee! By the Beard
Thou wert found out and marked for sovereignty.
O happy Beard! but happier Prince, whose Beard
Was so remarked as marked out our Prince
Not bating us a hair. Long may it grow,
And thick and fair, that who lives under it
May live as safe as under Beggar’s Bush,
Of which _it_ is the thing—_that_ but the type.
This is the Beard—the bush—or bushy Beard,
Under whose gold and silver reign ’twas said,
So many ages since, we all should smile!
No impositions, taxes, grievances,
Knots in a state, and whips unto a subject,
Lie lurking in this Beard, but all combed out.”