Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers by W. A. Clouston
page 319 of 355 (89%)
page 319 of 355 (89%)
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Butchell's first wife--for the bearded empiric married again--and the
"mummy," in its original glass case, is still to be seen in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeon's, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, London. It was once the fashion for gallants to dye their beards various colours, such as yellow, red, gray, and even green. Thus in the play of _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Bottom the weaver asks in what kind of beard he is to play the part of Pyramis--whether "in your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow?" (Act i, sc. 2.) In ancient church pictures, and in the miracle plays performed in medieval times, both Cain and Judas Iscariot were always represented with yellow beards. In the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Mistress Quickly asks Simple whether his master (Slender) does not wear "a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife," to which he replies: "No, forsooth; he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard--a Cain-coloured beard" (Act i, sc. 4).--Allusions to beards are of very frequent occurrence in Shakspeare's plays, as may be seen by reference to any good Concordance, such as that of the Cowden Clarkes. Harrison, in his _Description of England_, ed. 1586, p. 172, thus refers to the vagaries of fashion of beards in his time: "I will saie nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like womans lockes, manie times cut off, above or under the eares, round as by a woodden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a _pique de vant_ (O fine fashion!), or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors. And therfore if |
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