In truth this is well enough as far as it runs and for one suit of clothing; but this was by no means a universal dress, nor was it a universal beard. Indeed beards were fearfully and wonderfully varied.
That humorous old rhymester, Taylor, the “Water Poet,” may be quoted at length on the vanity thus:—
“And Some, to set their Love’s-Desire on Edge
Are cut and prun’d, like to a Quickset Hedge.
Some like a Spade, some like a Forke, some square,
Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some starke bare;
Some sharpe, Stilletto-fashion, Dagger-like,
That may with Whispering a Man’s Eyes unpike;
Some with the Hammer-cut, or Roman T.
Their Beards extravagant, reform’d must be.
Some with the Quadrate, some Triangle fashion;
Some circular, some ovall in translation;
Some Perpendicular in Longitude,
Some like a Thicket for their Crassitude,
That Heights, Depths, Breadths, Triform, Square, Ovall, Round
And Rules Geometrical in Beards are found.”
Taylor’s own beard was screw-shaped. I fancy he invented it.
The Anglo-Saxon beard was parted, and this double form remained for a long time. Sometimes there were two twists or two long forks.
A curious pointed beard, a beard in two curls, is shown [here], on James Douglas, Earl of Morton. A still more strangely kept one, pointed in the middle of the chin, and kept in two rolls which roll toward the front, is upon the aged herald, [here].
Richard II had a mean beard,—two little tufts on the chin known as “the mouse-eaten beard, here a tuft, there a tuft.” The round beard “like a half a Holland cheese” is always seen in the depictions of Falstaff; “a great round beard” we know he had. This was easily trimmed, but others took so much time and attention that pasteboard boxes were made to tie over them at night, that they might be unrumpled in the morning.
The Herald Vandum.