And further on he says (v. 5):
“The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in’t.”
In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) it is referred to by Suffolk as a sign of madness:
“My hair be fix’d on end, as one distract.”
And, once more, in “Richard III.” (i. 3), Hastings declares:
“My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.”
Another popular notion mentioned by Shakespeare is, that sudden fright or great sorrow will cause the hair to turn white. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), Falstaff, in his speech to Prince Henry, tells him: “thy father’s beard is turned white with the news.”
Among the many instances recorded to establish the truth of this idea, it is said that the hair and beard of the Duke of Brunswick whitened in twenty-four hours upon his hearing that his father had been mortally wounded in the battle of Auerstadt. Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate queen of Louis XVI., found her hair suddenly changed by her troubles; and a similar change happened to Charles I., when he attempted to escape from Carisbrooke Castle. Mr. Timbs, in his “Doctors and Patients” (1876, p. 201), says that “chemists have discovered that hair contains an oil, a mucous substance, iron, oxide of manganese, phosphate and carbonate of iron, flint, and a large proportion of sulphur. White hair contains also phosphate of magnesia, and its oil is nearly colourless. When hair becomes suddenly white from terror, it is probably owing to the sulphur absorbing the oil, as in the operation of whitening woollen cloths.”
Hair was formerly used metaphorically for the color, complexion, or nature of a thing. In “1 Henry IV.” (iv. 1), Worcester says:
“I would your father had been here,
The quality and hair of our attempt
Brooks no division.”