h contempt. It has been conjectured, too, that the odium
took its rise from the aversion to the red-haired Danes. In "As You Like
It" (iii. 4), Rosalind, when speaking of Orlando, refers to this
notion:[913] "His very hair is of the dissembling colour," whereupon
Celia replies: "Something browner than Judas's."

[913] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 127; Dyce's
"Glossary," pp. 61, 230.

Yellow hair, too, was in years gone by regarded with ill-favor, and
esteemed a deformity. In ancient pictures and tapestries both Cain and
Judas are represented with yellow beards, in allusion to which Simple,
in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4), when interrogated, says of his
master: "He hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard--a
Cain-coloured beard."[914]

[914] The quartos of 1602 read "a kane-coloured beard."

In speaking of beards, it may be noted that formerly they gave rise to
various customs. Thus, in Shakespeare's day, dyeing beards was a
fashionable custom, and so Bottom, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (i.
2), is perplexed as to what beard he should wear when acting before the
duke. He says: "I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard,
your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your
French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow."[915]

[915] See Jaques's Description of the Seven Ages in "As You
Like It," (ii. 6).

To mutilate a beard in any way was considered an irreparable outrage, a
practice to which Hamlet refers (ii. 2):

"Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?"

And in "King Lear" (iii. 7), Gloster exclaims:

"By the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done
To pluck me by the beard."

Stroking the beard before a person spoke was preparatory to favor. Hence
in "Troilus and Cressida" (i. 3), Ulysses, when describing how Achilles
asks Patroclus to imitate certain of their chiefs, represents him as
saying:

"'Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being drest to some oration.'"

Again, the phrase "to beard" meant to oppose face to face in a hostile
manner. Thus, in "1 Henry IV." (iv. 1), Douglas declares:

"No man so potent breathes upon the ground,
But I will beard him."

And in "1 Henry VI." (i. 3), the Bishop of Winchester says to Gloster:

"Do what thou dar'st; I'll beard thee to thy face."

It seems also to have been customary to swear by the