beard, an allusion
to which is made by Touchstone in "As You Like It" (i. 2): "stroke your
chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave."

We may also compare what Nestor says in "Troilus and Cressida" (iv. 5):

"By this white beard, I'd fight with thee to-morrow."

Our ancestors paid great attention to the shape of their beards, certain
cuts being appropriated to certain professions and ranks. In "Henry V."
(iii. 6), Gower speaks of "a beard of the general's cut." As Mr.
Staunton remarks, "Not the least odd among the fantastic fashions of our
forefathers was the custom of distinguishing certain professions and
classes by the cut of the beard; thus we hear, _inter alia_, of the
bishop's beard, the judge's beard, the soldier's beard, the citizen's
beard, and even the clown's beard." Randle Holme tells us, "The broad or
cathedral beard [is] so-called because bishops or gown-men of the church
anciently did wear such beards." By the military man, the cut adopted
was known as the stiletto or spade. The beard of the citizen was usually
worn round, as Mrs. Quickly describes it in "Merry Wives of Windsor"
(i. 4), "like a glover's paring-knife." The clown's beard was left bushy
or untrimmed. Malone quotes from an old ballad entitled "Le Prince d'
Amour," 1660:

"Next the clown doth out-rush
With the beard of the bush."

According to an old superstition, much hair on the head has been
supposed to indicate an absence of intellect, a notion referred to by
Antipholus of Syracuse, in the "Comedy of Errors" (ii. 2): "there's many
a man hath more hair than wit." In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (iii.
1), the same proverbial sentence is mentioned by Speed. Malone quotes
the following lines upon Suckling's "Aglaura," as an illustration of
this saying:[916]

"This great voluminous pamphlet may be said
To be like one that hath more hair than head;
More excrement than body: trees which sprout
With broadest leaves have still the smallest fruit."

[916] "Parnassus Biceps," 1656.

Steevens gives an example from "Florio:" "A tisty-tosty wag-feather,
more haire than wit."

Excessive fear has been said to cause the hair to stand on end: an
instance of which Shakespeare records in "Hamlet" (iii. 4), in that
celebrated passage where the Queen, being at a loss to understand her
son's strange appearance during his conversation with the Ghost, which
is invisible to her, says:

"And, as the sleepi