University of Virginia Library

AN HONORABLE CALLING

My revelation will in nowise lower this "myriad-minded man" in the just estimation of the world. The mystery of shaving is not only ancient but honorable. In the poet's time it was counted as one of the learned professions, inasmuch as the barber was often called upon to perform the duties of a surgeon, such as bleeding a customer — apart from any accidental slip of the razor — and occasionally extracting a troublesome molar. That Shakespeare was familiar with both these operations may be shown by countless citations from his plays, such as the famous line in "Julius Caesar":

and the following from "Much Ado About Nothing":

Nor does the calling of a barber offer any obstacle to the exercise of the poetic faculty. On the contrary, it may develop and foster the divine afflatus, as witness Jacques Jasmin of Gascony, Folez, the German poet, Burchiello, the Italian sonneteer, and Allan Ramsay, all reputed barbers whose effusions shed a golden glory over the tonsorial gild.

Shakespeare must have spent much of his time in a barber-shop. His plays are so full of allusions to the craft, and his dramatis personae exhibit such familiar knowledge of hair and whiskers, that it is difficult to avoid the thought that the "sweet swan of Avon" learned to shave before he began to sing. As he was not indifferent to those "attributes of awe and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings," it cannot be urged that he would consider barbering beneath his dignity, especially when royalty set the example. Note this passage from "Henry V":

In considering the theory that Shakespeare was a barber, it should be borne in mind that his father was a wool-comber — manifestly a calling closely akin to that of the hair-cutter. Here we have strong circumstantial evidence; for in early times trades commonly descended from sire to son. Perhaps the poet was articled to his father, for he says somewhere:

Among the almost innumerable ways of spelling the poet's name we find "Shaxberd" and "Shakberd," variants possessing peculiar significance in the present discussion. Nothing could be plainer, even to a wayfaring man, that in the unsettled orthography of the period these are simply forms of "Shakebeard" — a descriptive appellation needing no comment. It points as directly to the barber-shop as does "Smith" to the smithy.