University of Virginia Library

TONSORIAL PHRASES IN THE PLAYS

Although — perhaps owing to the great dramatist's personal modesty — no barbers appear in the throng of people who crowd Shakespeare's stage, there is no lack of the lingo of that profession. Kings and queens, lords and ladies, knights, fools, and country louts all use tonsorial phrases with an ease and gusto attainable only through expert knowledge.

"Did I not pluck thee by the nose?" says Lucio — a familiarity common to the fraternity at the present day. In "Coriolanus," Marcius exclaims with professional yearning, "Oh, let me clip ye" — whereat one is reminded of Petruchio's "Here's snip and nip and cut and slit and slash."

"Comb down his hair," suggests Cardinal Beaufort, and Antonio, of "The Tempest," longs for the day when newborn chins be rough and razorable." The gay gallant in Shakespeare's time, "trimmed like a younker," went "prancing to his love, while his chin, new-reaped, showed like a stubble-field at harvest home."

There must have been shampooing in Shakespeare's shop. To prove it, there is Iago's boast:

Hamlet's "Aye, there's the rub," expressed his satisfaction in the soothing process. As the barber hastened his knotted and combined locks to part, mayhap he fell asleep, "perchance to dream," under the soporific touch of nimble digits. Yet even in a simple shampoo the poet points a moral, as when he makes the poor Queen in "Richard III" say:

It is generally believed that singeing the ends of the hair or beard, to stimulate growth, is a modern invention; yet this seems to have been a common practise

in Shakespeare's shop. Hamlet tried it, for he speaks of "singeing his pate," and Lear exclaims:

On one occasion, at least, the operation met with a disastrous ending; in the "Comedy of Errors" mention is made of one "whose beard they have singed off."