"
A more familiar saying is "To beard a person," meaning to affront him,
or to set him at defiance. Todd explains the allusion in a note in his
edition of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_--"did beard affront him to his
face"; so Shakespeare's _King Henry IV._, Part I. Act i.: "I beard thee
to thy face"--Fr. "Faire la Barbe a quelqu'un." Ital. "Fa la barbe ad
uno" (Upton.)
See Steevens's note on the use of the word Beard in _King Henry IV._,
which is adopted, he says, "from romances, and originally signified to
'cut off the beard.'" Mr John Ady Repton, F.S.A., to whom we are mainly
indebted for our illustrations of these popular sayings, directs
attention to a specimen of defiance expressed in Agamemnon's speech to
Achilles, as translated by Chapman:--
--"and so tell thy strength how eminent
My power is, being compared with thine;
all other making feare
To vaunt equality with me, or in this
proud kind beare
Their beards against me."
In Shirley's play, _A Contention for Honour and Riches_, 1633:--
"You have worn a sword thus long to show ye hilt,
Now let the blade appear.
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