" An old play by Lyly, entitled _Mother
Bombie_ (1597-98), Act i. sc. 3, contains the following passage:--
"Tush, spit not you, and I'll warrant I, my beard is as good as a
handkerchief."
Our quotations from old plays are mainly drawn from Repton's little
book, "Some account of the Beard and Moustachio," of which one hundred
copies were printed for private circulation in 1839.
The extracts which we have reproduced are not such as to cause the beard
to find favour with the ladies. In Marston's _Antonio and Melida_,
(1602), Act v., we read as follows:--
"PIERO.--Faith, mad niece, I wonder when thou wilt marry?
"ROSSALINE.--Faith, kind Uncle, when men abandon jealousy,
forsake taking tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long.
Oh! to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of
furze on the ridge of his chin, ready still to flop into his foaming
chaps; ah! 't is more than most intolerable."
In another part of the same play are other objections to the mustachios.
We find in other old plays allusions to women combing and stroking
beards.
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