Dyeing the Hair.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 88, 7 February 1885, Page 5

Dyeing the Hair.

The lady of Queen Elizabeth's time was an extremely complex affair and artificial to the last degree -sq the •" Leisure Hour " says. Few people of fashion,in those days possessed the moral courage of Benedick, who declared that his wife's '' hair shall be of what colour it please God." Red, ,yellow and black dyes were in common use, the first, perhaps, in compliments to the Queen, whose natural hair, seldom seen, was reddish in hue. She herself possessed 80 wigs of various colours. The demand for hair was so large that chil dren were often allured into corners and sheared ; even the sanctity of the grave was not respected, and the dead were robbed of their hair to adorn living heads. This fashion of dyeing the hair was by no means confined to women ; men commonly dyed their beards. Thus Bottom, when about to personate that "most lovely gentleman-like man," Pyramus, asks, " What beard were I best to play it in ?" and he conclud?s to do so in "Either your straw-coloured beari, your orange tawny beard, your purple in grain beard, or your French crown colour beard, your perfect yellow." He .does not inform us what shape he would select, but. they were many and various. Some were — Out and pruned like to a quiok-set hedge. Some were rounded and more peaked. The calling of a person might often be ascertained by the cut of his beard. Military men and gallants wore it in spade, stiletto, or dagger form 5 judges, justices, and grave men wore theira in " formal cut j" while a rough bushy beard was tolerably indicative of a country clown -or at least of a very common man. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign the members of Lincoln's Inn were restricted by Act of Parliament to beards of a fortnight's growth, but this ridiculous law was repealed the following year.