e like a museum than an
establishment for conducting business. We get a word picture of a
barber's shop in Greene's "Quip for an Upstart Courtier," published in
1592. It is related that the courtier sat down in the throne of a chair,
and the barber, after saluting him with a low bow, would thus address
him: "Sir, will you have your worship's hair cut after the Italian
manner, short and round, and then frounst with the curling irons to make
it look like a half-moon in a mist; or like a Spaniard, long at the ears
and curled like to the two ends of an old cast periwig; or will you be
Frenchified with a love-lock down to your shoulders, whereon you may
wear your mistress's favour? The English cut is base, and gentlemen
scorn it; novelty is dainty. Speak the word, sir, my scissors are ready
to execute your worship's will." A couple of hours were spent in combing
and dressing the ambrosial locks of the young Apollo; then the barber's
basin was washed with camphor soap. At last the beard is reached, and
with another congee the barber asks if his worship would wish it to be
shaven; "whether he would have his peak cut short and sharp, and amiable
like an inamorato, or broad pendent like a spade, to be amorous as a
lover or terrible as a warrior and soldado; whether he will have his
crates cut low like a juniper bush, or his subercles taken away with a
razor; if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primed, or his
moustachios fostered to turn about his ears like vine tendrils, fierce
and curling, or cut down to the lip with the Italian lash?--and with
every question a snip of the scissors and a bow." If a poor man entered
the shop he was polled for twopence, and was soon trimmed around like a
cheese, and dismissed with scarce a "God speed you."

The Puritans looked askance at the fashions introduced by the barbers.
No wonder when the talk in the shop was about the French cut, the
Spanish cut, the Dutch and the Italian mode; the bravado fashion, and
the mean style. In addition to these were the gentleman's cut, the
common cut, the Court cut, and county cut. "And," wrote Stubbes with
indignation, "they have other kinds of cuts innumerable, and, therefore,
when you come to be trimmed they will ask you whether you will be cut to
look terrible to your enemy, or amiable to your friend; grim and stern
in countenance, or pleasant and demure; for they have diverse kinds of
cuts for all these purposes, or else they lie! Then when they h