Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Beards are a big deal in Hamlet. The topic of beards and the use of the word “beard” appear frequently in the text, as both a noun and a verb. Turns out, beards were an issue of importance in sixteenth century England. It was a loaded term with a variety of definitions. The word was used a noun to mean the facial hair that grows on men’s faces as well as age, experience, virility, and masculinity – “the noun beard was employed in contemporary colloquialisms to stand in for those abstractions.”
As a verb, beard meant to defy, affront, openly oppose OR to remove or shave. Beard is used as a verb in Act II, scene 2, when Hamlet says “com’st thou to beard me in Denmark.” The issue of being bearded in Denmark is of great significance to Hamlet. Claudius “bearded” King Hamlet from the throne and Hamlet is addressing the troupe of actors who will help him “beard” his uncle. Caught up in the term is not only political meaning, but sexual meaning as well, since bearding someone was essentially undoing their male status. Dr. Mark Albert Johnson summarizes, “Hamlet’s quibbling throughout the scene illustrates the nexus of political, sexual, and economic value carried by the beard, underscoring the extent to which those values and the status they materialize can be done or undone by bearding…Particularly in its pejorative transitive sense, bearding reveals how beards not only materialized manhood but also thereby exposed it to potential diminution, fragmentation, and eradication: beards and manhood, in this light, can be both done and undone.” Interestingly, at the time, the phrase “bearding” became synonymous with beheading.
Also of interest, men routinely swore by their beards. “Despite the suspicion with which sacred objects were regarded in post-Reformation England, the proverbial quality of English beard oaths suggests that facial hair was widely reputed to possess inherent spiritual and religious value and an innate ability to accurately reflect the state of the soul.”
Most of the info here I got from Beard Fetish in Early Modern England: Sex, Gender, and Registers of Value by Dr. Mark Albert Johnston
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Beards are a big deal in Hamlet. The topic of beards and the use of the word “beard” appear frequently in the text, as both a noun and a verb. Turns out, beards were an issue of importance in sixteenth century England. It was a loaded term with a variety of definitions. The word was used a noun to mean the facial hair that grows on men’s faces as well as age, experience, virility, and masculinity – “the noun beard was employed in contemporary colloquialisms to stand in for those abstractions.”
As a verb, beard meant to defy, affront, openly oppose OR to remove or shave. Beard is used as a verb in Act II, scene 2, when Hamlet says “com’st thou to beard me in Denmark.” The issue of being bearded in Denmark is of great significance to Hamlet. Claudius “bearded” King Hamlet from the throne and Hamlet is addressing the troupe of actors who will help him “beard” his uncle. Caught up in the term is not only political meaning, but sexual meaning as well, since bearding someone was essentially undoing their male status. Dr. Mark Albert Johnson summarizes, “Hamlet’s quibbling throughout the scene illustrates the nexus of political, sexual, and economic value carried by the beard, underscoring the extent to which those values and the status they materialize can be done or undone by bearding…Particularly in its pejorative transitive sense, bearding reveals how beards not only materialized manhood but also thereby exposed it to potential diminution, fragmentation, and eradication: beards and manhood, in this light, can be both done and undone.” Interestingly, at the time, the phrase “bearding” became synonymous with beheading.
Also of interest, men routinely swore by their beards. “Despite the suspicion with which sacred objects were regarded in post-Reformation England, the proverbial quality of English beard oaths suggests that facial hair was widely reputed to possess inherent spiritual and religious value and an innate ability to accurately reflect the state of the soul.”
Most of the info here I got from Beard Fetish in Early Modern England: Sex, Gender, and Registers of Value by Dr. Mark Albert Johnston