Beards

No berd hadde he, ne nevere sholde have, As smothe it was as it were late y-shave; I trowe he were a gelding or a mare.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

There, Chaucer was describing the Pardoner, one of the Pilgrims to Canterbury. He refers to the characters' lack of facial hair, comparing him to either a horse that has been castrated, or a female.

Beards have commonly been seen as a sign of virility. Hercules is often depicted as bearded, whilst pretty much the whole Canon of Norse Gods sported vigorous efforts.

For Romans (variously adopting or rejecting the beard several times in their history), the bearded man was a model of virtue & simplicity, or he was a slave. In some periods, they wore beards in imitation of the Greeks; in others, to distinguish themselves, they didn't.

Clergymen in 16th century England were usually clean shaven to indicate their celibacy, or bearded in order to demonstrate their acceptance of Protestant Reforms. Sikhs regard the beard as sacred, as it is part of Gods' design of mankind. In a similar vein, St Clement of Alexandria, himself possessed of a fine specimen, had plenty to say on the subject of beards.

"How womanly it is for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, and to arrange his hair at the mirror, shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and smooth them!…For God wished women to be smooth and to rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane. But He adorned man like the lions, with a beard, and endowed him as an attribute of manhood, with a hairy chest--a sign of strength and rule."

"This, then, is the mark of the man, the beard. By this, he is seen to be a man. It is older than Eve. It is the token of the superior nature….It is therefore unholy to desecrate the symbol of manhood, hairiness.”

Bearded men are also frequently cast as sages, a pantheon of fictional wizards cementing the image of the mystical old man. This element of mystery can cast suspicion or doubt over the bearded man,

Ned: What's wrong with my moustache?
Homer: Makes it look like you got something to hide.
Dialogues III, 8F16

and it's important to consider the horrors of the beard of Mr Twit, said to contain sardines, stilton cheese and cornflakes, which he would eat later at his leisure.

Before going to war against the Persians, Alexander the Great commanded his army to shave,

"...for there is not a better handle to take a man by than the beard."

Whether this proves to be my downfall at school or not is another matter.