The men's hair is cut short but their beards are allowed to grow.
Baldness is unknown, and many of the men wear beards.
Maundy Thursday is sometimes known as Sheer or Chare Thursday, either in allusion, it is thought, to the "shearing" of heads and beards in preparation for Easter, or more probably in the word's Middle English sense of "pure," in allusion to the ablutions of the day.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the walls.
The hair is long, black or very dark auburn, wavy and sometimes curly, but never woolly, and the men have luxuriant beards and whiskers, often of an auburn tint, while the whole body inclines to hairiness.
