Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

25th April

Shakespeare at 462: playwright of hirsute subversion

The Beard Liberation Front, the Informal network of beard wearers, has said that William Shakespeare, who was born on or around 23rd April 1564 was an early beard liberationist in the way his plays acknowledged the possibility of hirsute subversion.

Shakespeare whose popular image suggests he favoured beards himself wrote complex but ultimately popular plays for a sixteenth century audience.

The campaigners say that Shakespeare’s plays are full both of beards and the possibility of beards to subvert the existing order.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, popular culture has failed to celebrate the importance of Shakespeare’s beard. Now is the time.

Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.2

Bottom

I will discharge it in either your straw-colour

beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain

beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your

perfect yellow

Macbeth Act One Scene Three

Banquo

That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,

And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught

That man may question? You seem to understand me,

By each at once her choppy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret