Beard or no beard, that is the question.

Pogonotrophy is the act of growing and grooming facial hair, today it is not an issue, but in the past facial hair was, on one hand, a sign of virility, yet on the other, a sign of rebellion against the church and as we shall see, by Tudor times, a beard brought in much-needed revenue. ​

In this Greek battle scene some men have beards and some do not.

In Greek society, a man with a beard was considered wise and knowledgeable, Alexander the Great however, thought differently, he forced the men of his armies to shave, for he feared that an enemy could use the beard to their advantage thinking that they would grab at it during hand to hand combat and thus be victorious. ​

In 1447, during the reign of Henry VI, it was forbidden to wear a moustache, very few men shaved their beard leaving just a moustache, as in this confusing image from Shakespeare's Henry VI where the Yorkists mock the body of Sir John Clifford. It was a requirement that the upper lip be shaved every two weeks.  Henry's reasoning behind this goes unmentioned.  ​

During the reign of Henry VIII, there are a number of incidents regarding beards. The first is said to have occurred before the Field of the Cloth of Gold when the French king, Francis I, expressed a wish for the event to take place in 1519, but Henry did not.  To prove he had every intention of attending, Henry wrote to Francis saying that he would not shave until the event took place. In a letter drafted in the August of that year, Cardinal Wolsey wrote:
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"As a proof of the King's desire, he had resolved to wear his beard till the said meeting. To requite this token of his affection, Francis "laid his hand on his beard, and said surely he would never put if off till he had seen him" 

Another tale also refers to the French king, who had his head shaved after he received a head injury, it seems that Henry was so envious of the respect shown by the French courtiers who kept their hair short while the king recovered, that he ordered his court to follow suit. Later in Henry's reign, despite having a beard himself he introduced a tax on beards, and like Henry VI and the moustache tax, there is no mention of why. Lastly, Thomas More, the friend and confidant of Henry said at his execution: 

"My beard has not been guilty of treason. It were an injustice to punish it."

It was not only the noble and the common Tudor man who suffered as a result of having a beard, lawyers suffered too, these learned men were not allowed into chambers if they had a beard, and they would have had to pay twelve pence extra for a meal at lunchtime.

Incidentally, a beard in Tudor times was anything over a fortnight's growth. 

I wonder, did Henry pay his tax bill?

Queen Elizabeth too had a thing about beards and continued the taxation of them just as her father did, but the beard soon came back into fashion, and the tax was dropped. You do have to wonder if this had anything to do with her favourite, Sir Robert Dudley, sporting rather a cute little one? ​

Russian Tsar, Peter I also disliked beards, he ordered his nobles to be clean-shaven, and he was known to personally shave a 
courtiers' beard, and just like our monarchs taxed their courtiers a hundred rubles each year a beard was worn. But if they persisted he forced these men to wear about their necks a medal that said:

 "beards are a ridiculous ornament." ​

As we have previously seen with Alexander the Great, the pulling of beards seems to have been frowned upon in  England too. Complaints were brought of unfair beard pulling in street fights, and as a result, if you were caught you were fined two shillings.

For our men today it is a matter of choice to wear a beard, but do bear the following in mind if you don't have one. Charles Darwin considered that the beard played its part in the role of sexual selection suggesting that there is evidence that a greater number of women find men with beards more attractive than men without.