Wigs have claims to be considered amongst the most essential appliances of the actors; means at once of their disguise and their decoration. Without false hair the fictions of the stage could scarcely be set forth. How could the old look young, or the young look old, how could scanty locks be augmented, or baldness concealed, if the _coiffeur_ did not lend his aid to the costumier? Nay, oftentimes calvity has to be simulated, and fictitious foreheads of canvas assumed. Hence the quaint advertisements of the theatrical hairdresser in professional organs, that he is prepared to vend "old men's bald pates" at a remarkably cheap rate. King Lear has been known to appear without his beard--Mr. Garrick, as his portrait reveals, played the part with a clean-shaven face, and John Kemble followed his example; but could the ghost of Hamlet's father ever have defied the poet's portraiture of him, and walked the platform of Elsinore Castle without a "sable-silvered" chin? Has an audience ever viewed tolerantly a bald Romeo, or a Juliet grown gray in learning how to impersonate that heroine to perfection? It is clear that at a very early date the players must have acquired the simple arts of altering and amending their personal appearance in these respects. The accounts still extant of the revels at court during the reigns of Elizabeth and James contain many charges for wigs and beards. Thus a certain John Ogle is paid "for four yeallowe heares for head-attires for women, twenty-six shillings and eightpence;" and "for a pound of heare twelvepence." Probably the auburn tresses of Elizabeth had made blonde wigs fashionable. John Owgle, who is no doubt the same trader, receives thirteen shillings and fourpence for "eight long white berds at twenty pence the peece." He has charges also on account of "a black fyzician's berde," "berds white and black," "heares for palmers," "berds for fyshers," &c. It would seem, however, that these adornments were really made of silk. There is an entry: "John Ogle for curling of heare made of black silk for Discord's heade (being sixty ounces), price of his woorkmanshipp thereon only is seven shillings and eightpence;" and mention is made of a delivery to Mrs. Swegoo the silk-woman, of "Spanish silke of sundry cullers, weighing four ounces and three quarters, at two shillings and sixpence the ounce, to garnishe nine heads and nine scarfes for the nine muses; heads of heare drest and trimmed at twenty-three shillings and fourpence the peece, in all nine, ten pounds ten shillings."