In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the rich families from the country thought it no disgrace in that simple age to lodge in Fleet Street, or take rooms above some barber's shop. At this period, indeed, the barber-surgeon was a man of considerable importance. His shop was the gathering-place of idle gallants, who came to have their sword-wounds dressed after street frays. The gittern, or guitar, lay on the counter, and this was played by a customer to pass away the time until his turn came to have his hair trimmed, his beard starched, his mustachios curled, and his love-locks tied up. We give a picture of a barber's shop at this period; the place appears more like a museum than an establishment for conducting business. We get a word picture of a barber's shop in Greene's "Quip for an Upstart Courtier," published in 1592. It is related that the courtier sat down in the throne of a chair, and the barber, after saluting him with a low bow, would thus address him: "Sir, will you have your worship's hair cut after the Italian manner, short and round, and then frounst with the curling irons to make it look like a half-moon in a mist; or like a Spaniard, long at the ears and curled like to the two ends of an old cast periwig; or will you be Frenchified with a love-lock down to your shoulders, whereon you may wear your mistress's favour? The English cut is base, and gentlemen scorn it; novelty is dainty. Speak the word, sir, my scissors are ready to execute your worship's will." A couple of hours were spent in combing and dressing the ambrosial locks of the young Apollo; then the barber's basin was washed with camphor soap. At last the beard is reached, and with another congee the barber asks if his worship would wish it to be shaven; "whether he would have his peak cut short and sharp, and amiable like an inamorato, or broad pendent like a spade, to be amorous as a lover or terrible as a warrior and soldado; whether he will have his crates cut low like a juniper bush, or his subercles taken away with a razor; if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primed, or his moustachios fostered to turn about his ears like vine tendrils, fierce and curling, or cut down to the lip with the Italian lash?--and with every question a snip of the scissors and a bow." If a poor man entered the shop he was polled for twopence, and was soon trimmed around like a cheese, and dismissed with scarce a "God speed you."