Harrison, in his Description of England, ed. 1586, p. 172, thus refers to the vagaries of fashion of beards in his time:  “I will saie nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like womans lockes, manie times cut off, above or under the eares, round as by a woodden dish.  Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a pique de vant (O fine fashion!), or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors.  And therfore if a man have a leane and streight face, a marquesse Ottons cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter like, a long slender beard will make it seeme the narrower; if he be wesell becked, then much heare left on the cheekes will make the owner looke big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose."[161]

  [161] Reprint for the Shakspere Society, 1877, B. ii, ch. vii,
        p. 169.

Barnaby Rich, in the conclusion of his Farewell to the Military Profession (1581), says that the young gallants sometimes had their beards “cutte rounde, like a Philippes doler; sometymes square, like the kinges hedde in Fishstreate; sometymes so neare the skinne, that a manne might judge by his face the gentlemen had had verie pilde lucke."[162]

  [162] Reprint for the (old) Shakspeare Society, 1846, p. 217.

In Taylor’s Superbiae Flagellum we find the following amusing description of the different “cuts” of beards: 

  Now a few lines to paper I will put,
  Of mens Beards strange and variable cut: 
  In which there’s some doe take as vaine a Pride,
  As almost in all other things beside. 
  Some are reap’d most substantiall, like a brush,
  Which makes a Nat’rall wit knowne by the bush: 
  (And in my time of some men I have heard,
  Whose wisedome have bin onely wealth and beard)
  Many of these the proverbe well doth fit,
  Which sayes Bush naturall, More haire then wit. 
  Some seeme as they were starched stiffe and fine,
  Like to the bristles of some angry swine: 
  And some (to set their Loves desire on edge)
  Are cut and prun’de like to a quickset hedge. 
  Some like a spade, some like a forke, some square,
  Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some starke bare,
  Some sharpe Steletto fashion, dagger like,
  That may with whispering a mans eyes out pike: 
  Some with the hammer cut, or Romane T,[163]
  Their beards extravagant reform’d must be,
  Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion,
  Some circular, some ovall in translation,
  Some perpendicular in longitude,
  Some like a thicket for their crassitude,
  That heights, depths, bredths, triforme, square, ovall, round,