With the Restoration wigs came into general wear, and gradually the beards and moustaches, which had literally flourished so remarkably from the time of Elizabeth, were yielded to the razor.  At this period theatrical costume was simply regulated by the prevailing fashions, and made no pretensions to historical truth or antiquarian correctness.  The actors appeared upon all occasions in the enormous perukes that were introduced in the reign of Charles II., and continued in vogue until 1720.  The flowing flaxen wigs assumed by Booth, Wilks, Cibber, and others, were said to cost some forty guineas each.  “Till within these twenty-five years,” writes Tom Davies in 1784, “our Tamberlanes and Catos had as much hair on their heads as our judges on the bench.”  Cibber narrates how he sold a superb fair full-bottomed periwig he had worn in 1695 in his first play, “The Fool in Fashion,” to Colonel Brett, so that the officer might appear to advantage in his wooing of the Countess of Macclesfield, the lady whom, upon unsatisfactory evidence, the poet Savage persistently claimed as his mother.

But if the heroes of the theatre delighted in long flaxen hair, it was always held necessary that the stage villain’s should appear in jet-black periwigs.  For many years this continued to be an established law of the drama.  “What is the meaning,” demanded Charles II., “that we never see a rogue in the play but, odds-fish! they always clap him on a black periwig, when it is well known one of the greatest rogues in England always wears a fair one?” The king was understood to refer to Titus Oates.  But this custom was of long life.  Davies describes “certain actors who were cast into the parts of conspirators, traitors, and murderers, who used to disguise themselves in large black wigs, and to distort their features in order to appear terrible.  I have seen,” he adds, “Hippesley act the First Murderer in ‘Macbeth;’ his face was made pale with chalk, distinguished with large whiskers and a long black wig.”  “Begin, murderer; leave thy damnable faces and begin!” cries Hamlet to Lucianus, the poisoner; so that even in Shakespeare’s time grimness of aspect on the part of the stage villain may have been thought indispensable.  Churchill’s friend, Lloyd, in his admirable poem, “The Actor,” published in 1762, writes on this head: 

    To suit the dress demands the actor’s art,
    Yet there are those who over-dress the part: 
    To some prescriptive right gives settled things—­
    Black wigs to murderers, feathered hats to kings.

Quin appeared upon the stage almost invariably in a profuse full-bottomed periwig.  Garrick brought into fashion a wig of much smaller size, worn low on the forehead, with five crisp curls on either side, and known generally as the “Garrick cut.”  But the great actor occasionally varied the mode of his peruke.  The portraits by Wood, Sherwin, and Dance exhibit him in three different forms of wigs.