A Day with William Shakespeare — May Clarissa Gillington Byron

IT was early on a bright June morning of the year 1599. The household of Christopher Mountjoy, the wig-maker, at the corner of Silver Street in Cripplegate, was already up and astir. Mountjoy, his wife and daughter, and his apprentice, Stephen Bellott, were each refreshing themselves with a hasty mouthful-one could not term it breakfast-before beginning their day's work. For town wig-makers were busy folk, then as now. Every fashionable dame wore "transformations," and some noble ladies, like the late Queen of Scots and-breathe it low-the great Elizabeth herself, changed the colour of their tresses every day.