~ Mysterious Beards ~

Portrait from The Poetical Works of Owen Meredith (Robert, Lord Lytton).

"‘Maybe he has a mysterious beard.’ ‘Who cares? It’s his soul that matters.’” —Munsey’s Magazine

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June ponders:

Maybe they were calling Shakespeare "The Beard" and pronounced it "bard"!

INSTRUCTIONS: Click on the puzzle image below to reveal one possible solution.

And if Browning had majored in economics, he'd have written "My Last Ducat."

"But why have they also put a book with the unicorn among the falsehoods?" I asked.
     "Obviously the founders of the library had strange ideas.  They must have believed that this book which speaks of fantastic animals and beasts living in distant lands was part of the catalogue of falsehoods spread by the infidels...."
     "But is the unicorn a falsehood?  It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol.  It stands for Christ, and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares."
     "So it is said, Adso.  But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans."
     "What a disappointment," I said.  "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood.  Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?"
     . . .
     "But console yourself, they exist in these books, which, if they do not speak of real existence, speak of possible existence."
—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

~ Mysterious Beards ~

Portrait from The Man Christ Jesus, under a shroud of tissue paper.

“The Holy Ghost is also represented with a beard, to signify his being equal to the Father and the Son, and that like them, he had eternity for his portion.” —Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Christian Iconography

 

~ Mysterious Beards ~

Portrait from Memoir of Charles Lowe.

“[The] specter raises the prospect of an immaterial beard.” —Jack Selzer, Rhetorical Bodies