The commonness of its use gave rise to a proverb. In the Silent Woman, Act II., scene 2, Ben Jonson avails of it. Morose had married a woman, recommended by his barber, and whose fidelity he suspected, and the following passage occurs, between Morose and Truewit. Lond., 1816, iii. 411.
_Truewit._ Yes, faith, a cursed wretch indeed, sir.
_Morose._ I have married his _cittern_, that's common to all men.
Upon this passage is the following note--"It appears from innumerable passages, in our old writers, that barbers' shops were furnished with some musical instrument, commonly a cittern or guitar, for the amusement of such customers as chose to strum upon it, while waiting for their turn to be shaved, &c. It should be recollected, that the patience of customers, if the shop was at all popular, must, in those tedious days of love-locks, and beards of most fantastical cuts, have been frequently put to very severe trials. Some kind of amusement therefore was necessary, to beguile the time."
In old times, in old England, barbers were in the habit of making a variety of noises, with their fingers and their shears, which noises were supposed to be agreeable to their customers. Fosbroke, p. 414, refers to Lily's old play of Mydas, iii. 2, as showing the existence of the custom, in his time. Lily was born about 1553. There were some, who preferred to be shaved and dressed quietly. Nares, in his Glossary, refers to Plutarch, De Garrulitate, for an anecdote of King Archelaus, who stipulated with his barber to shave him in silence. This barbers' trick was called the "_knack with the fingers_;" and was extremely disagreeable to Morose, in Ben Jonson's play, to which I have referred. Thus, in i. 2, Clerimont, speaking of the partiality of Morose for Cutbeard, the barber, says--"The fellow trims him silently, and has not the knack with his shears or his fingers: and that continence in a barber he thinks so eminent a virtue, as it has made him chief of his counsel."
As barbers were brought first into Rome, from Sicily, so the best razors, according to Nares and Fosbroke, before the English began to excel in cutlery, were obtained in Palermo. Their form was unlike those now in use, and seems more perfectly to correspond with one of the Roman names, signifying a razor, i. e. _culter_. The blade, like that of a pruning knife, or sickle, curved slightly inward, the reverse of which is the modern form.