18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

[cahn]

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Comments

Re: Length of hair under wig

[selenak]

With the caveat that this is second hand, and tv people may talk a lot of bluster to pretend knowledge: in the „Making of“ documentary of the miniseries „Charles II: The Power and the Passion“ (US title: The Last King), there‘s talk about the wig problem, i.e. the fact it makes it hard for the audience to tell the actors apart if you show them in full periwig all the time, and how they solved it. Which was letting them have very, VERY short haircuts under the wigs and be without the wigs in private circumstances (i.e. no public appearances) or during sports (i.e. when Charles and Buckingham play tennis, for example). Supposedly their research guys backed this up, and found it was done because of the lice and general comfort problem, but as I said: I have no idea whether this was pretend knowledge to justify a style decision.

Otoh, you have young FW writing to Aunt Sophie that he‘s not wearing a periwig, he hates them, he’s wearing his natural hair instead at a point when they‘re giving way to the shorter wigs (which he‘ll have no problem wearing) anyway, and since he‘s able to switch between natural hair and shorter wig, and Prussian military hairstyle had the hair tied back in a strict short tail, it must have been at least long enough to wear said tail. But that‘s a continental German principality and may not apply to anyone British.

Re: Length of hair under wig

[luzula]

Interesting, thanks!

Also interesting about Prussian military hairstyle being a short ponytail! I get the impression that soldiers often had short cropped hair because of problems with lice etc, but maybe that isn't true in every era.