JamesWhitehead
Piffle Prospector
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,176
Long before Punch & Judy, Shakespeare has Antony pondering the crocodile:
LEPIDUS: What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?
ANTONY: It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
LEPIDUS: What color is it of?
ANTONY: Of it own color, too.
LEPIDUS: ’Tis a strange serpent.
ANTONY: ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.
Earlier in the scene, Lepidus has repeated the traditional belief that the crocodile was generated by the action of the sun on the mud of the Nile. Antony is teasing Lepidus with a description which is no description at all, turning the solid creature into a phantom.
LEPIDUS: What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?
ANTONY: It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
LEPIDUS: What color is it of?
ANTONY: Of it own color, too.
LEPIDUS: ’Tis a strange serpent.
ANTONY: ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.
Earlier in the scene, Lepidus has repeated the traditional belief that the crocodile was generated by the action of the sun on the mud of the Nile. Antony is teasing Lepidus with a description which is no description at all, turning the solid creature into a phantom.