“Shall Rather at My Hands Haue a Figge to Choake him” or How a Very Ancient Fruit Became a Venomous Antidote to Cure Ignorance and Prejudice According to Thomas Lodge

As sweet on the inside, as stinging on the outside, figs are among the most ancient and widespread fruits. As well as in the Bible and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, we find references to figs in many important texts belonging to different cultures: it is amazing how the meaning connected to its characteristics can change over time and space. Early Modern England too wasn’t immune to the charm of this simple fruit, and several authors seem to have been particularly attracted and interested in its several metaphoric implications. William Shakespeare, for instance, refers to figs in various works, playing both with its obscene meaning and its notoriously poisonous nature; so does his peer, Thomas Lodge, who was so interested in this fruit to entitle one of his most important works A Fig for Momus. In addition to the above-mentioned implications of the fruit, in this work and in other (few) moments within his canon, Lodge seems to lean also on an additional concept, dating back to Tertullian’s and other’s interpretation of the fig as the tree of knowledge. After a brief introducion on some literary references to figs, the first part of this paper will provide examples from Shakespeare’s canon for its above-mentioned poisonous nature, so as to draw a comparison with Lodge’s use of the same. In the second part, I’ll try to analyse some Lodgean examples to show how and why Lodge mixed those different meanings. The aim of this paper is thus to find an explanation for his particular use of this common fruit, applied to a broader context: that of Momuses and Sycophants (sŷcon, fig + phaínein, to show, reveal) to show how and if this possibly poisonous fruit could be intended to be at the same time an antidote to cure the ignorance and prejudice against whom Lodge fought vehemently.