THE orange doesn’t immediately strike one as the most sybaritic of fruits. Too brash, too bold, too, well, orange. It lacks the peach’s luscious curves and the strawberry’s plump, come-hither allure. Grapes can be dangled above lips of louche, lascivious lovers and cherries gorged with a frisky wink, but the orange is wilfully, resolutely unsexy, thick woollen tights rather than silken stockings, more half-time snack than good-time minx. Shakespeare, in Much Ado About Nothing, even goes as far as to associate it with the green-eyed monster. Count Claudio, described by Beatrice as ‘neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well’ is a ‘civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion’.
Civil as an orange, eh? Hardly complimentary, although the Stratford scribe was referring with his pun…
