Last week I wanted to write about a crocodile, and was distracted and ended up writing about one of my dogs. Now, I never had a crocodile for a pet, but I did tell you that I wanted to write about this particular reptile for a silly reason: I encountered one, so to speak - not in the flesh - during a performance of "Anthony and Cleopatra" not long ago, in Stratford upon Avon.

In the seventh scene of Act II, a party is in full swing on Pompey's boat, with the three rulers of the world - the host, Mark Antony and Lepidus - imbibing drinks. Lepidus gets very drunk, and the following conversation ensues:

Lepidus: "What manner o' thing is your crocodile?"

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Mark 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 its own organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates."

Lepidus: "What color is it of?"

Mark Antony: "Of its own color too."

Lepidus: "'Tis a strange serpent."

Mark Antony: "'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet."

I tried to understand why this exchange rang a bell, and have come up with the conclusion that this could be the inspiration for a childish riddle-cum-joke. Question: Is the crocodile greener or broader? Answer: It is greener, because it is as green as it is long and as it is wide - but it is only as long as its length.

That's me, always looking for a punch line. But as I'm already quoting Shakespeare, the crocodiles have a ground for a class-action suit against the Bard for defamation. He popularized the notion that to weep crocodile tears is to pretend to be overcome by a sorrow that one does not actually experience, to create a hypocritical show of emotion.

He did not invent this, however. A Franciscan monk called Bartholomaeus Anglicus wrote in the 13th century: "If the crocodile findeth a man by the brim of the water, or by the cliff, he slayeth him there if he may, and then weepeth upon him and swalloweth him at last."

In a travel book written in about 1400, "The Voyage and Travail of Sir John Mandeville," we find: "In many places of Inde are many crocodiles ... that is, a manner of long serpent. These serpents slay men and they eat them weeping." And the English slaver John Hawkins wrote in 1565 about the Caribbean islands: "In this river we saw many Crocodils ... His nature is ever when he would have his prey, to cry and sob like a Christian body, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them."

Edmund Spenser picked up the rumor in 1595, in his "The Faerie Queene": "As when a wearie traueller that strayes / By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile, / Vnweeting of the perillous wandring wayes, / Doth meet a cruell craftie Crocodile, / Which in false griefe hyding his harmefull guile, / Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares: / The foolish man, that pitties all this while / His mournefull plight, is swallowd vp vnwares, / Forgetfull of his owne, that mindes anothers cares."

Emotional life of a crocodile

Shakespeare made crocodile tears the epitome of hypocrisy in several of his plays, most notably "Othello." When Lodovico demands that the warrior make amends with Desdemona, whom he had just hit, as "she weeps," Othello answers: "O devil, devil! / If that the earth could teem with woman's tears, / Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile."

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy wrote the book "When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals," but I doubt if we can say anything about the emotional life of the crocodile. He does shed tears, though: Some sort of lachrymeal glands in his head release fluid, which moisturizes his eyes when he is out of the water. That is precisely what "crocodile tears" are. We just don't know if they have anything to do with sadness, grief or sorrow - the emotions we tend to associate them with. So we assume they don't, and accuse the poor crocs of hypocrisy.

I could have go on here about the "big crocodiles" being the first creatures created by God with their name, on the fifth day of creation, (Genesis 1:21), but the Greek, Latin and English translation were inaccurate here in translating taninim (crocodiles, in modern Hebrew). Even the Hebrew sages interpreted that word as "snakes" or "whales." One could maybe claim that the snake in the Garden of Eden was really a crocodile, and that God punished him for his transgression by telling him: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go." Some people even have the notion that the frogs that plagued the Egyptians were actually crocodiles ...

But I'm not serious enough to go on in that vein. I'm willing to give up anything, however, for the sake of a trivial story, if it leads to a punch line. In 1927 Rene Lacoste was one of the Four Musketeers who made up the French Tennis Team in the Davis Cup, playing the mighty U.S. team in the finals. The French coach promised Lacoste that if he won, he would get a suitcase made of alligator skin. Lacoste did beat the legendary Bill Tilden - and the American press nicknamed him "The Alligator." His friend Robert George drew a crocodile for him, and Lacoste then had embroidered it on the blazer he wore on court.

By 1933 Lacoste retired from the tennis world and teamed up with Andre Gillier, the owner and president of the largest French knitwear manufacturing firm at that time, and set up a company to manufacture white shirts for tennis, golf and sailing bearing the logo of the crocodile - apparently marking the first time that a logo appeared on the outside of an article of clothing.

The success was immediate. Indeed even Lacoste could not have explained how it came about: "I suppose you could say that if it had been a really nice animal, something sympathetic, then maybe nothing would have happened. Suppose I had picked a rooster. Well, it's French, but it doesn't have the same impact."

By 2006 Lacoste sells about 48 million items a year bearing the logo - including clothing, leather goods, shoes, accessories, eyeglasses and perfumes. Which explains the reaction of an Israeli traveler on a safari in Africa, when he saw one of his fellow travelers disappearing into the jaws of a crocodile: "Oh, I didn't know Lacoste had a new line of sleeping bags!"