`Merchant of Venice,' V. 127:
"We should hold day with the Antipodes
If you would walk in absence of the sun."
`Richard II.,' III. ii. 49:
"Who all this while hath revell'd in the night,
Whilst we were wandering with the Antipodes."
In `Henry VI.,' part 3, I. iv. 135, the word more clearly designates the East:
"Thou art as opposite to every good
As the Antipodes are unto us,
Or as the South to the Septentrion." [<i>sc</i>. the North.]
But more precise geographical indications are given in `Much
Ado,' II. i. 273, where Benedick is so anxious to avoid
Beatrice that he says—
"I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on. I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair of the great Kam's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies rather than hold three words conference with this harpy."
Now the Pygmies lived on the Upper Nile, near Khartoum,
Prester John in India, and the great Kam (Khan) in Tartary.
The word <i>Antipodes</i> in modern use is applied rather to places than to people. Geographically, the word means a place exactly opposite on the surface of the globe, as Antipodes Island (Eastward of New Zealand), which is very near the opposite end of the diameter of the globe passing through London. But the word is often used in a wider sense, and the whole of Australasia is regarded as the Antipodes of Great Britain.