_Achil_. How now, thou core of envy!
Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news?
_Ther_. Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot
worshippers, here’s a letter for thee.
_Achil_. From whence, fragment?
_Ther_. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.
_Patr_. Who keeps the tent now?
_Ther_. The surgeon’s box or the patient’s wound.
_Patr_. Well said, Adversity! and what needs these tricks?
_Ther_. Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou art
said to be Achilles’ male varlet.
_Patr_. Male varlet, you rogue! What’s that?
_Ther_. Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases of the
south, the guts-griping ruptures, catarrhs, loads o’ gravel in the
back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, limekilns i’ th’ palm,
incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee- simple of the tetter, take
and take again such preposterous discoveries!
_Patr_. Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to
curse thus?
_Ther_. Do I curse thee?
_Patr_. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur,
no.
_Ther_. No! Why art thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein
of sleid silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of
a prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pest’red with such
water-flies-diminutives of nature!
_Patr_. Out, gall!
_Ther_. Finch egg!
_Achil_. My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in to-morrow’s battle.
Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,
A token from her daughter, my fair love,
Both taxing me and gaging me to keep
An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it.
Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;
My major vow lies here, this I’ll obey.
Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent;
This night in banqueting must all be spent.
Away, Patroclus! Exit with Patroclus
_Ther_. With too much blood and too little brain these two may run mad;
but, if with too much brain and to little blood they do, I’ll be a
curer of madmen. Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one
that loves quails, but he has not so much brain as ear-wax; and the
goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull, the
primitive statue and oblique memorial of cuckolds, a thrifty
shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s leg-to what form but
that he is, should wit larded with malice, and malice forced with wit,
turn him to? To an ass, were nothing: he is both ass and ox. To an ox,
were nothing: he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a
fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a put-tock, or a herring without a
roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against
destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I
care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus. Hey-day!
sprites and fires!
Enter Hector, Troylus, Aiax, Agamemnon, Vlyſſes, Nestor, Menelaus, and
Diomedes, with lights
_Agam_. We go wrong, we go wrong.
_Aiax_. No, yonder ’tis;
There, where we see the lights.
_Hect_. I trouble you.
_Aiax_. No, not a whit.