ACHILLES
I’ll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight,
Which with my scimitar I’ll cool tomorrow.
Patroclus, let us feast him to the height.
PATROCLUS
Here comes Thersites.
ACHILLES
How now, core of envy!
crusty batch of nature, what’s the news?
THERSITES
Why, picture of what seemest, and idol of idiot worshippers, here’s a letter for .
ACHILLES
From , fragment?
THERSITES
Why, full dish of fool, from Troy.
PATROCLUS
Who keeps the tent now?
THERSITES
The surgeon’s box or the patient’s wound.
PATROCLUS
Well said, adversity! And what needs these tricks?
THERSITES
, be silent, boy; I profit not by talk; art said to be Achilles’ male varlet.
PATROCLUS
Male varlet, you rogue! What’s that?
THERSITES
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, lime-kilns i’ th’ palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries!
PATROCLUS
Why, damnable box of envy, , what meanest to curse thus?
THERSITES
Do I curse ?
PATROCLUS
Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no.
THERSITES
No! Why art , then, exasperate, idle immaterial skein of sleave silk, green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, tassel of a prodigal’s purse, ? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies, diminutives of nature!
PATROCLUS
Out, gall!
THERSITES
Finch egg!
ACHILLES
My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in tomorrow’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!
THERSITES
With too much blood and too little brain these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too 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 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 fitchook, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, 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!
AGAMEMNON
We go wrong, we go wrong.
AJAX
No, yonder ;
There, where we see the lights.
HECTOR
I trouble you.
AJAX
No, not a whit.
ULYSSES
Here comes himself to guide you.
ACHILLES
Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, Princes all.
AGAMEMNON
So now, fair Prince of Troy, I bid good night;
Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.
HECTOR
Thanks, and good night to the Greeks’ general.
MENELAUS
Good night, my lord.
HECTOR
Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.
THERSITES
Sweet draught! ‘Sweet’ quoth a’!
Sweet sink, sweet sewer!
ACHILLES
Good night and welcome, both at once, to those
That go or tarry.
AGAMEMNON
Good night.
ACHILLES
Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,
Keep Hector company an hour or two.
DIOMEDES
I cannot, lord; I have important business,
The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.
HECTOR
Give me your hand.
ULYSSES
Follow his torch; he goes to
Calchas’ tent; I’ll keep you company.
TROILUS
Sweet sir, you honour me.
HECTOR
And so, good night.
ACHILLES
Come, come, enter my tent.
THERSITES
That same Diomed’s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust ; I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a serpent when he hisses. He will spend his mouth and promise, like Brabbler the hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretell it: it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun borrows of the moon when Diomed keeps his word. I will rather leave to see Hector than not to dog him. They say he keeps a Trojan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas’ tent. I’ll after. Nothing but lechery! All incontinent varlets!