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.

Here comes Thersites.

How now, thou core of envy!

Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news?

Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot worshippers,

here’s a letter for thee.

From whence, fragment?

Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.

Who keeps the tent now?

The surgeon’s box or the patient’s wound.

Well said, adversity! And what needs these tricks?

Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou art said to be

Achilles’ male varlet.

Male varlet, you rogue! What’s that?

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!

Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to curse thus?

Do I curse thee?

Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no.

No! Why art thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of

sleave silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a

prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such

water-flies, diminutives of nature!

Out, gall!

Finch egg!

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!

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!

We go wrong, we go wrong.

No, yonder ’tis;

There, where we see the lights.

I trouble you.

No, not a whit.

Here comes himself to guide you.

Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, Princes all.

So now, fair Prince of Troy, I bid good night;

Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.

Thanks, and good night to the Greeks’ general.

Good night, my lord.

Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.

Sweet draught! ‘Sweet’ quoth a’!

Sweet sink, sweet sewer!

Good night and welcome, both at once, to those

That go or tarry.

Good night.

Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,

Keep Hector company an hour or two.

I cannot, lord; I have important business,

The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.

Give me your hand.

[_Aside to Troilus._] Follow his torch; he goes to

Calchas’ tent; I’ll keep you company.

Sweet sir, you honour me.

And so, good night.

Come, come, enter my tent.

That same Diomed’s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; 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!