THERSITES

Agamemnon, how if he had Biles (full) all over generally. And those Biles did run, say so; did not the General run, were not that a botchy core? Then there would come some matter from him: I see none now. The plague of Greece upon thee thou Mongrel beef-witted Lord. I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness: but I think thy Horse will sooner con and Oration, then y u learn a prayer without book: Thou canst strike, canst thou? A read Murren of that thy Jades tricks. Dost thou think I have no sense thou strikest me thus? Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think. I would thou didst itch from head to foot, and I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loath som'st scab in Greece. Thou grumblest & railest every hour on A chilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness, as Cer berus is at Proserpina's beauty. I, that thou barkest at him. Thou shouldst strike him. He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a Sailor breaks a biscuit. Do, do. I, do, do, thou sodden-witted Lord: thou hast no more brain then I have in mine elbows: And Asinico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy valiant Ass, thou art here but to thresh Trojans, and thou art bought and sold a mong those of any wit, Like a Barbarian slave. If thou use to Beatrice me, I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels thou. You scurvy Lord. Mars his Idiot: do rudeness, do Camel, do, do. You see him there, do you? Nay look upon him. Nay but regard him well. But yet you look not well upon him: for who some ever you take him to be, he is Ajax. I, but that fool knows not himself. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters: his evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his Brain more then he has beat my bones: I will buy nine Spar rows for a penny, and his Piamater is not worth the ninth partly of a Sparrow. This Lord (Achilles) Ajax who wears his wit in his belly, and his guts in his head, I'll tell you what I say of him. I say this Ajax— Has not so much wit. As will stop the eye of Helens Needle, for whom he comes to fight. I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not: He there, that he, look you there. No I warrant you, for a fools will shame it. I serve thee not. I serve here voluntary. E'neso, a great deal of your wit too lies in your sinews, or else there be Liars Hector shall have a great catch, if he knock out either of your brains, he were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel. There's Ulysses, and old Nestor, whose Wit was mouldy ere their Grandsires had nails on their toes, yoke you Like draft-Oxen, and make you plough up the war. Yes good sooth, to Achilles, to Ajax, to— It's no matter, I shall speak as much as thou afterwards. I will hold my peace when Achilles Brooch bids me, shall I? I will see you hanged Like Clotpoles ere I come any more to your Tents; I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools. If I could have remembered a gilded counterfeit, thou wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation, but it is no matter, thy self upon thy self. The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance be thine in great revenue; heaven bless thee from a Tutor, and Discipline come not near thee. Let thy blood be thy direction till thy death, then if she that lays thee out says thou art a fair coarse, I'll be sworn and sworn vpon't she never shrouded any but Lazars, Amen. Where's Achilles ? I, the heavens hear me. Thy Commander Achilles, then tell me Patron clus, what's Achilles ? Thy knower Patroclus : then tell me Patroclus, what art thou? I'll decline the whole question: Agamemnon come mands Achilles, Achilles is my Lord, I am Patroclus know er, and Patroclus is a fool. Agamemnon is a fool, Achilles is a fool, There sites is a fool, and as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command A chilles, Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemon, Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool: and Patroclus is a fool positive. Make that demand to the Creator, it suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here? Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery: all the argument is a Cuckold and a Whore, a good quarrel to draw emulations, factions, and bleed to death upon: Now the dry Suppeago on the Subject, and War and Lechery confound all. A wonder. Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself. He must fight singly to morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of and heroical cudgeling, that he raves in saying nothing. Why he stalks up and down Like a Peacock, a stride and a stand: ruminates Like and hostess, that hath no Arithmetic but her brain to set down her recko ning: bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say, there were wit in his head and twoo'd out; and so there is: but it lies as coldly in him, as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The men un done for ever; for if Hector break not his neck in the come bat, heel break't himself in vainglory. He knows not me: I said, good morrow Ajax ; And he replies, thanks Agamemnon, What think you of this man, that takes me for the General? He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster: a plague of oh pinion, a man may wear it on both sides Like a leather Jerkin. Who, I: why heel answer no body: he pro fesses not answering; speaking is for beggars: he wears his tongue in's arms: I will put on his presence; let Pa troclus make his demands to me, you shall see the Page ant of Ajax. Hum. Would? Hum. Agamemnon? Would? God buy you with all my heart. If to morrow be a fair day, by eleven a clock it will go one way or other; howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me. Fare you well withal my heart. No, but he's out a tune thus: what music will be in him when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know not: but I am sure none, unless the Fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on. Let me carry another to his Horse; for that's the more capable creature. Would the Fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water and Ass at it: I had rather be a Tick in a Sheep, then such a valiant ignorance. Why thou picture of what thou seemest, & I doll of Ideot-worshippers, here's a Letter for thee. Why thou full dish of Fool, from Troy. The Surgeons box, or the Patients wound. Prithee be silent boy, I profit not by thy talk, thou art thought to be Achilles male Varlot. Why his masculine Whore. Now the rotten diseases of the South, guts-griping Ruptures, Catarres, Loads a gravel in the back, Lethargies, cold Palsies, and the Like, take and take again, such preposterous discoue rises. Do I curse thee? No? why art thou then exasperate, thou idle, immaterial skiene of Slayed silk; thou green Sarsenet flap for a soar eye, thou tassel of a Prodigals purse thou: Ah how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies, diminutives of Nature. Finch Egg. 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, and honest fellow enough, and one that loves Quails, but he has not so much Brain as earwax; and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there his Brother, the Bull, the primitive Statue, and oblique memorial of Cuckolds, a thrifty shooing-horne 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 too: to and Ass were nothing; he is both Ass and Ox; to and Ox were nothing, he is both Ox and Ass: to be a Dog, a Mule, a Cat, a Fitchew, a Toad, a Li zard, and 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 : sot I care not to be the louse of a Lazar, so I were not Menelaus. Hoy-day, spirits and fires. Sweet draught: sweet quotha? sweet sink, sweet sure. That same Diomed is a falsehearted Rogue, a most unjust Knave; I will no more trust him when he leeres, then I will a Serpent when he hisses: he will spend his mouth & promise, Like Brabbler the Hound; but when he performs, Astronomers foretell it, that it is prodigi ous, there will come some change; the Sun borrows of the Moon when Diomed keeps his word. I will ra there leave to see Hector, then not to dog him: they say, he keeps a Trojan Drab, and uses the Traitor Chalcas his Tent. I'll after—Nothing but Lechery? All incontinent Varlets. And any man may find her, if he can take her life: she's noted. Roguery. A juggling trick, to be secretly open. How the devil Luxury with his fat rumpe and potato finger, tickles these together: fry lechery, fry. Now the pledge, now, now, now. Now she sharpens: well said Whetstone. Nor I by Pluto: but that that likes not me, plea ses me best. A proof of strength she could not publish more; Unless she say, my mind is now turned whore. Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes? Heel tickle it for his concupy. Would I could meet that rogue Diomed, I would croak Like a Raven: I would bode, I would bode: Patroclus will give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the Parrot will not do more for and Almond, then he for a commodious drab: Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery, nothing else holds fashion. A burning devil take them. Now they are clapper-clawing one another, I'll go look on: that dissembling abominable varlet Dio mede, has God that same scurvy, doting, foolish young knaves Sleeve of Troy, there in his Helm: I would feign see them meet; that, that same young Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish whore-mai sterly villain, with the Sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errant. OF the tother side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals; that stole old Mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor : and that same dog-foxe Ulysses is not proved worth a Blackberry. They set me up in policy, that mongrel cur Ajax, against that dog of as bade a kind, Achilles. And now is the cur Ajax prouder then the cur Achilles, and will not arm to day. Whereupon, the Grecians began to proclaim barbarism; and policy grows into and ill opinion. Soft, here comes Sleeve, and the other. Hold thy whore Grecian: now for thy whore Trojan: Now the Sleeve, now the Sleeve. No, no: I am a rascal: a scurvy railing knave: a very filthy rogue. God a mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck—for frighting me: what's be come of the wenching rogues? I think they have swallowed one another. I would laugh at that mira cle—yet in a sort, lechery ears it self: I'll seek them. The Cuckold and the Cuckold maker are at it: now bull, now dog, low; Paris low; now my dou ble hened sparrow; low Paris, low; the bull has the game: beware horns ho? What art thou? I am a Bastard too, I love Bastards, I am a Ba stard begotten, Bastard instructed, Bastard in mind, Bastard in valour, in every thing illegitimate: one Bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one Bastard? take heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the Son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgement: farewell Bastard. Peace fool, I have not done.