1    I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,
2    Which with my scimitar I'll cool to-morrow.
3    Patroclus, let us feast him to the height.

4    Here comes Thersites.

5    How now, thou core of envy!
6    Thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news?

7    Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol
8    of idiot worshippers, here's a letter for thee.

9    From whence, fragment?

10   Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.

11   Who keeps the tent now?

12   The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound.

13   Well said, adversity! and what need these tricks?

14   Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk:
15   thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.

16   Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?

17   Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases
18   of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
19   loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold
20   palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
21   lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,
22   limekilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
23   rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
24   again such preposterous discoveries!

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

27   Do I curse thee?

28   Why no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson
29   indistinguishable cur, no.

30   No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle
31   immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet
32   flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's
33   purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered
34   with such waterflies, diminutives of nature!

35   Out, gall!

36   Finch-egg!

37   My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
38   From my great purpose in to-morrow's battle.
39   Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,
40   A token from her daughter, my fair love,
41   Both taxing me and gaging me to keep
42   An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it:
43   Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;
44   My major vow lies here, this I'll obey.
45   Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent:
46   This night in banqueting must all be spent.
47   Away, Patroclus!

48   With too much blood and too little brain, these two
49   may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too
50   little blood they do, I'll be a curer of madmen.
51   Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one
52   that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as
53   earwax: and the goodly transformation of Jupiter
54   there, his brother, the bull,--the primitive statue,
55   and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty
56   shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's
57   leg,--to what form but that he is, should wit larded
58   with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to?
59   To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to
60   an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a
61   dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an
62   owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would
63   not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire
64   against destiny. Ask me not, what I would be, if I
65   were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse
66   of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus! Hey-day!
67   spirits and fires!

68   We go wrong, we go wrong.

69   No, yonder 'tis;
70   There, where we see the lights.

71   I trouble you.

72   No, not a whit.

73   Here comes himself to guide you.

74   Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, princes all.

75   So now, fair prince of Troy, I bid good night.
76   Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.

77   Thanks and good night to the Greeks' general.

78   Good night, my lord.

79   Good night, sweet lord Menelaus.

80   Sweet draught: 'sweet' quoth 'a! sweet sink,
81   sweet sewer.

82   Good night and welcome, both at once, to those
83   That go or tarry.

84   Good night.

85   Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,
86   Keep Hector company an hour or two.

87   I cannot, lord; I have important business,
88   The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.

89   Give me your hand.

Aside to TROILUS
90    Follow his torch; he goes to
91   Calchas' tent:
92   I'll keep you company.

93   Sweet sir, you honour me.

94   And so, good night.

95   Come, come, enter my tent.

96   That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most
97   unjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers
98   than I will a serpent when he hisses: he will spend
99   his mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound:
100  but when he performs, astronomers foretell it; it
101  is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun
102  borrows of the moon, when Diomed keeps his
103  word. I will rather leave to see Hector, than
104  not to dog him: they say he keeps a Trojan
105  drab, and uses the traitor Calchas' tent: I'll
106  after. Nothing but lechery! all incontinent varlets!