Here comes Thersites.

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!

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.

I trouble you.

No, not a whit.

Here comes himself to guide you.

Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, Princes all.

Thanks, and good night to the Greeks’ general.

Good night, my lord.

Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.

Good night.

Give me your hand.

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!