Troilus and Cressida
Act V, Scene 1
The Grecian camp. Before Achilles’ tent.
- Enter Achilles and Patroclus.
Achilles
1 - 3- 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
4- Here comes Thersites.
- Enter Thersites.
Achilles
5 - 6- How now, thou core of envy?
- Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news?
Thersites
7 - 8- Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of
- idiot-worshippers, here’s a letter for thee.
Achilles
9- From whence, fragment?
Thersites
10- Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.
Patroclus
11- Who keeps the tent now?
Thersites
12- The surgeon’s box, or the patient’s wound.
Patroclus
13- Well said, adversity! And what needs these tricks?
Thersites
14 - 15- Prithee be silent, boy, I profit not by thy talk. Thou art
- said to be Achilles’ male varlot.
Patroclus
16- Male varlot, you rogue! What’s that?
Thersites
17 - 23- Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the
- south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads a’ gravel
- in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten
- livers, whissing lungs, bladders full of imposthume,
- sciaticas, lime-kills i’ th’ palm, incurable bone-ache, and
- the rivell’d fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again
- such preposterous discoveries!
Patroclus
24 - 25- Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what means thou to
- curse thus?
Thersites
26- Do I curse thee?
Patroclus
27 - 28- Why, no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson indistinguishable
- cur, no.
Thersites
29 - 33- No? Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein
- of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye,
- thou tossel of a prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor
- world is pest’red with such water-flies, diminutives of
- nature!
Patroclus
34- Out, gall!
Thersites
35- Finch-egg!
Achilles
36 - 46- 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, honor 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!
- Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus.
Thersites
47 - 63- 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, hanging at his brother’s leg—to what form but that
- he is, should wit larded with malice, and malice fac’d 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!
- Enter Agamemnon, Hector, Troilus, Ajax, Ulysses, Nestor,
- Menelaus, and Diomedes, with lights.
Why, thou picture of what thou seemest
From: Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare
Charles Cowden Clarke, Mary Cowden Clarke, 1866
Agamemnon
64- We go wrong, we go wrong.
Ajax
65 - 66- No, yonder ’tis,
- There where we see the lights.
Hector
67- I trouble you.
Ajax
68- No, not a whit.
- Enter Achilles.
Ulysses
69- Here comes himself to guide you.
Achilles
70- Welcome, brave Hector, welcome, princes all.
Agamemnon
71 - 72- So now, fair Prince of Troy, I bid good night.
- Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.
Hector
73- Thanks and good night to the Greeks’ general.
Menelaus
74- Good night, my lord.
Hector
75- Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.
Thersites
76- Sweet draught! “Sweet,” quoth ’a! Sweet sink, sweet sewer.
Achilles
77 - 78- Good night and welcome, both at once, to those
- That go or tarry.
Agamemnon
79- Good night.
- Exeunt Agamemnon, Menelaus.
Achilles
80 - 81- Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,
- Keep Hector company an hour or two.
Diomedes
82 - 83- I cannot, lord, I have important business,
- The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.
Hector
84- Give me your hand.
Ulysses
85 - 86- Aside to Troilus
- Follow his torch, he goes to Calchas’ tent.
- I’ll keep you company.
Troilus
87- Sweet sir, you honor me.
Hector
88- And so good night.
- Exit Diomedes, Ulysses and Troilus following.
Achilles
89- Come, come, enter my tent.
- Exeunt Achilles, Hector, Ajax, and Nestor.
Thersites
90 - 99- 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 Troyan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas’
- tent. I’ll after—nothing but lechery! All incontinent
- varlots!
- Exit.
Queen Hecuba
Guillaume Rouille, 1553