| ACT II SCENE III | The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent. | |
| [Enter THERSITES, solus] |
| THERSITES | How now, Thersites! what lost in the labyrinth of |
| thy fury! Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He |
| beats me, and I rail at him: O, worthy satisfaction! |
| would it were otherwise; that I could beat him, |
| whilst he railed at me. 'Sfoot, I'll learn to | 5 |
| conjure and raise devils, but I'll see some issue of |
| my spiteful execrations. Then there's Achilles, a |
| rare enginer! If Troy be not taken till these two |
| undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of |
| themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, | 10 |
| forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods and, |
| Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy |
| caduceus, if ye take not that little, little less |
| than little wit from them that they have! which |
| short-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant | 15 |
| scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly |
| from a spider, without drawing their massy irons and |
| cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the |
| whole camp! or rather, the bone-ache! for that, |
| methinks, is the curse dependent on those that war | 20 |
| for a placket. I have said my prayers and devil Envy |
| say Amen. What ho! my Lord Achilles! |
| [Enter PATROCLUS] |
| PATROCLUS | Who's there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and rail. |
| THERSITES | If I could have remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou |
| wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation: but | 25 |
| it is no matter; thyself upon thyself! 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 | 30 |
| out says thou art a fair corse, I'll be sworn and |
| sworn upon't she never shrouded any but lazars. |
| Amen. Where's Achilles? |
| PATROCLUS | What, art thou devout? wast thou in prayer? |
| THERSITES | Ay: the heavens hear me! | 35 |
| [Enter ACHILLES] |
| ACHILLES | Who's there? |
| PATROCLUS | Thersites, my lord. |
| ACHILLES | Where, where? Art thou come? why, my cheese, my |
| digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to |
| my table so many meals? Come, what's Agamemnon? | 40 |
| THERSITES | Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, |
| what's Achilles? |
| PATROCLUS | Thy lord, Thersites: then tell me, I pray thee, |
| what's thyself? |
| THERSITES | Thy knower, Patroclus: then tell me, Patroclus, | 45 |
| what art thou? |
| PATROCLUS | Thou mayst tell that knowest. |
| ACHILLES | O, tell, tell. |
| THERSITES | I'll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands |
| Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus' | 50 |
| knower, and Patroclus is a fool. |
| PATROCLUS | You rascal! |
| THERSITES | Peace, fool! I have not done. |
| ACHILLES | He is a privileged man. Proceed, Thersites. |
| THERSITES | Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites | 55 |
| is a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool. |
| ACHILLES | Derive this; come. |
| THERSITES | Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; |
| Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; |
| Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool, and | 60 |
| Patroclus is a fool positive. |
| PATROCLUS | Why am I a fool? |
| THERSITES | Make that demand of the prover. It suffices me thou |
| art. Look you, who comes here? |
| ACHILLES | Patroclus, I'll speak with nobody. | 65 |
| Come in with me, Thersites. |
| [Exit] |
| THERSITES | Here is such patchery, such juggling and such |
| knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a |
| whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions |
| and bleed to death upon. Now, the dry serpigo on | 70 |
| the subject! and war and lechery confound all! |
| [Exit] |
| [Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, and AJAX] |
| AGAMEMNON | Where is Achilles? |
| PATROCLUS | Within his tent; but ill disposed, my lord. |
| AGAMEMNON | Let it be known to him that we are here. |
| He shent our messengers; and we lay by | 75 |
| Our appertainments, visiting of him: |
| Let him be told so; lest perchance he think |
| We dare not move the question of our place, |
| Or know not what we are. |
| PATROCLUS | I shall say so to him. | 80 |
| [Exit] |
| ULYSSES | We saw him at the opening of his tent: |
| He is not sick. |
| AJAX | Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart: you may call it |
| melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my |
| head, 'tis pride: but why, why? let him show us the | 85 |
| cause. A word, my lord. |
| [Takes AGAMEMNON aside] |
| NESTOR | What moves Ajax thus to bay at him? |
| ULYSSES | Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him. |
| NESTOR | Who, Thersites? |
| ULYSSES | He. | 90 |
| NESTOR | Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument. |
| ULYSSES | No, you see, he is his argument that has his |
| argument, Achilles. |
| NESTOR | All the better; their fraction is more our wish than |
| their faction: but it was a strong composure a fool | 95 |
| could disunite. |
| ULYSSES | The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily |
| untie. Here comes Patroclus. |
| [Re-enter PATROCLUS] |
| NESTOR | No Achilles with him. |
| ULYSSES | The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: | 100 |
| his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure. |
| PATROCLUS | Achilles bids me say, he is much sorry, |
| If any thing more than your sport and pleasure |
| Did move your greatness and this noble state |
| To call upon him; he hopes it is no other | 105 |
| But for your health and your digestion sake, |
| And after-dinner's breath. |
| AGAMEMNON | Hear you, Patroclus: |
| We are too well acquainted with these answers: |
| But his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn, | 110 |
| Cannot outfly our apprehensions. |
| Much attribute he hath, and much the reason |
| Why we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues, |
| Not virtuously on his own part beheld, |
| Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss, | 115 |
| Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish, |
| Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him, |
| We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin, |
| If you do say we think him over-proud |
| And under-honest, in self-assumption greater | 120 |
| Than in the note of judgment; and worthier |
| than himself |
| Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on, |
| Disguise the holy strength of their command, |
| And underwrite in an observing kind | 125 |
| His humorous predominance; yea, watch |
| His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if |
| The passage and whole carriage of this action |
| Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add, |
| That if he overhold his price so much, | 130 |
| We'll none of him; but let him, like an engine |
| Not portable, lie under this report: |
| 'Bring action hither, this cannot go to war: |
| A stirring dwarf we do allowance give |
| Before a sleeping giant.' Tell him so. | 135 |
| PATROCLUS | I shall; and bring his answer presently. |
| [Exit] |
| AGAMEMNON | In second voice we'll not be satisfied; |
| We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you. |
| [Exit ULYSSES] |
| AJAX | What is he more than another? |
| AGAMEMNON | No more than what he thinks he is. | 140 |
| AJAX | Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a |
| better man than I am? |
| AGAMEMNON | No question. |
| AJAX | Will you subscribe his thought, and say he is? |
| AGAMEMNON | No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as | 145 |
| wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether |
| more tractable. |
| AJAX | Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I |
| know not what pride is. |
| AGAMEMNON | Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the | 150 |
| fairer. He that is proud eats up himself: pride is |
| his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; |
| and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours |
| the deed in the praise. |
| AJAX | I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads. | 155 |
| NESTOR | Yet he loves himself: is't not strange? |
| [Aside] |
| [Re-enter ULYSSES] |
| ULYSSES | Achilles will not to the field to-morrow. |
| AGAMEMNON | What's his excuse? |
| ULYSSES | He doth rely on none, |
| But carries on the stream of his dispose | 160 |
| Without observance or respect of any, |
| In will peculiar and in self-admission. |
| AGAMEMNON | Why will he not upon our fair request |
| Untent his person and share the air with us? |
| ULYSSES | Things small as nothing, for request's sake only, | 165 |
| He makes important: possess'd he is with greatness, |
| And speaks not to himself but with a pride |
| That quarrels at self-breath: imagined worth |
| Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse |
| That 'twixt his mental and his active parts | 170 |
| Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages |
| And batters down himself: what should I say? |
| He is so plaguy proud that the death-tokens of it |
| Cry 'No recovery.' |
| AGAMEMNON | Let Ajax go to him. | 175 |
| Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent: |
| 'Tis said he holds you well, and will be led |
| At your request a little from himself. |
| ULYSSES | O Agamemnon, let it not be so! |
| We'll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes | 180 |
| When they go from Achilles: shall the proud lord |
| That bastes his arrogance with his own seam |
| And never suffers matter of the world |
| Enter his thoughts, save such as do revolve |
| And ruminate himself, shall he be worshipp'd | 185 |
| Of that we hold an idol more than he? |
| No, this thrice worthy and right valiant lord |
| Must not so stale his palm, nobly acquired; |
| Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit, |
| As amply titled as Achilles is, | 190 |
| By going to Achilles: |
| That were to enlard his fat already pride |
| And add more coals to Cancer when he burns |
| With entertaining great Hyperion. |
| This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid, | 195 |
| And say in thunder 'Achilles go to him.' |
| NESTOR | [Aside to DIOMEDES] O, this is well; he rubs the
|
| vein of him. |
| DIOMEDES | [Aside to NESTOR] And how his silence drinks up
|
| this applause! | 200 |
| AJAX | If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face. |
| AGAMEMNON | O, no, you shall not go. |
| AJAX | An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride: |
| Let me go to him. |
| ULYSSES | Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel. | 205 |
| AJAX | A paltry, insolent fellow! |
| NESTOR | How he describes himself! |
| AJAX | Can he not be sociable? |
| ULYSSES | The raven chides blackness. |
| AJAX | I'll let his humours blood. | 210 |
| AGAMEMNON | He will be the physician that should be the patient. |
| AJAX | An all men were o' my mind,-- |
| ULYSSES | Wit would be out of fashion. |
| AJAX | A' should not bear it so, a' should eat swords first: |
| shall pride carry it? | 215 |
| NESTOR | An 'twould, you'ld carry half. |
| ULYSSES | A' would have ten shares. |
| AJAX | I will knead him; I'll make him supple. |
| NESTOR | He's not yet through warm: force him with praises: |
| pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry. | 220 |
| ULYSSES | [To AGAMEMNON] My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.
|
| NESTOR | Our noble general, do not do so. |
| DIOMEDES | You must prepare to fight without Achilles. |
| ULYSSES | Why, 'tis this naming of him does him harm. |
| Here is a man--but 'tis before his face; | 225 |
| I will be silent. |
| NESTOR | Wherefore should you so? |
| He is not emulous, as Achilles is. |
| ULYSSES | Know the whole world, he is as valiant. |
| AJAX | A whoreson dog, that shall pelter thus with us! | 230 |
| Would he were a Trojan! |
| NESTOR | What a vice were it in Ajax now,-- |
| ULYSSES | If he were proud,-- |
| DIOMEDES | Or covetous of praise,-- |
| ULYSSES | Ay, or surly borne,-- | 235 |
| DIOMEDES | Or strange, or self-affected! |
| ULYSSES | Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure; |
| Praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck: |
| Famed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature |
| Thrice famed, beyond all erudition: | 240 |
| But he that disciplined thy arms to fight, |
| Let Mars divide eternity in twain, |
| And give him half: and, for thy vigour, |
| Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield |
| To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom, | 245 |
| Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines |
| Thy spacious and dilated parts: here's Nestor; |
| Instructed by the antiquary times, |
| He must, he is, he cannot but be wise: |
| Put pardon, father Nestor, were your days | 250 |
| As green as Ajax' and your brain so temper'd, |
| You should not have the eminence of him, |
| But be as Ajax. |
| AJAX | Shall I call you father? |
| NESTOR | Ay, my good son. | 255 |
| DIOMEDES | Be ruled by him, Lord Ajax. |
| ULYSSES | There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles |
| Keeps thicket. Please it our great general |
| To call together all his state of war; |
| Fresh kings are come to Troy: to-morrow | 260 |
| We must with all our main of power stand fast: |
| And here's a lord,--come knights from east to west, |
| And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best. |
| AGAMEMNON | Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep: |
| Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep. | 265 |
| [Exeunt] |
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: Scenes and Commentary