<SPEECH 1><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<23%>
	Agamemnon, how if he had boils? full, all over, generally?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 2><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	And those boils did run? Say so, did not the general run then? were not that a botchy core?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 3><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	Then would come some matter from him: I see none now.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 4><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 5><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness: but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? a red murrain o' thy jade's tricks!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 6><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 7><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 8><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	I would thou didst itch from head to foot, and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab of Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 9><ACT 2><SCENE 1><23%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina's beauty, ay that thou barkest at him.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 10><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	Thou shouldst strike him.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 11><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<24%>
	He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 12><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Do, do.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 13><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego may tutor thee: thou scurvy-valiant ass! thou art here but to thrash Trojans; and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel, and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 14><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	You scurvy lord!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 15><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Mars his idiot! do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 16><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	You see him there, do you?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 17><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Nay, look upon him.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 18><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Nay, but regard him well.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 19><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	But yet you look not well upon him; for, whosoever you take him to be, he is Ajax.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 20><ACT 2><SCENE 1><24%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Ay, but that fool knows not himself.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 21><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! his evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones: I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth part 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.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 22><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<25%>
	I say, this Ajax,—
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 23><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	Has not so much wit—
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 24><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	As will stop the eye of Helen's needle, for whom he comes to fight.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 25><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not: he there; that he; look you there.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 26><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	No, I warrant you; for a fool's will shame it.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 27><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	I serve thee not.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 28><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	I serve here voluntary.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 29><ACT 2><SCENE 1><25%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	Even so; 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: a' were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 30><ACT 2><SCENE 1><26%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	There's Ulysses and old Nestor, whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes, yoke you like draught-oxen, and make you plough up the wars.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 31><ACT 2><SCENE 1><26%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	Yes, good sooth: to, Achilles! to, Ajax! to!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 32><ACT 2><SCENE 1><26%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	'Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou afterwards.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 33><ACT 2><SCENE 1><26%>
<THERSITES>	<26%>
	I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids me, shall I?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 34><ACT 2><SCENE 1><26%>
<THERSITES>	<27%>
	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.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 35><ACT 2><SCENE 3><32%>
<THERSITES>	<33%>
	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 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, 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 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 Neapolitan bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse dependant on those that war for a placket. I have said my prayers, and devil Envy say Amen. What, ho! my Lord Achilles!

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 36><ACT 2><SCENE 3><33%>
<THERSITES>	<34%>
	If I could have remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation: but 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 out says thou art a fair corpse, I'll be sworn and sworn upon't she never shrouded any but lazars. Amen. Where's Achilles?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 37><ACT 2><SCENE 3><33%>
<THERSITES>	<34%>
	Ay; the heavens hear me!

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 38><ACT 2><SCENE 3><33%>
<THERSITES>	<34%>
	Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, what's Achilles?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 39><ACT 2><SCENE 3><33%>
<THERSITES>	<34%>
	Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me, Patroclus, what art thou?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 40><ACT 2><SCENE 3><33%>
<THERSITES>	<34%>
	I'll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus' knower; and Patroclus is a fool.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 41><ACT 2><SCENE 3><33%>
<THERSITES>	<34%>
	Peace, fool! I have not done.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 42><ACT 2><SCENE 3><34%>
<THERSITES>	<35%>
	Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites is a fool; and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 43><ACT 2><SCENE 3><34%>
<THERSITES>	<35%>
	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 Patroclus is a fool positive.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 44><ACT 2><SCENE 3><34%>
<THERSITES>	<35%>
	Make that demand to the Creator. It suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 45><ACT 2><SCENE 3><34%>
<THERSITES>	<35%>
	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 the subject! and war and lechery confound all!
<STAGE DIR>
<Exit.>
</STAGE DIR>

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 46><ACT 3><SCENE 3><56%>
<THERSITES>	<58%>
	A wonder!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 47><ACT 3><SCENE 3><57%>
<THERSITES>	<58%>
	Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 48><ACT 3><SCENE 3><57%>
<THERSITES>	<58%>
	He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 49><ACT 3><SCENE 3><57%>
<THERSITES>	<58%>
	Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock, a stride and a stand; ruminates like a hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say 'There were wit in this head, an 'twould out;' and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i' the combat, he'll 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 opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 50><ACT 3><SCENE 3><57%>
<THERSITES>	<58%>
	Who, I? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not answering; speaking is for beggars; he wears his tongue in his arms. I will put on his presence: let Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 51><ACT 3><SCENE 3><57%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Hum!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 52><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Ha!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 53><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Hum!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 54><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Agamemnon!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 55><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Ha!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 56><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	God be wi' you, with all my heart.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 57><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven o'clock it will go one way or other; howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 58><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Fare you well, with all my heart.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 59><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	No, but he's out o' 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.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 60><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Let me bear another to his horse, for that's the more capable creature.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 61><ACT 3><SCENE 3><58%>
<THERSITES>	<59%>
	Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance.
<STAGE DIR>
<Exit.>
</STAGE DIR>
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 62><ACT 5><SCENE 1><78%>
<THERSITES>	<79%>
	Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot-worshippers, here's a letter for thee.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 63><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<79%>
	Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 64><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<79%>
	The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 65><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<80%>
	Prithee, be silent, boy: I profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 66><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<80%>
	Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 67><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<80%>
	Do I curse thee?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 68><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<80%>
	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.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 69><ACT 5><SCENE 1><79%>
<THERSITES>	<80%>
	Finch egg!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 70><ACT 5><SCENE 1><80%>
<THERSITES>	<80%>
	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 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 fitchew, 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! spirits and fires!

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 71><ACT 5><SCENE 1><81%>
<THERSITES>	<81%>
	Sweet draught: 'sweet,' quoth a'! sweet sink, sweet sewer.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 72><ACT 5><SCENE 1><81%>
<THERSITES>	<82%>
	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.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 73><ACT 5><SCENE 2><82%>
<THERSITES>	<83%>
	And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she's noted.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 74><ACT 5><SCENE 2><82%>
<THERSITES>	<83%>
	Roguery!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 75><ACT 5><SCENE 2><82%>
<THERSITES>	<83%>
	A juggling trick,—to be secretly open.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 76><ACT 5><SCENE 2><84%>
<THERSITES>	<84%>
	How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 77><ACT 5><SCENE 2><84%>
<THERSITES>	<84%>
	Now the pledge! now, now, now!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 78><ACT 5><SCENE 2><84%>
<THERSITES>	<85%>
	Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 79><ACT 5><SCENE 2><85%>
<THERSITES>	<85%>
	Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not me
	Pleases me best.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 80><ACT 5><SCENE 2><86%>
<THERSITES>	<86%>
	A proof of strength she could not publish more,
	Unless she said, 'My mind is now turn'd whore.'
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 81><ACT 5><SCENE 2><86%>
<THERSITES>	<87%>
	Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 82><ACT 5><SCENE 2><87%>
<THERSITES>	<88%>
	He'll tickle it for his concupy.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 83><ACT 5><SCENE 2><88%>
<THERSITES>	<88%>
	Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus would give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery: nothing else holds fashion. A burning devil take them!
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 84><ACT 5><SCENE 4><92%>
<THERSITES>	<92%>
	Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I'll go look on. That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same scurvy doting foolish young knave's sleeve of Troy there in his helm: I would fain see them meet; that that same young Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish whoremasterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, on a sleeveless errand. O' the other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals,—that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved worth a blackberry: they set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles; and now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day; whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion. Soft! here comes sleeve, and t' other.

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 85><ACT 5><SCENE 4><93%>
<THERSITES>	<93%>
	Hold thy whore, Grecian! now for thy whore, Trojan! now the sleeve, now the sleeve!
<STAGE DIR>
<Exeunt Troilus and Diomedes, fighting.>
</STAGE DIR>

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 86><ACT 5><SCENE 4><93%>
<THERSITES>	<93%>
	No, no, I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 87><ACT 5><SCENE 4><93%>
<THERSITES>	<93%>
	God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck for frighting me! What's become of the wenching rogues? I think they have swallowed one another: I would laugh at that miracle; yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I'll seek them.
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 88><ACT 5><SCENE 7><96%>
<THERSITES>	<96%>
	The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now, bull! now, dog! 'Loo, Paris, 'loo! now, my double-henned sparrow! 'loo, Paris, 'loo! The bull has the game: 'ware horns, ho!
<STAGE DIR>
<Exeunt Paris and Menelaus.>
</STAGE DIR>

</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 89><ACT 5><SCENE 7><96%>
<THERSITES>	<97%>
	What art thou?
</THERSITES>

<SPEECH 90><ACT 5><SCENE 7><96%>
<THERSITES>	<97%>
	I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard begot, 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 judgment. Farewell, bastard.
</THERSITES>

