Page 2849 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself. [245]

ACHILLES
How so?

THERSITES
He must fight singly tomorrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of
an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing.

ACHILLES
How can that be? [250]

THERSITES
Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock, a stride and a stand; ruminates

like an 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 his head, an ’twould out [255] 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’th’combat, he’ll break’t himself in
vainglory. He knows not me: I said ‘Good morrow, Ajax’ and he [260] 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. [265]

ACHILLES
Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.

THERSITES
Who, I? Why, he’ll answer nobody, he professes not answering; speaking is
for beggars; he wears his tongue in’s arms. I will put on his presence: let
Patroclus [270] make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.

ACHILLES

To him, Patroclus. Tell him I humbly desire the valiant Ajax to invite the most
valorous Hector to come unarmed to my tent, and to procure safe-conduct
[275] for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-
times-honoured captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon, et cetera.