Page 2888 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Finch-egg!

ACHILLES
My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in tomorrow’s battle. [35]
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; honour or go or stay; [40]

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
With too much blood and too little brain, [45] 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 earwax; and the goodly transformation of Jupiter

there, his [50] 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 [55] and ox. To

an ox were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a car, 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 [60] care not to be the louse of

a lazar so I were not Menelaus. − Hoyday! Spirits and fires!

Enter Hector, Troilus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Menelaus,
Diomedes, with lights.

AGAMEMNON
We go wrong, we go wrong.

AJAX