Achit. Derive this; come.

Ther. 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.

Patr. Why am I a fool?

Ther. Make that demand to the Creator." — It

suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here!

Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, and AJAX.

Achil. Patroclus, I'll speak with nobody.-Come in with me, Thersites.

[Exit.

Ther. 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!

10

[Exit

Aga. Where is Achilles?
Patr. Within his tent; but ill-dispos'd, my lord.

The quarto reads, "Make that demand of the prover." The folio reading makes the sense something clearer, and is more characteristic of the speaker. Prover would seem to mean one who has had experience of thy folly; and one would think that Thersites had such experience from the way he talks.

H.

Patchery is cozenage, roguery; making up something to wheedle or deceive. So in Fox, the Martyrologist: "Blackston being reproved for his false patching, fell in a quaking and shak ing, his conscience belike remorsing him." And in Timon o. Athens, Act v. sc. 1.:

“Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,
Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,
Keep in your bosom; yet remain assur'd,
That he's a made-up villain."

10 The serpigo is a kind of tetter. Act iii. sc. 1, note 6.

H.

See Measure for Measure

H.

11

Aga. Let it be known to him that we are here.
He shent our messengers; and we lay by
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.

Patr.

I shall say so to him. [Exit. Ulys. 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 a cause. - A word, my lord.

[Takes AGAMEMNON aside. Nest. What moves Ajax thus to bay at him? Ulys. Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him. Nest. Who? Thersites?

Ulys. He.

Nest. Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.

Ulys. No; you see, he is his argument, that has his argument, Achilles.

Nest. All the better; their fraction is more our wish, than their faction: But it was a strong composure, a fool could disunite.

12

Ulys. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. Here comes Patroclus.

11 Shent is rebuked, reviled, or abused. See The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. sc. 4, note 7. The quarto bas, He sate;" the folio, He sent, neither of which will stand with the rest of the passage. The emendation is Theobald's. Mr. Collier pro poses, "We sent," and objects to " He shent," that " Achilles had not rebuked any messengers." But how does he know this? If because no mention has been made of it, the objection is equally good against "We sent," for neither has this been mentioned The context strongly favours shent.

12 The folio reads counsel.

B

Re-enter PATROCLUS.

Nest. No Achilles with him.

Ulys. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.'

Patr. Achilles bids me say, he is much sorry, If any thing more than your sport and pleasure Did move your greatness and this noble state14 To call upon him: he hopes it is no other, But, for your health and your digestion sake, An after-dinner's breath."

Aga.

15

We are too well acquainted with these answers;
But his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn,
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;
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

13 It was an old notion that the elephant, "being unable to lie down, slept leaning against a tree, which the hunters observing, do saw it almost asunder; whereon the beast relying, by the fall of the tree, falls also down itself, and is able to rise no more." Thos in The Dialogues of Creatures Moralysed: "The olefawnte that bowyth not the kneys." Thus also in All's Lost by Lust, 1633: "Stubborn as an elephant's leg, no bending in her." The notion continued till the time of Sir Thomas Browne, and is refuted in bis Vulgar Errors.

14 This stately train of attending nobles.

15 Breath for breathing; that is, exercise, relaxation.

Ajax. You whoreson cur!

Ther. Do, do.

[Beating him.

Ajax. Thou stool for a witch!

6

Ther. 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!

[Beating him.

Ther. Mars his idiot! do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.

Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS.

Achil. Why, how now, Ajax! wherefore do you thus?

How now, Thersites! what's the matter, man?
Ther. You see him there, do you?

Achil. Ay; what's the matter?

Ther. Nay, look upon him.

Achil. So I do: what's the matter?

Ther. Nay, but regard him well.

Achil. Well! why, I do so.

Ther. But yet you look not well upon him; for, whosoever you take him to be, he is Ajax.

Achil. I know that, fool.

Ther. Ay, but that fool knows not himself.

tress knock with her foot to call up her attendant, he said, "Hark! madam is punning."

Assinego is the Portuguese diminutive for an ass; and was often used in that sense in the Poet's time.

H.

Ajar. Therefore I beat thee.

Ther. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! his evasions have ears thus long. I have bobb'd 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.

Achil. What?

Ther. I say, this Ajax

Achil. Nay, good Ajax.

[AJAX offers to strike him.

Ther. has not so much wit

Achil. Nay, I must hold you.

Ther. -as will stop the eye of Helen's needle, for whom he comes to fight.

Achil. Peace, fool!

Ther. I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not he there; that he, look you, there.

:

Ajax. O, thou damn'd cur! I shall —

Achil. Will you set your wit to a fool's?

Ther. No, I warrant you; for a fool's will shame it. Patr. Good words, Thersites.

Achil. What's the quarrel?

Ajar. I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenour of the proclamation, and he rails upon me.

Ther. I serve thee not.

Ajax. Well, go to, go to.

Ther. I serve here voluntary.

Achil. Your last service was sufferance, 'twas not voluntary; no man is beaten voluntary: Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress.

Ther. Even so? a great deal of your wit too lies in your sinews, or else there be liars. Hector