ARKCODEX
Act II, Scene 3
1The Grecian camp. Before Achilles’ tent.
2Enter Thersites, solus.
3ThersitesHow 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 bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse dependent on those that war for a placket. I have said my prayers and devil Envy say Amen. What ho! my Lord Achilles!
4Enter Patroclus.
5PatroclusWho’s there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and rail.
6ThersitesIf 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 corse, I’ll be sworn and sworn upon’t she never shrouded any but lazars. Amen. Where’s Achilles?
7PatroclusWhat, art thou devout? wast thou in prayer?
8ThersitesAy: the heavens hear me!
9Enter Achilles.
10AchillesWho’s there?
11PatroclusThersites, my lord.
12AchillesWhere, 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?
13ThersitesThy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, what’s Achilles?
14PatroclusThy lord, Thersites: then tell me, I pray thee, what’s thyself?
15ThersitesThy knower, Patroclus: then tell me, Patroclus, what art thou?
16PatroclusThou mayst tell that knowest.
17AchillesO, tell, tell.
18ThersitesI’ll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus’ knower, and Patroclus is a fool.
19PatroclusYou rascal!
20ThersitesPeace, fool! I have not done.
21AchillesHe is a privileged man. Proceed, Thersites.
22ThersitesAgamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites is a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.
23AchillesDerive this; come.
24ThersitesAgamemnon 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.
25PatroclusWhy am I a fool?
26ThersitesMake that demand of the prover. It suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here?
27AchillesPatroclus, I’ll speak with nobody. Come in with me, Thersites. Exit.
28ThersitesHere 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! Exit.
29Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, and Ajax.
30AgamemnonWhere is Achilles?
31PatroclusWithin his tent; but ill disposed, my lord.
32AgamemnonLet 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.
33PatroclusI shall say so to him. Exit.
34UlyssesWe saw him at the opening of his tent:
He is not sick.
35AjaxYes, 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 cause. A word, my lord. Takes Agamemnon aside.
36NestorWhat moves Ajax thus to bay at him?
37UlyssesAchilles hath inveigled his fool from him.
38NestorWho, Thersites?
39UlyssesHe.
40NestorThen will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.
41UlyssesNo, you see, he is his argument that has his argument, Achilles.
42NestorAll the better; their fraction is more our wish than their faction: but it was a strong composure a fool could disunite.
43UlyssesThe amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. Here comes Patroclus.
44Reenter Patroclus.
45NestorNo Achilles with him.
46UlyssesThe elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.
47PatroclusAchilles 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
But for your health and your digestion sake,
And after-dinner’s breath.
48AgamemnonHear you, Patroclus:
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
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
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,
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.
49PatroclusI shall; and bring his answer presently. Exit.
50AgamemnonIn second voice we’ll not be satisfied;
We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you. Exit Ulysses.
51AjaxWhat is he more than another?
52AgamemnonNo more than what he thinks he is.
53AjaxIs he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better man than I am?
54AgamemnonNo question.
55AjaxWill you subscribe his thought, and say he is?
56AgamemnonNo, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.
57AjaxWhy should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not what pride is.
58AgamemnonYour mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the 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.
59AjaxI do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.
60NestorYet he loves himself: is’t not strange? Aside.
61Reenter Ulysses.
62UlyssesAchilles will not to the field to-morrow.
63AgamemnonWhat’s his excuse?
64UlyssesHe doth rely on none,
But carries on the stream of his dispose
Without observance or respect of any,
In will peculiar and in self-admission.
65AgamemnonWhy will he not upon our fair request
Untent his person and share the air with us?
66UlyssesThings small as nothing, for request’s sake only,
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
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.”
67AgamemnonLet Ajax go to him.
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.
68UlyssesO Agamemnon, let it not be so!
We’ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes
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
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,
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,
And say in thunder “Achilles go to him.”
69NestorAside to Diomedes. O, this is well; he rubs the vein of him.
70DiomedesAside to Nestor. And how his silence drinks up this applause!
71AjaxIf I go to him, with my armed fist
I’ll pash him o’er the face.
72AgamemnonO, no, you shall not go.
73AjaxAn a’ be proud with me, I’ll pheeze his pride:
Let me go to him.
74UlyssesNot for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.
75AjaxA paltry, insolent fellow!
76NestorHow he describes himself!
77AjaxCan he not be sociable?
78UlyssesThe raven chides blackness.
79AjaxI’ll let his humours blood.
80AgamemnonHe will be the physician that should be the patient.
81AjaxAn all men were o’ my mind—
82UlyssesWit would be out of fashion.
83AjaxA’ should not bear it so, a’ should eat swords first: shall pride carry it?
84NestorAn ’twould, you’ld carry half.
85UlyssesA’ would have ten shares.
86AjaxI will knead him; I’ll make him supple.
87NestorHe’s not yet through warm: force him with praises: pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.
88UlyssesTo Agamemnon. My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.
89NestorOur noble general, do not do so.
90DiomedesYou must prepare to fight without Achilles.
91UlyssesWhy, ’tis this naming of him does him harm.
Here is a man—but ’tis before his face;
I will be silent.
92NestorWherefore should you so?
He is not emulous, as Achilles is.
93UlyssesKnow the whole world, he is as valiant.
94AjaxA whoreson dog, that shall pelter thus with us!
Would he were a Trojan!
95NestorWhat a vice were it in Ajax now—
96UlyssesIf he were proud—
97DiomedesOr covetous of praise—
98UlyssesAy, or surly borne—
99DiomedesOr strange, or self-affected!
100UlyssesThank 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:
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,
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
As green as Ajax’ and your brain so temper’d,
You should not have the eminence of him,
But be as Ajax.
101AjaxShall I call you father?
102NestorAy, my good son.
103DiomedesBe ruled by him, Lord Ajax.
104UlyssesThere 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
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.
105AgamemnonGo we to council. Let Achilles sleep:
Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep. Exeunt.