| [Alarums: excursions. Enter THERSITES] | |
| THERSITES | Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I'll go look on. That dissembling abominable varlets 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 whore-masterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand. O' the t'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 worthy 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. |
| [Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following] | |
| TROILUS | Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx, I would swim after. |
| DIOMEDES | Thou dost miscall retire: I do not fly, but advantageous care Withdrew me from the odds of multitude: Have at thee! |
| THERSITES | Hold thy whore, Grecian!--now for thy whore, Trojan!--now the sleeve, now the sleeve! |
| [Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES, fighting] | |
| [Enter HECTOR] | |
| HECTOR | What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match? Art thou of blood and honour? |
| THERSITES | No, no, I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave: a very filthy rogue. |
| HECTOR | I do believe thee: live. |
| [Exit] | |
| THERSITES | God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck for frightening 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. |
| [Exit] |