Act 2, Scene 1

The Grecian camp

[Enter Ajax and THERSITES.]
Ajax
811 Thersites!
Thersites
812 Agamemnon—how if he had boils full, an over, generally?
Ajax
813 Thersites!
Thersites
814 And those boils did run—say so. Did not the general run
815 then? Were not that a botchy core?
Ajax
816 Dog!
Thersites
817 Then there would come some matter from him;
818 I see none now.
Ajax
819 Thou bitch-wolf's son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then.
[Strikes him.]
Thersites
820 The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted
821 lord!
Ajax
822 Speak, then, thou whinid'st leaven, speak. I will beat thee
823 into handsomeness.
Thersites
824 I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I
825 think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a
826 prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain
827 o' thy jade's tricks!
Ajax
828 Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.
Thersites
829 Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?
Ajax
830 The proclamation!
Thersites
831 Thou art proclaim'd, a fool, I think.
Ajax
832 Do not, porpentine, do not; my fingers itch.
Thersites
833 I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the
834 scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in
835 Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as
836 slow as another.
Ajax
837 I say, the proclamation.
Thersites
838 Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles; and
839 thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at
840 Proserpina's beauty—ay, that thou bark'st at him.
Ajax
841 Mistress Thersites!
Thersites
842 Thou shouldst strike him.
Ajax
843 Cobloaf!
Thersites
844 He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a
845 sailor breaks a biscuit.
Ajax
846 You whoreson cur!
[Strikes him.]
Thersites
847 Do, do.
Ajax
848 Thou stool for a witch!
Thersites
849 Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more
850 brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinico may tutor thee. You
851 scurvy valiant ass! Thou art here but to thrash Troyans, and thou
852 art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian
853 slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell
854 what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!
Ajax
855 You dog!
Thersites
856 You scurvy lord!
Ajax
857 You cur!
[Strikes him.]
Thersites
858 Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.
[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS.]
Achilles
859 Why, how now, Ajax! Wherefore do you thus?
860 How now, Thersites! What's the matter, man?
Thersites
861 You see him there, do you?
Achilles
862 Ay; what's the matter?
Thersites
863 Nay, look upon him.
Achilles
864 So I do. What's the matter?
Thersites
865 Nay, but regard him well.
Achilles
866 Well! why, so I do.
Thersites
867 But yet you look not well upon him; for who some ever
868 you take him to be, he is Ajax.
Achilles
869 I know that, fool.
Thersites
870 Ay, but that fool knows not himself.
Ajax
871 Therefore I beat thee.
Thersites
872 Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His
873 evasions have ears thus long. I have bobb'd his brain more than
874 he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and
875 his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This
876 lord, Achilles, Ajax—who wears his wit in his belly and his guts
877 in his head—I'll tell you what I say of him.
Achilles
878 What?
Thersites
879 I say this Ajax—
[AJAX offers to strike him.]
Achilles
880 Nay, good Ajax.
Thersites
881 Has not so much wit—
Achilles
882 Nay, I must hold you.
Thersites
883 As will stop the eye of Helen's needle, for whom he
884 comes to fight.
Achilles
885 Peace, fool.
Thersites
886 I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not—
887 he there; that he; look you there.
Ajax
888 O thou damned cur! I shall—
Achilles
889 Will you set your wit to a fool's?
Thersites
890 No, I warrant you, the fool's will shame it.
Patroclus
891 Good words, Thersites.
Achilles
892 What's the quarrel?
Ajax
893 I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenour of the
894 proclamation, and he rails upon me.
Thersites
895 I serve thee not.
Ajax
896 Well, go to, go to.
Thersites
897 I serve here voluntary.
Achilles
898 Your last service was suff'rance; 'twas not voluntary. No
899 man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as
900 under an impress.
Thersites
901 E'en so; a great deal of your wit too lies in your
902 sinews, or else there be liars. Hector shall have a great catch
903 an he knock out either of your brains: 'a were as good crack a
904 fusty nut with no kernel.
Achilles
905 What, with me too, Thersites?
Thersites
906 There's Ulysses and old Nestor—whose wit was mouldy ere
907 your grandsires had nails on their toes—yoke you like draught
908 oxen, and make you plough up the wars.
Achilles
909 What, what?
Thersites
910 Yes, good sooth. To Achilles, to Ajax, to—
Ajax
911 I shall cut out your tongue.
Thersites
912 'Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou
913 afterwards.
Patroclus
914 No more words, Thersites; peace!
Thersites
915 I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids me, shall I?
Achilles
916 There's for you, Patroclus.
Thersites
917 I will see you hang'd like clotpoles ere I come any more
918 to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave
919 the faction of fools.
[Exit.]
Patroclus
920 A good riddance.
Achilles
921 Marry, this, sir, is proclaim'd through all our host,
922 That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,
923 Will with a trumpet 'twixt our tents and Troy,
924 To-morrow morning, call some knight to arms
925 That hath a stomach; and such a one that dare
926 Maintain I know not what; 'tis trash. Farewell.
Ajax
927 Farewell. Who shall answer him?
Achilles
928 I know not; 'tis put to lott'ry. Otherwise. He knew his man.
Ajax
929 O, meaning you! I will go learn more of it.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 812wordplay
“boils full, an over, generally”
Thersites imagines Agamemnon ('the general') covered head-to-toe in boils — playing on 'general' meaning both the commander-in-chief and the word 'general' meaning 'all over, everywhere.' A 'botchy core' is the foul pus at the centre of a boil. The speech is Thersites at his most scurrilous: degrading the supreme Greek general to a diseased carcass.
classical The Greek and Trojan heroes
TLN 820archaic vocab
“The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord”
'Beef-witted' means as stupid as a cow — beef was stereotypically thought to dull the intellect. 'Mongrel' insults Ajax's mixed Greek-Trojan ancestry (his mother Hesione was Trojan, making him Hector's cousin). 'The plague of Greece' may glance at the plague Apollo sent on the Greek army in Iliad Book 1 as punishment for Agamemnon's behaviour.
classical The Greek and Trojan heroes
TLN 825archaic vocab
“thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book”
'Con' means to learn by heart. 'Without book' means without reading from a text — from memory. Thersites says Ajax is so stupid that his horse would master a formal speech sooner than Ajax could memorise even a prayer. 'A red murrain o' thy jade's tricks' piles on the insult: a murrain is a plague or epidemic disease of cattle, and a 'jade' is a worn-out, low-quality horse.
TLN 839classical allusion
“full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina's beauty”
Cerberus was the monstrous three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld — he barked at everything and everyone who passed. Proserpina (Greek Persephone) was the queen of the underworld. Thersites mocks Ajax's resentment of Achilles: Ajax barks uselessly at Achilles's greatness the way Cerberus barks at the queen of the dead — both out of reach and neither troubled in the least.
TLN 850archaic vocab
“an assinico may tutor thee”
'Assinico' (also spelled 'asinico') means a little ass — a small donkey — from Spanish or Portuguese 'asnico.' Thersites is telling Ajax that even a donkey could teach him manners, placing him below one of the proverbially stupid animals. 'Sodden-witted' in the same speech means dull-witted from being boiled, like overcooked meat that has lost all its flavour.
TLN 852archaic vocab
“bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian slave”
To be 'bought and sold' was a proverbial phrase meaning to be cheated, manipulated, or used as a tool by others — treated as a commodity with no will of your own. Thersites is telling Ajax that any man with half a brain has already worked out how to exploit him, as easily as selling a slave. 'Barbarian' originally meant foreign and uncivilised; here it intensifies the degradation.
TLN 868wordplay
“he is Ajax”
Thersites's 'he is Ajax' is a pun on 'a jakes' — Elizabethan slang for a privy or toilet. The joke runs across the whole passage: Ajax cannot understand who he is, and Thersites is answering Achilles's question ('What is the matter?') with a scatological insult — Ajax is a jakes, a lavatory. The joke recurs elsewhere in Shakespeare and was a standard Elizabethan schoolboy pun on the name.
TLN 875archaic vocab
“his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow”
'Pia mater' is Latin for 'tender mother' — the innermost membrane surrounding the brain — and was used in Elizabethan English as a term for the brain itself or its contents (intellect). Thersites is saying Ajax's brain is worth less than one-ninth of a sparrow, the cheapest bird sold in the market ('nine sparrows for a penny'). The insult combines learned medical jargon with market-stall arithmetic to calculate just how worthless Ajax's mind is.
TLN 899historical topical
“you as under an impress”
An 'impress' (or impressment) was compulsory military service — being forcibly pressed into service against your will, as opposed to serving voluntarily. Achilles is mocking Thersites by applying Elizabethan military law to the Trojan War: Thersites claimed he serves voluntarily, but Achilles says the beatings he just received make him a conscript, not a volunteer. Impressment — especially of sailors — was a live grievance in Elizabethan England.
TLN 906rhetorical device
“Ulysses and old Nestor—whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes—yoke you like draught oxen, and make you plough up the wars”
Thersites, briefly at his sharpest, accuses Ulysses and old Nestor of using Achilles and Ajax as dumb work-animals. 'Draught oxen' are plough-oxen, controlled by a yoke — powerful beasts that do all the hard labour while their drivers get the benefit. The image exposes the play's real power structure: the clever men (Ulysses, Nestor) manipulate the mighty men (Achilles, Ajax) for their own ends. This is also a compression of a major theme of the play.
classical Achilles, Patroclus, and the wrath of Achilleshistorical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 922historical topical
“Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun, Will with a trumpet 'twixt our tents and Troy, To-morrow morning, call some knight to arms”
Hector is issuing a formal chivalric challenge: he will stand between the two armies at 'the fifth hour' (about 11 a.m.) and call any Greek champion to single combat. This mirrors the medieval and Elizabethan tradition of trial by combat — a formal, trumpet-heralded duel between champions — applied to the supposedly ancient world of Troy. The challenge's winner was held to have God's (or the gods') favour on his side.
classical The Greek and Trojan heroeshistorical Trial by combat and the gage