Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, Be shook to air. ACHILLES Shall Ajax fight with Hector? PATROCLUS Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him. ACHILLES I see my reputation is at stake My fame is shrewdly gored. PATROCLUS O, then, beware;

Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves:

Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger;

And danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when we sit idly in the sun. ACHILLES Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus:

I'll send the fool to Ajax and desire him To invite the Trojan lords after the combat To see us here unarm'd: I have a woman's longing, An appetite that I am sick withal, To see great Hector in his weeds of peace, To talk with him and to behold his visage, Even to my full of view.

Enter THERSITES A labour saved! THERSITES A wonder! ACHILLES What? THERSITES Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself. ACHILLES How so? THERSITES He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing. ACHILLES How can that be? THERSITES Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,--a stride and a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning: bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say 'There were wit in this head, an 'twould out;' and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking.

The man's undone forever; for if Hector break not his neck i' the combat, he'll break 't himself in vain-glory. He knows not me: I said 'Good morrow, Ajax;' and he replies 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think you of this man that takes me for the general?

He's grown a very land-fish, language-less, a monster.

A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin. ACHILLES Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites. THERSITES Who, I? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not answering: speaking is for beggars; he wears his tongue in's arms. I will put on his presence: let Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax. ACHILLES To him, Patroclus; tell him I humbly desire the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarmed to my tent, and to procure safe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon, et cetera. Do this. PATROCLUS Jove bless great Ajax! THERSITES Hum! PATROCLUS I come from the worthy Achilles,-- THERSITES Ha! PATROCLUS Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent,-- THERSITES Hum! PATROCLUS And to procure safe-conduct from Agamemnon. THERSITES Agamemnon! PATROCLUS Ay, my lord. THERSITES Ha! PATROCLUS What say you to't? THERSITES God b' wi' you, with all my heart. PATROCLUS Your answer, sir. THERSITES If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven o'clock it will go one way or other: howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me. PATROCLUS Your answer, sir. THERSITES Fare you well, with all my heart. ACHILLES Why, but he is not in this tune, is he? THERSITES No, but he's out o' tune thus. What music will be in him when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know not; but, I am sure, none, unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on. ACHILLES Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight. THERSITES Let me bear another to his horse; for that's the more capable creature. ACHILLES My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;

And I myself see not the bottom of it.

Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS THERSITES Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance.