How now, thou core of envy?

Achilles
How now, thou core of envy?
Thou crusty botch of nature, what’s the news?
Thersites
Why, thou picture of what thou seemest and
idol of idiot-worshippers, here’s a letter for thee.
Achilles
From whence, fragment?
Thersites
Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.
 Achilles takes the letter and moves aside to read it.

Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough
and one that loves quails, but he has not so
much brain as earwax.

Patroclus
Who keeps the tent now?
Thersites
The surgeon’s box or the patient’s wound.
Patroclus
Well said, adversity. And what need these tricks?
Thersites
Prithee, be silent, boy. I profit not by thy
talk. Thou art said to be Achilles’ male varlet.
Patroclus
“Male varlet,” you rogue! What’s that?
Thersites
Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten
diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures,
catarrhs, loads o’ gravel in the back, lethargies,
cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, whissing
lungs, bladders full of impostume, sciaticas,
limekilns i’ th’ palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
again such preposterous discoveries.
Patroclus
Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou,
what means thou to curse thus?
Thersites
Do I curse thee?
Patroclus
Why, no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson
indistinguishable cur, no.
Thersites
No? Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle
immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarsenet
flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse,
thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such
waterflies, diminutives of nature!
Patroclus
Out, gall!
Thersites
Finch egg!
Achilles, coming forward
My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in tomorrow’s battle.
Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,
A token from her daughter, my fair love,
Both taxing me and gaging me to keep
An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it.
Fall, Greeks; fail, fame; honor, or go or stay;
My major vow lies here; this I’ll obey.
Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent.
This night in banqueting must all be spent.
Away, Patroclus. He exits with Patroclus.
Thersites
With too much blood and too little brain,
these two may run mad; but if with too much brain
and too little blood they do, I’ll be a curer of madmen.
Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough
and one that loves quails, but he has not so much
brain as earwax. And the goodly transformation
of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull—the primitive
statue and oblique memorial of cuckolds, a
thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his
brother’s leg—to what form but that he is should
wit larded with malice and malice forced with
wit turn him to? To an ass were nothing; he is both
ass and ox. To an ox were nothing; he is both ox
and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a
toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without
a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I
would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I
would be, if I were not Thersites, for I care not to be
the louse of a lazar so I were not Menelaus.