Monologue

Thersites Monologue from Troilus and Cressida

From Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare

male · sarcastic · 1:46 min

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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 ear-wax; 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 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 fitchook, 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. Hey-day! sprites and fires! Enter Hector, Troilus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Menelaus and Diomedes with lights.

About this piece

Thersites expresses his disdain for the leaders of the Greek army, mocking their intelligence and character while contemplating his own identity in relation to them.

30s · disgust · madness · identity · power · betrayal

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