Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/108

 place, that he does not know his letters. He flies into a rage with Thersites because he refuses to read to him the proclamation of Hector's challenge, and they fling the vilest Billingsgate at each other, varied with fisticuffs. They try to outdo each other at a game of epithets. If one says, "Thou mongrel, beef-witted lord," the other says, "Toad-stool." "Porcupine," says one in a way to wither. "Scurvy-valiant ass," retorts the other. So in a later scene these phrases of invective remind us of Shakspeare: "Damnable box of envy;" "thou full dish of fool;" "thou idle, immaterial skein of sleeve silk;" "green sarcenet flap for a sore eye." This, flung at Patroclus, convinces us that the plain of Troy has shrunken to a dog-pit, and we give odds on Thersites. "To be a mule, a cat, a lizard, an owl, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus,—I would conspire against destiny. I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus."

There is a long scene in which the prominent Trojans discuss the policy of returning Helen and getting entirely out of the scrape. Hector says, "Let her go,—any ten Trojans' lives are as dear to us as she; she is not worth what she doth cost the holding." This profit-and-loss view of the case is despised by the rest, especially by Troilus, who is the only consistent person in the play, and who is nobly contrived to keep alive for us the tradition of honor and manhood. Now Cassandra enters to bully like a fish-woman, with arms akimbo: