Thersites is Shakspeare himself in a cynic masquerade, that he may watch the whole game and be privy to the monstrous immorality. Achilles hangs back from fighting the Trojans, not in anger at the slight of Agamemnon, but rather because he has a secret understanding with one of Priam's daughters. Instead of maintaining consistent political attitudes, almost everybody is carrying on some private transaction of this kind, and the great heroes scramble like boys in a shower of comfits. Pandarus, the disgraceful old uncle of Cressida, who brought her and Troilus together in the same spirit which gave Helen to Paris, and back again coolly to her proper husband, is left at the close of the play to bewail the whole bad issue of the Homeric morals: "A goodly medicine for mine aching bones! O world, world, world! Thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a' work, and how ill requited!"
In the second scene, the heroes swagger across the stage one by one coming from the field, while Pandarus stands by and talks of each in a way to make of them diminutive patterns of militia colonels. Æneas, Antenor, Hector, Paris: "There's a brave man, niece;" "It does a man's heart good." That's Antenor, "And he's a man good enough;" but where is Troilus? "If he see me, you shall see him nod at me;" but see Hector, and, oh, "What hacks are on his helmet!—there be hacks!" His niece says, "Be those with swords?" "Swords? any thing:—an the devil come to him, it's all one, by God's lid;" but there's Troilus; look, niece, there's a man, "and his helm more hacked than Hector's." "Had I a sister were a Grace, or a daughter a Goddess, he should take his choice. Paris is dirt to him." Eh, Cressid, don't you take? So all these scenes pass with a mischievous innuendo pushed forward by the lackey sentences: "I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot." Thus it runs on like a nautical melodrama, or the rattling chaff of "Tom and Jerry," a stream on which the moral disgust of Thersites swims in full view.
When Ajax appears, we are made aware in the first 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:
"Our fire-brand brother, Paris, burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen, and a woe:
Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go."
Troilus flatly says that she is mad. Finally, Hector, though confessing that by every moral law Helen ought to be restored to her husband, thinks it better to hold on to her because she is a spur to valor, and their reputations depend upon preventing the Greeks from carrying their point. It is a discussion of shopkeepers who are aspiring to be actors and couch their speech in high-stepping hexameters.
Pandarus sings to Helen such a bit of frippery that we expect to see them both begin to hop from one foot to the other in the style of the burlesque, as they deliver the chorus of "Oh! oh! ha! ha! hey ho!"
There never was such deliberate absurdity as the fighting in this play. The original draught of it was certainly left untouched by Shakspeare, probably to keep the laugh sustained. It is all done in the vein of Bombastes. "Now, they are clapper-clawing one another," says Thersites; "I'll go look on." Diomedes enters, followed by Troilus, who bids him stand; for, if he took to the river Styx, Troilus would jump in after him. "Stand, forsooth," says Diomedes; "don't flatter yourself I was flying: no, my worthy Trojan, I was only extricating myself from the multitude to get at you,—so come on." They come on, and go off fighting. Pretty soon Diomedes enters with the horse of Troilus, under the pantomimic illusion that he has slain its master. He despatches the horse with a note to Cressida, his new mistress, late the mistress of the late Troilus. But Troilus was no more dead than Falstaff was embowelled; he enters in a fine fume, looking up his horse. There is Ajax bellowing to come to close quarters with him, and Diomedes in the rear bawling in imitation of Ajax, but ironically, because he thinks that Troilus fell by his hand. It is a very unexpected accommodation when Troilus appears, and the three go out fighting. Not a drop of blood is spilt as yet, for these are pasteboard warriors with wind for blood. But now comes Hector meeting Achilles, who goes into a perilous bluster as if the Trojan's last moments had arrived in his person. "Have at thee, Hector." "Very well," says Hector, "why don't you begin?" "Well, no, on the whole, I won't," replies Achilles; "my arms are out of practice, luckily for you; you may go unscathed this time." No sooner has Hector gone, than Achilles slips off to collect a party of his Myrmidons whom he engages to waylay Hector and overcome him by force of numbers. They find him resting with his helmet off, and they butcher him; Achilles crying, "Here he is, that's your man!" Then a retreat is sounded on both sides, as if for fear that some one would get hurt. The whole play breaks up abruptly, and nothing is finished. It seems like a tale told by an idiot, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The sincere lover, Troilus, meeting Pandarus somewhere amid these punchinello combats, invokes ignominy and shame upon the pander's life, and invites posterity to use his name as a designation of a vile profession. Thus we return upon the track of the play's motive, and feel competent to enjoy, without hindrance, the humor and irony which saturate the scenes. Let us notice the character of Ajax, which is scratched all over by Shakspeare's pen.
From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, and not to any distinction in his quality. Malvolio's conceit is Turveydropian and runs to deportment. Even when he grows flighty with the fancy of being Olivia's husband, he still meditates what his great air must be. "I will be point-de-vice the very man: to have the humor of state, and after a demure travel of regard, to ask for my kinsman, Toby. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control." Standing thus posed, if he should undertake to bow, Toby might believe he "saw creases come into the whites of his eyes."