Shakespeare · Soliloquies & Solo Speeches
Production Notes
Thersites — the Greek army’s official scold, filthy-mouthed and probably brilliant — delivers himself of a furious comic rant against Ajax and Achilles, neither of whom he can touch and both of whom he despises. The speech is a masterpiece of impotent rage: Thersites wants to conjure the gods to curse the fools around him, and his imprecations grow more elaborate and more absurd as the speech progresses.
Thersites is the play’s truth-teller, but he tells it in the most corrosive possible terms. Players who find the genuine outrage underneath the comedy — who actually feel how stupid they find Ajax and Achilles — will unlock the speech’s energy.
Script
THERSITES
How now, Thersites? What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me, and I rail at him. O, worthy satisfaction! Would it were otherwise, that I could beat him whilst he railed at me. ’Sfoot, I’ll learn to conjure and raise devils but I’ll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. Then there’s Achilles, a rare enginer! If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods; and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if you take not that little, little, less than little wit from them that they have, which short-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without drawing their massy irons and cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the whole camp! Or rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache! For that, methinks, is the curse depending on those that war for a placket. I have said my prayers, and devil Envy say “Amen.”
Facilitator Notes
Warm-up: Find something genuinely infuriating — not performed rage, but real exasperation. Let Players locate that feeling before they begin.
Debrief prompts:
- Thersites talks to himself as though he’s also an audience member watching himself: “How now, Thersites?” What does self-address do in a solo speech?
- The accumulation of gods — Jove, Mercury — builds to a curse that is more absurd than powerful. Does Thersites know his curses won’t work? Does it matter?
- “I have said my prayers, and devil Envy say Amen.” Thersites ends with a kind of savage satisfaction. What has he achieved in this speech?
- Thersites is always right about the people he hates. Does that make him admirable or insufferable?