Episode IX
Scylla and Charybdis
He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather.
2:00 PM, National Library of Ireland. Style: Dialectic.
Summary
Stephen performs a dazzling, half-serious theory of Hamlet to a circle of Dublin literati. Bloom passes through the library on his own errand.
- 1
The library circle
In the Quaker Lyster's office at the National Library, Stephen holds forth on Shakespeare to AE (George Russell), John Eglinton, and the librarian Best.
- 2
The Hamlet theory
Stephen argues — half-believing it, half-performing — that Hamlet is autobiographical: Shakespeare is the ghost; the dead king is the father he lost; the unfaithful queen is Anne Hathaway.
- 3
Mulligan crashes in
Buck Mulligan arrives, mocks the proceedings, and turns Stephen's theory into a music-hall routine called 'Everyman His Own Wife.'
- 4
Bloom passes by
Bloom appears briefly in the library lobby on his Keyes-ad errand. Stephen and Bloom pass each other for the first time in the book, almost without noticing.
- 5
Out into the street
Stephen and Mulligan leave together; Stephen privately registers that he believes none of his own theory and that Mulligan has stolen his audience.
Gabler lines 9.1–1225
How Scylla and Charybdis unfolds, scene by scene
This is a map, not a recap. The episode is an argument in a library: Stephen advances a theory of Shakespeare while the literary men of Dublin resist it. The map tracks the theory's rise, its audience's rejection, and Bloom passing silently between the two young men at the door.
In the National Library, Stephen sets out his case that Shakespeare wrote out of a wound: Ann Hathaway's betrayal and the death of his son.
1. The Quaker librarian and Goethe
lines 1–100Lyster praises Wilhelm Meister's hesitating soul, and the room settles into comfortable literary chat.
Why it matters:The establishment's taste is set up first so Stephen's theory has something to break against.
2. Stephen's Shakespeare: the ghost and the father
lines 100–300Stephen argues Shakespeare played the ghost in Hamlet, speaking as a dead father to a dead son named Hamnet.
Why it matters:Paternity as a legal fiction is the book's governing idea; this is where it is stated outright.
Notice:“Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man.” Bloom and Stephen are being defined in advance.
3. Ann Hathaway in the cornfield
lines 200–440Stephen insists Shakespeare was seduced and wounded first, and that the wound produced the plays.
Why it matters:Biography is being used as a key to art, and the room knows it is a stunt even as it listens.
4. AE and the Platonists
5. Mulligan's entrance
6. The invitation Stephen does not get
7. The dynastic ending
8. “No.”
9. Bloom between them
The shape underneath
Scylla and Charybdis runs performance → resistance → disavowal → crossing. The episode is Stephen's high point of intellect and his low point of belonging, and its real event happens in the doorway rather than the argument. Everything the theory says about lost sons and unrecognised fathers is about to be tested in the flesh. See the Homeric parallel below for the two hazards Stephen is steering between.
In modern prose
Two in the afternoon, in the National Library, and we're back with Stephen — who is on stage. In front of a small audience of Dublin's literary establishment (a poet, a librarian, a Theosophist or two) he spins out a long, dazzling, half-serious theory that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet out of his own life: that he was the cuckolded ghost-father, not the avenging young prince, and that the play is about a man who has lost a son and been betrayed by his wife. The other men prod and parry, partly admiring him, partly hoping he'll trip. Buck Mulligan turns up and tries to puncture the whole performance. Stephen is showing off, but he's also working something out: he's circling, without admitting it, the idea that fatherhood matters more than biology, that an older man who has lost a son and a younger man who has effectively lost a father might recognise each other. While he's talking, Bloom passes through the library on a small errand and Stephen clocks him without registering him. The chapter is the most intellectually dense in the book — today it would read as a brilliant podcast guest going slightly too long — but the real action is underneath: Stephen is rehearsing, in code, the relationship the rest of the day is going to offer him.
Context and parallels
The Linati and Gilbert schemas
- Scene
- The Library
- Hour
- 2:00 PM
- Organ
- Brain
- Art
- Literature
- Colour
- —
- Symbol
- Stratford, London
- Technic
- Dialectic
- Correspondence
- Scylla & Charybdis
Project Gutenberg, public domain.
Further reading
Guides, essays and Daily Companion days that go further into Scylla and Charybdis.
- Beginner's guide to UlyssesWhere to start, and how to keep going.
- How to read UlyssesPractical ways through the book's hardest stretches.
- All 18 episode summariesSee where this episode sits in the whole day.
- Daily Companion, Day 57: Inside the National Library, among literary menThe scene moves to the National Library, where Stephen holds forth on his theory of Hamlet before a small audience: the poet AE (George Russell), the librarian Mr Lyster, and John Eglinton.
- Daily Companion, Day 63: The ghost in HamletStephen turns to Hamlet itself, and to the eerie fact that Shakespeare himself is said to have played the Ghost, the dead king, rather than the young prince.
- Daily Companion, Day 68: Leaving the library, Bloom passes between themAs Stephen and Mulligan head out, laughing together again despite everything, they pass through the library's doorway just as Leopold Bloom is quietly leaving too.
- Who's who in UlyssesLeopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and the cast of Dublin.
- Themes in UlyssesThe ideas that run beneath every episode.
- Dublin locations in UlyssesWhere National Library of Ireland sits on Bloom's day.