Scylla and Charybdis
“He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather.”
Stephen performs a dazzling, half-serious theory of Hamlet to a circle of Dublin literati. Bloom passes through the library on his own errand.
- Beat 01The 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.
- Beat 02The 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.
- Beat 03Mulligan crashes in
Buck Mulligan arrives, mocks the proceedings, and turns Stephen's theory into a music-hall routine called 'Everyman His Own Wife.'
- Beat 04Bloom 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.
- Beat 05Out 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.
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.
- Scene
- The Library
- Hour
- 2:00 PM
- Organ
- Brain
- Art
- Literature
- Color
- —
- Symbol
- Stratford, London
- Technic
- Dialectic
- Correspondence
- Scylla & Charybdis