The last reading stopped at: “smoothsliding Mincius.” (9.1124)
Summary:
Stephen starts narrating how Shakespeare brought his own family into his plays: “. . . his mother's name lives in the forest of Arden” (setting of As you Like it), his dead son Hamnet cast as Hamlet, his wife, Ann Hathaway as Cleopatra, Cressida and Venus, bringing finally into the picture the three brothers of William Shakespeare, Gilbert, Edmund and Richard. Mr Best, whose first name is Richard, is very keen that Stephen says a good word for Richard. John Eglinton too wants to hear what he has to say about Richard and Edmund. Suddenly the discussion takes on the form of a play. After all as Hamlet said and Buck Mulligan quotes, “The play's the thing!”
Stephen then thinks of his own brother (Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ Hall), who for him was like a whetstone (a stone used to sharpen knives, here one's own wits) along with later friends like Cranly (See, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), Mulligan, etc. Incidently this little paragraph offers one of the many proofs scattered around in the book that Stephen is modelled on Joyce himself. James Joyce's brother, Stanislaus, worked in a apothecary, and was like a whetstone for Joyce.
Even though Stephen himself laughs at the end of his argument (to free his mind from his mind's bondage), even though Buck Mulligan intervenes with one of his, apparently, irrelevant comments, the mood here is sombre. It also contains two profound sentences everyone knows but does not always think about: “Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves” (9.1044)
“No”, Stephen answers on being asked by Eglinton whether he believes in his own theory. What Stephen really means by this no is worth pondering about. In any case, Eglinton is relieved, perhaps because then Stephen cannot expect any payment for his theory even if he writes it down for publication in the magazine Dana.
(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)
