Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy...
STEPHEN: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago,
Richard Crookback, Edmund in _King Lear_, two bear the wicked uncles’
names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his
brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.
BEST: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don’t want Richard, my name
...
_(Laughter)_
QUAKERLYSTER: (_A tempo_) But he that filches from me my good name...
STEPHEN: _(Stringendo)_ He has hidden his own name, a fair name,
William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old
Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it
in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John o’Gaunt his
name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a
bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus,
dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What’s in
a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the
name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at
his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in
the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the
recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the
stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the
bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight
returning from Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.
Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
And from her arms.
Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
Read the skies. _Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos._ Where’s your
configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: _sua donna.
Già: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D._
—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a
celestial phenomenon?
—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
What more’s to speak?
Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
_Stephanos,_ my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my
feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
—You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name is
strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Me, Magee and Mulligan.
Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
_Pater, ait._ Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing
be.
Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
—That’s very interesting because that brother motive, don’t you know,
we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three
brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t you know, the fairytales. The
third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best
prize.
Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
The quaker librarian springhalted near.
—I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you
to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps
I am anticipating?
He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
An attendant from the doorway called:
—Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...
—O, Father Dineen! Directly.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
John Eglinton touched the foil.
—Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund.
You kept them for the last, didn’t you?
—In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
Lapwing.
Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him, then
Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They
mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.
Lapwing.