Motivation
Scholar Ronan Crowley opined via Twitter regarding, “...a note for ‘Ithaca’ that reads ‘LB’s idea of Hamlet.’ It’s crossed in blue, which suggests usage. Do we also get Bloom’s Hamlet theory in Ulysses?”
I respond: To appreciate “Bloom’s idea of Hamlet” is to recognize not only Joyce’s misdirection in Ithaca but also Joyce’s Shakespearean allusion via a visual joke in Ithaca. Joyce gives his reader "Bloom's idea of Hamlet," which answers affirmatively the posed usage question of the blue colored note under present scrutiny.
What’s the idea of “idea of”?
As to misdirection firstly, one might be overly swayed by Haine’s language whereby “idea of” connotes “a theory.”
One ought not be so swayed. There are seven instances of the phrase “idea of” in Ulysses and only the first two, spoken by Haines, connote “a theory.” The other instances connote, respectively, “a mental map,” “a practice to be realized,” “an image realized mentally,” “an intention” and “a practice realized.”
Search results from Joyce's Ulysses Concordance
Misdirection: Scientific and Artistic Temperaments
As to misdirection secondly, Lenehan establishes in Wandering Rocks that (U10.582-3), “There’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom.”
U10.578-83
Nevertheless, in Ithaca, the temperaments of the duumvirate are contrasted, with the reader inferring that Bloom holds a scientific temperament while Stephen’s is artistic.
U17.559-567
With respect to the play Hamlet, Stephen’s articulated theory in Scylla and Charybdis is biographically grounded and logically argued, as might befit any scientific approach to the question of authorship for the plays attributed to Shakespeare. It is Bloom’s artistic mind, making punning connections in spite of himself, that phrases such a question as a little ham and bacon joke.
U16.777-87
From the text Stephen appears as having a scientific approach while Bloom’s approach appears as artistic, a pun: hence, Joyce’s usual misdirection.
One of Two Keys Joyce Disclosed in Scylla and Charybdis
As to Joyce’s visual allusion it is necessary to recognize that pertinent key (there is another key in the episode) to Ulysses that Joyce stated in Scylla and Charybdis, highlighting that key by the first of four instances of the string “Ulysses” throughout the novel. Shakespeare’s characters of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are highlighted as templates for patterns of relationships among major characters Joyce put into Ulysses.
U9.397-404
It is well known that in Telemachus Joyce highlights for the reader a mapping of the character Stephen Dedalus to the character Prince Hamlet from the play, but he does so in an inverted or contrary way, as one’s shadow is inverted and apart from one’s body:
- While Prince Hamlet grieved a dead father Stephen grieves his deceased mother. I submit these are inverted and unalike as a father is not a mother.
- The ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to the prince atop the
battlements of Elsinore but the specter of Mary Dedalus appears in
Stephen’s nightmare as he sleeps in his quarters of the Martello
Tower. Unalike.
- Prince Hamlet was a student; Stephen is a teacher. Unalike.
James Joyce's room in the James Joyce Tower and Museum
But the stated key directs the reader to (U9.401-2) “look to see when and how the shadow lifts,” that is to examine when and how the pattern is not inverted or not unalike: that the pattern has been lifted, is uninverted, and is alike: e.g., Prince Hamlet donned inky black; Stephen Dedalus wears mourning black. They are thus alike.
Via this pattern of inversion and similarity (being unalike and being alike), other Ulysses characters map to the dramatis personae from Shakespeare, such as:
- King Lear : Simon Dedalus (alike: each has daughters; Lear gives to his elder daughters and slights his youngest, Cordelia; Simon gives his eldest, Dilly, two pennies for milk and a bun, but the other daughters go hungry [but for the nuns’ charity]; unalike: Lear’s youngest Cordelia yet loves her father, but Simon’s youngest, Boody, does not (U.10.292) “—Our father who art not in heaven.”).
- Othello : Bloom (alike: each is married; unalike: Othello’s Desdemona is innocent of adultery but is murdered while Bloom’s Molly is not innocent yet lives).
- Troilus and Cressida : Mulvey and Molly (alike: Cressida escaped the fortress town of Troy through the agency of her father thus forsaking Troilus, while Molly left the garrison town at Gibraltar along with her father, Major Tweedy, thus forsaking the promise of a return by her first, Mulvey; unalike: Cressida was unfaithful to Troilus but Molly remains faithful to Mulvey in her imagination, masturbating and coming to her fantasy of them together on Gibraltar, (U18.1610) “Yes,” at the notorious end of her monologue).
- Pericles Prince of Tyre : the Whore of the Lane (alike: each seemingly lost a daughter and wandered afar from home but later each recognizes that daughter; unalike the prince is Marina’s male parent while the whore is Molly’s female parent, Lunita Laredo [reader, ponder the clue: why had she (U16.714) “begged the chance of his washing”?]).
There are other named Dublin characters Joyce so mapped (and these are left as further exercises for the reader, e.g., to which characters in Shakespeare do Martha Clifford and Henry Flower map and why?).
Visual Joke, Yet Another Joycean Exercise for his Reader
To focus again on the play Hamlet mapped to the novel Ulysses, Stephen is to Prince Hamlet as Bloom is to Polonius (alike: older dispensers of hoary, unsolicited advice and father of each of a son and daughter; unalike: Bloom’s daughter lives yet his son died while Polonius’s son lived after his daughter died; Bloom’s father the suicide but daughter Ophelia was the suicide). Recall from the play Act 3, Scene 4, the Closet Scene, wherein the prince confronts his mother, Gertrude, with Polonius hidden behind the arras but upon his presence being perceived, the prince takes sword in hand.
The Murder of Polonius by Eugène Delacroix
Joyce, for his visual joke, expects the reader to fill in the narrative blanks. Exiting the rear of 7 Eccles Street, guest Stephen, upon eyeing the jakes under starlight, might have remarked something like “Piss, I need to” euphemised in the text as (U17.1186) “At Stephen's suggestion…” to which host Bloom might have replied, “I too; we’ll piss together” euphemised as (U17.1186) “...at Bloom's instigation” because that jakes accommodates but one.
U17.1171-90
I speculate that Joyce expects his reader:
- to picture Stephen as a Prince Hamlet with Bloom as a Polonius together in the garden outside of the jakes;
- to imagine Bloom as dismissing mentally either one's re-entering the house to use the watercloset; and
- to recognize that Bloom's brief thought of "watercloset" would have triggered in Bloom’s artistic mind the Closet Scene from the play Hamlet with (U17.1177-81) Molly, invisible behind the lit screen of roller blind, mapping to a Gertrude.
Shakespeare's scene has been inverted! The female is invisible inside behind the
arras-like screen of roller blind while the two males, their sides contiguous, are together outside, their manhoods in hand.
Ulysses for Dummies, 17, Night
Such a visual joke in episode 17 pairs nicely with another such visual joke in episode 1 (there are others). The Martello Tower is patently phallic; what is ejaculated from a phallus but semen. Where such semen naturally belongs is expressed as (U17.2279) “ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ” of (U1.80) “our great sweet mother” (U1.78) “the snotgreen sea,” represented by the (U1.600) “fortyfoot hole,” into which Mulligan plunges at the conclusion of episode 1. Then and there Mulligan joins other “swimmers” as “sea men,” with Joyce visually punning on “semen” lately come from the phallic tower [pun intended].
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
“Bloom’s idea of Hamlet” is realized, as per the blue color on the note in question, not as a theory but rather as yet another visual joke left by Joyce as an exercise for his reader: an image realized mentally. Q.E.D.
© 2021 Wilson Varga
Acknowledgments
Search results are taken from
Joyce's Ulysses Concordance with that text drawn from gutenberg.org (license) by Andrea Moro, Vanderbilt University, andrea at andreamoro dot net. See:
https://joyceconcordance.andreamoro.net/
The single frame representing episode 17 is from “Ulysses for Dummies.” See:
