We read as far as "... womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came." (Penguin 518.29), (Gabler 14.490)
Things start to get a bit calmer as we move from the above Elizabethan style of writing to John Bunyan's style in Pilgrim's Progress.
We are still witnesses to the drinking bash of a group of young people in a room of the maternity hospital in Holles Street. Mr. Bloom is also present. The young ones are drunk. An young nurse has come in and asked them to be quiet, as after all it is a hospital.
Stephen is extremely drunk. In what is reminiscent of the earlier episode in the library, Stephen is being very voluble. He is making liberally allusions not only to the old testament (for example: ... even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten, Penguin 514.16) but he is also referring to other well known (and also not so well known) works of poets (for instance, Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont, Penguin 513.13) , writers, philosophers (for instance, to Thus spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, Penguin 513.31) etc. Naturally Shakespeare makes an appearance in the references to the secondbest bed, to Hamlet and his father.
What does Stephen want to achieve with his 'lecture'? Can one, who is so very drunk, talk so incessantly and for so long? Even if he can and does have the knack to go off on topics that are obviously of little interest to the people around him, could we, the readers, feel comfortable with what we read on these pages? Things start to fall into place if one can accept that what we are confronted with here is really memories (Special thanks to Ashraf Noor for this explanation.) Memories of the book, memories of mankind's past, memories of history. What we read here are not just examples of Stephen's scholarship. Rather what we are offered here are snippets from Joyce's repertoire. Stephen, after all, turns out to be a mere peg on which Joyce hangs his ideas.
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| (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress#/media/File:Christian_in_Pilgrim%27s_Progress.jpg) |
Stephen's oratory is interrupted by Punch Costello. As he recites George Burleigh's parody of the nursery rhyme, 'The house that Jack built', thunder is heard from outside. Just like Joyce in real life, Stephen too is scared of thunder. (... the braggart boaster - i.e-. Stephen - cried that an old Nobodaddy - i.e., god - was in his cups... But the was only to dye his desperation... ) Bloom tries to calm him down, explaining in his typical manner the cause of thunder as a natural phenomenon! But Bloom's words do not succeed in quietening Stephen's fear. .. he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could bot be words be done away (Penguin 516.19)
As storm rages outside the hospital, the style of the episode changes yet again, this time to that of Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist. And the happenings of the day, Thursday sixteenth June are summarized.
