Part 59 (1/2)

Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is another member of his family who is recorded.

--The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste, quake, quack.

Door closed. Cell. Day.

They list. Three. They.

I you he they.

Come, mess.

STEPHEN: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old age told some cavaliers he got a pa.s.s for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time ma.s.s he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William.

MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What's in a name?

BEST: That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake. _(Laughter)_

BUCKMULLIGAN: (_Piano, diminuendo_)

_Then outspoke medical d.i.c.k 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 Ca.s.siopeia, the rec.u.mbent 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, meac.o.c.k. Who will woo you?

Read the skies. _Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos._ Where's your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: _sua donna.

Gia: di lui. gelindo risolve di non amare_ S. D.

--What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial phenomenon?