Page 180 (9.130-163) "A deathsman... help me!"

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— A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.

Greene was talking about lust
Hamlet I.i "He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice" [analysis]
?9 lives: Fortinbras?, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, Hamlet
Hamlet I.v "Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away"

Boer War (1899-1902) khaki

Hamlet V.ii
Swinburne poem


Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.

Joyce's friendship with Byrne coincided with the Boer war, 1899-1902

Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none
But we had spared...

Close quote of Swinburne


Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.



— He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.

cf U25 "Tell us a story, sir. —Oh, do, sir. A ghoststory."

Henry VI, Part 2 IV.7.71 'Unless you be possess'd with devilish spirits, You cannot but forbear to murder me: This tongue hath parley'd unto foreign kings For your behoof,--'

Dickens [ebook]

List! List! O list!

My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.

If thou didst ever...

— What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is king Hamlet?

"as far" (approximate contemporary travel times, 75 miles vs 489 miles)
Henry VIII V.4.65 'I have some of 'em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days' [more]


John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.



Lifted.



— It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.

c1600? a case has been made that Hamlet must take place in late spring because of the flowers Ophelia finds in bloom

other bears were named 'George Stone' and 'Harry Hunks' [more]

Drake died in 1596
Hamlet III.ii "groundlings"
Pericles IV.1.66 'Never was waves nor wind more violent; And from the ladder-tackle washes off A canvas-climber.'



Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.

cf Brandes "Local colour in Hamlet" [ebook]
cf improvised Parable of Plums



— Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts.

(WS lodged from 1598-1604 with Huguenot Christopher Mountjoy, 3/4 mile north of the Globe)


Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!

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mysteries: 1603? WS's route? swanmews location?


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