The Search for the Father

Stephen’s relationship to his real father and father-substitutes echoes with allusions to Prince Hal. Hal has exiled himself from his father’s court. Shakespeare never indicates the causes of this separation. The critical reader may infer however that it is because of the taint of illegitimacy upon Henry IV’s reign. Perhaps it is a moral protest against the murder of Richard II. From what is revealed in the Henriad of Hal’s political acumen, it is highly likely that part of the reason is to avoid too close an association with the "previous administration." Henry IV is one of Shakespeare’s classic "guilty kings." He is unable to face the moral consequences of his political machinations. His guilty conscience is glaringly obvious through the elisions in his first words to Hal:

He cannot admit to himself that his usurpation of the throne was an immoral act. Henry Bolingbroke projects his guilt upon his son. He is harsher on Hal, who will become the "legitimate king" through succession, than he is with the rebellious Hotspur who would replay Bolingbroke’s usurpation. All of Hal’s efforts to win the appreciation of his father are quickly overborne by the weight upon Henry IV’s brow. In the Henry IV plays, Hal’s relationship to his own father, and to the substitute father figures of Falstaff and the Chief Justice, dramatizes a symbolic battle for the heart of the English nation.

Stephen is also exiled from his father and family. Simon Dedalus has abandoned the bourgeois role of the patriarch, leaving his family to a slow downward spiral. Stephen has exiled himself not only from his family but from the various social institutions that base their power upon the patriarchal model. Stephen’s interrogation of the role of fatherhood during Bloomsday is, like Hal’s, a questioning of the moral foundations of the institutions that guide his nation.

Shakespeare emphasizes Henry IV’s alienation from Hal by contrasting the King’s opinions of his son with the rich complexities of Hal’s adventures in Eastcheap. The King’s harsh and simplistic criticisms of Hal’s apparent debauchery reveal his complete isolation from his son’s inner life. Both Simon Dedalus and–before their meeting in Circe–Bloom characterize Stephen’s bohemian life with condemnation evocative of the Henriad. Simon Dedalus’ criticism of the influence of Mulligan on Stephen parallels Henry IV’s repeated denunciation of the ill company he perceives to be corrupting Hal. Although Simon’s words are not a literal allusion, he concludes with a famous Falstaffian phrase:

As Schutte (1957, p. 190) notes "I’ll tickle his catastrophe" is from Henry IV, Part 2 (II.i.66). It is spoken by Falstaff when Mistress Quickly makes the first concerted effort to bring the knight to accounts, although this undertaking proves to be as impotent as Simon’s blustering threats. This is, however, the first direct indication by a character other than Stephen that there is more to Mulligan than the charismatic gadfly who has been presented so far. Further evidence will show that this conspicuous allusion linking Mulligan to Falstaff is part of a coherent pattern.

Before he has befriended him, Bloom also perceives Stephen’s friends as a corrupting influence in words that are much closer to Shakespeare: "so grieved he also in no less measure for young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores" (U.14.275-276). This compares very closely with the reminiscences of Hal’s younger days in the opening of Henry V: "Since his addiction was to courses vain, / His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow, / His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports" (Henry V, I.i.54-56). In the Henriad the word "riot" is used exclusively to describe Hal’s dissipation.

Within the parameters of Ulysses’ intertextual reference to the Henriad, John Eglinton, rather than Simon Dedalus or Bloom, becomes the critical father figure with whom Stephen must contend. Eglinton parallels the Lord Chief Justice as the impartial exemplar of sound judgment in an imperfect society. Joyce breaks with the Shakespearean solution, however, because, in the logic of Ulysses, being the best of a corrupt regime is not good enough. Stephen is surely tempted to follow Hal’s course of adopting the Lord Chief Justice as a new father over both his natural father Henry Bolingbroke and his "natural" father Sir John Falstaff. As Schutte (1957) notes, there were numerous qualities of independence, sound critical reasoning, and literary ability that might attract him to Eglinton (p. 44-45). He observes that Eglinton is the target of Stephen’s dialectic:

As will be shown below, as Stephen attacks the institutional ideologies of his society in the National Library, he begins to associate himself with Falstaffian rebellion. Thus Eglinton’s first words to Stephen, "Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with elder’s gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? (U.9.18-19, Italics Added), are an echo of Falstaff’s battle of wits with the Lord Chief Justice:

This quote is from a verbal battle in the street that eventually has the Chief Justice grudgingly playing along with Falstaff’s wit. The epithets describing Eglinton repeatedly call to mind his role as a judge arbitrating the strength of Stephen’s argument: "John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge" (U.9.152). He provides the "jurists" explanation of the significance of the second best bed. (U.9.684-688). Finally, when he attempts to draw Stephen’s conclusion, the attribution is a direct "Judge Eglinton summed up" (U.9.1017).

Stephen reveals, however, that he has already considered Eglinton and found him wanting. Joyce has created an apocryphal country bumpkin father for Eglinton (Gifford & Seidman, 1974, p. 194), who is an embarrassment for the cosmopolitan librarian. Eglinton argues that Shakespeare’s family is not important because "I should say that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation" (U.9.814-816). Stephen immediately diagnoses this proposition as a symptom of Eglinton’s abandoned roots:

Stephen’s words resonate to the Falstaffian questioning of fatherhood; Schutte (1957) notes that the Shakespearean words in this passage, "rough rugheaded kern," "strossers," and "nether stocks" are drawn from the histories that include Hal and Henry IV: Richard II, Henry V, and Henry IV, Part 2 (p. 50n) respectively. For all his critical abilities, Joyce’s Eglinton uses literature as a buffer from the nasty realities of the big wide world. He prefers the country peasants of Wordsworth in his discomfort with his own origins. Eglinton is even more conflicted by real and appropriated fathers than Stephen. This is anathema to Stephen’s aesthetics of art drawn from life. Stephen rebels against such denial by immediately scourging himself with the pain of his own family situation:

Stephen’s scathing appraisal of Best as a fatuous protégé to Eglinton–"Phedo’s toyable fair hair" (U.9.1139)–is a part of his rejection of Eglinton as father substitute. We can see how closely Joyce worked to tie Eglinton and Best together through a passage he had to abandon as untenable. In the original composition, Eglinton joined with Best in the little joke about having the same name as one of Shakespeare’s brothers:

Schutte’s first reason is the correct one. Playing along with the joke is in character for Eglinton’s fatherly/teacherly fondness for Best. Unlike Hal, Stephen does not choose the Lord Chief Justice as a negotiation between usurpation and misrule. Instead, he will interrogate the institutional imperatives that draw their power through association with the signifiers of patriarchy.