In contrast to the psychological interrogation of the role of fatherhood in Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Henriad investigates the socio-political importance of the father in the development of the hero. As the above list of particulars proposes, I have found that there is a consistent pattern of parallel dramatic techniques, themes, and allusions in Ulysses suggesting that Joyce was using the plays of the Henriad as an intertextual allusion to the struggle of Stephen Dedalus in coming to terms with the cultural signifier of the father.

Stephen and Prince Hal are alike in their frustration at proving their potential in the circumstances they find themselves in. Each is locked into a society ruled by illegitimate usurpers. They can take no action in the present to fulfill their own destinies lest they become collaborators in the present regime. Both are estranged from their natural fathers by circumstances that tie their exiles to the moral upheaval of their country. For Stephen and Hal, the search for a father substitute and an understanding of the role of fatherhood is an analysis of the moral foundations of their respective nations.

I will explore the character of Buck Mulligan as he is a Falstaff to Stephen’s Prince Hal. Ironically, Mulligan’s clowning and mockeryper seare only tangential to my analysis. As studies of Mulligan’s clowning (Bell, 1987; Glasheen, 1977; Hayman, 1967) have noted, his "art" is essentially criticism, mockery, and imitation. It does not bear comparison with the superhuman invention of Falstaff’s wit. Instead, for my purposes, Mulligan evokes Falstaff through his dramatic and thematic relationship to Stephen as a friend, antagonist, and teacher.

I will finally argue that as Hal takes what he has learned from Falstaff and appropriates it for his own purposes, Stephen will apply his experiences with Mulligan to his own objectives in "Scylla and Charybdis." Both Stephen and Hal must come to a decision about the role of the father. Their strategies are parallel but in the end they will make choices particular to their own times. Upon the death of Henry Bolingbroke, Hal chooses the Lord Chief Justice as his new father; in doing so he rejects the medieval power politics of Henry IV for the rule of law. With Salic law on his side, Henry V conquers France as a machiavellian and not as a warlord. In Stephen’s case, he breaks his vow of silence, and habit of inaction, in order to challenge the guardians of intellectual ideology in the National Library. He rejects not only his father, and the world of his fathers, but the role of fatherhood as well. Stephen, rather than Mulligan, demonstrates the full range of Falstaffian intellect through his catechism of the function of fatherhood in maintaining institutional hierarchies.