Mulligan and Falstaff

The Rejection of Mulligan

The social similarities of Hal and Stephen are self-evident. Both spend their exile with a witty, larger-than-life companion. Their relationships are based upon drinking, verbal combat, and the deconstruction of the social codes within which they live. Finally, both must leave their companions because of conflicting moral outlooks and personal destinies. The Hal/Falstaff relationship is informative to Ulysses at the level of more technical dramatic issues as well. First, it provides a parallel technique to the development–or, more correctly, dissection–of Mulligan’s character in the course of the novel. Second, there are strong parallels between the matter and method of what Hal learns from Falstaff and what Stephen learns from Mulligan in the course of their relationships.

Stephen’s rejection of Mulligan will dog his thoughts throughout the day. The motivation for the dissolution of the Hal/Falstaff and Stephen/Mulligan friendships are portrayed through the same dramatic means. For all that has been written about the friendship of Hal and Falstaff, it is surprising to return to the Henry IV plays and be reminded of how little of it is actually shown. Hal and Falstaff share only three scenes before the prince is called to his father in Act III. After this the orbits of the two begin their inexorable journeys towards their separate destinies.

Stephen Dedalus almost inevitably strikes the first-time reader of Ulysses as being a total prig. This impression probably would have been much less severe if the structure of Ulysses had, as with Hal and Falstaff, allowed for a few more scenes to be played out between Stephen and Mulligan before the former makes his resolution to leave. Although the rejection of Falstaff is difficult, it has been prepared for; we have seen the change and understand its cause, even if we do not particularly like the result. In Ulysses, we know nothing of "the night in Camden hall" (U.9.1192), we only encounter the soured friendship and the decision in the morning. At the outset, the reader only encounters Stephen’s rejection and judges him as he judges himself: "He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all" (U.3.451-452). As the day goes on however, there will be more matter with which to evaluate the relationship.

Ulysses highlights the personality differences that divide Stephen and Mulligan. Further reflection will reveal that although each criticizes the other, most of the verbal criticism is delivered by Mulligan against Stephen. Stephen’s critique of Mulligan takes place almost exclusively within his interior monologue. It is only through deeper observation of behavior that we begin to understand the dynamics of the relationship that lead to Stephen’s estrangement. Like Falstaff with Hal, Mulligan can not–or will not–understand or respect the higher ideals, and the need for integrity to those ideals, that drive Stephen. He can only see it as a dogmatic abstinence: "you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected the wrong way" (U.1.208-209). Mulligan would have Stephen prostitute his wit to Haines in order to "touch him for a guinea" (U.1.155). Likewise, he will later chide Stephen for not subordinating his critical integrity to the patronage of Lady Gregory. The metaphysical rift between them is also a part of the "seas between" (U.9.1202) that Stephen observes in their relationship. Mulligan constantly berates Stephen–and not vice-versa–for his insistence on seeing the world as anything more than the sum total of its atoms. He claims to see the death of Stephen’s mother as "a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter" (U.1.206-207). Yet Stephen is careful to note that it is not Mulligan’s lack of respect for the metaphysical that offends him in this particular case:

If it was not the statement that Stephen’s mother "is beastly dead" that is the matter, the obvious conclusion is that the offense comes from referring to him as "O, it’s only Dedalus (U.1.198-199). Given so little knowledge about the failing friendship of Stephen and Mulligan, the reader can only interpret Stephen’s attitude as the height of egotism. After the reader knows more of Mulligan there will be motivation to see this slight as part of a larger problem with his personality.

The presentation of Mulligan’s character follows a course that is similar to that of Falstaff in the Henry IV plays. The brilliant and witty personality of Falstaff that overpowers most of Part 1 is gradually chipped away in Part 2. Through a series of slightly more and more uncomfortable scenes, the audience is exposed to the unsavory realities of Falstaff’s pursuit of pleasure and self over all else. From his insults of Hal when he thinks the prince is not within hearing (Henry IV, Part 2, II.iv.263-265) to his more egregious abuse of the conscription press and cozening of Justice Shallow, Shakespeare gradually convinces the audience that although Falstaff’s realm of misrule is a "pleasant place to visit, you wouldn’t want to live there.’

As the day goes on, Joyce uses a similar dramatic technique to gradually whittle away at the reader’s perception of Mulligan’s personal appeal. By the time the reader encounters him in the D.B.C., his "honeying malice" (U.9.1087) begins to taste quite sour. He has just arrived from his haranguing of Stephen in the library and relates as much to Haines:

This scene gives the reader an idea of Mulligan’s total lack of personal loyalty to Stephen–or to anyone else who is out of earshot and makes a good target. Mulligan’s conversation with Haines is not the personal cutting down that is a part of witty repartee. He makes no effort whatsoever to counter Haines’ assumption that Stephen is a babbling monomaniac. The point that personal integrity has larger social implication is further cudgeled home by the interposition of the sailor’s plaintiff "England expects . . . " as Mulligan plays his role for the Englishman Haines. Haines’ proper British politeness sounds more sympathetic than Mulligan:

In the same manner, Mulligan was entirely on Stephen’s side when Haines was absent: "God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you’re not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford" (U.1.51-53). Again, when Mulligan leaves the library, he immediately switches from antagonizing Stephen to libeling John Eglinton. Mulligan measures the social standing of the people around him and reinforces that pecking order with his mockery. We wonder more at Mulligan’s psyche than his humor from the way he needs to vent his mockery at Eglinton as soon as the librarian is no longer in his presence:

At this late point the reader may begin to question the moral values required to be a person who can please everyone. In this reappraisal one may remember such passing early details as the fact Mulligan has stolen his shaving mirror from the serving girl–"her name is Ursula" (U.1.140). Falstaff had an Ursula; before he heads off to the second rebellion, he recalls her as one "whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceiv’d the first white hair of my chin" (Henry IV, Part 2, I.ii.284-287). Mulligan’s Ursula had reason to keep her mirror despite its crack. She is in all probability too poor to buy a better one. He gives no more thought to robbing her than that, because she is so plain, "It does her all right" (U.1.138-139).

Shakespeare well understood this technique of bathos when he used it to contrast Hal and Falstaff. Hal’s "redeeming time" soliloquy, coming as early as it does in the plays, is far less characterization than it is a cue to the audience of his dramatic purpose in giving us too much Falstaff:

Joyce also indicated that he intended to have Mulligan’s character gradually diminished by excess. When Budgen (1934) first read "Scylla and Charybdis," Joyce asked specifically what he thought of Mulligan. When Budgen told him "He is as witty and entertaining as ever," he reports that Joyce replied "He should begin to pall on the reader as the day goes on" (p. 115-116).

Joyce gives his readers a full helping of Mulligan and allows them to decide on how lasting a friendship can be with a man whose personal philosophy amounts to "Why don’t you play them as I do? To hell with them all" (U.1.505). With Mulligan as a foil, Stephen’s bloody-minded consistency to his ideals gains a grudging respectability in the comparison.

Fools Versus Clowns

In the comparison with Falstaff, Mulligan embodies the physical elements of the character far more than the intellectual. The facility of his wit comes from the fact that it requires little invention. His mockery is the art of putting a mustache and glasses on the picture of a face. His powers of invention never come close to the heights attained by the Fat Knight. When Hal overhears Falstaff running him down, Falstaff explains his action with cunning and humor:

When Mulligan is caught out with his "beastly dead" remark, he is flustered: "A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan’s cheek" (U.1.200-201). The reader can always see the origin of Mulligan’s ideas; in contrast, Falstaff delights in the occasional quip that is incomprehensible to his fellow characters. Mulligan will mock pieties, but only because they are there to be knocked down. He never seems to understand the fundamental ideologies and power relations that lie beneath the institutions he simultaneously mocks and plays up to. When he chides Stephen with a simple allusion from Wilde, Stephen returns with a synthesis of Wilde that cuts closely upon Mulligan’s social role: "It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant" (U.1.146). Mulligan’s response is an immediate retreat from combat:

Mulligan never shows the intellectual craftiness that allows the Shakespearean übermensch to live entirely beyond the mores of society. Falstaff is an archetypical fool; he can move amongst the classes untouched because he is beyond them. As Harold Bloom (1986) notes, he does not want land, or station, or power: "Ideally he wants nothing except the audience, which he always has; who could watch anyone else on stage when Ralph Richardson was playing Falstaff?" (p. 61). All his world orbits around his great belly. He cannot be called out on the truths and mores that bind the society around him because he understands those truths better than his accusers. His humor deconstructs the reasons to be serious. He can catechize on honor and give its absolute value. At the battle of Shrewsbury–when the choice is between honor or death at the hands of Douglas–he throws away honor in a moment. In another moment, he sees that honor might bring some reward, especially when it can be easily stolen from Hal. So he takes up honor–and Hotspur’s body–and claims Hal’s victory as his own. Bloom posits that:

Mulligan’s humor never flies to such heights. While he is clowning and mocking he is always a character rooted in his world. His humor is a personal defense against the serious social compromises he must make to maintain his rather comfortable position. His mind flees the implications of his actions. Stephen sends the telegram accusing him of just this vice: "The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done" (U.9.550-551). Mulligan’s only response is to mock on.

Mulligan as a Teacher

For all that Mulligan’s wit is bound firmly to the earth, there is much that Stephen learns from him. Stephen has put so much effort into extricating himself from the ties that would bind that he needs Mulligan in order to understand those who have chosen the path of inclusion. As Hal did with Falstaff, Stephen gains from Mulligan insight into a Socratic questioning of the order of their fathers’ world. Shakespeare made several allusions to parallel Falstaff with Socrates. Allen Bloom (1993) points out that this was to draw out the contention of Hal with the sins of his father: "The impious relationship of Hal and Falstaff, and the pious relationship between Hal and his father, pretty much represent the essential tension between philosophy and obedience to the ancestral so central to the life of Socrates" (p. 406). The description of Falstaff growing cold from the feet up as he dies parallels the description of Socrates’ death in the Phaedo. When Hal is playing Henry IV, he calls Falstaff "that villainous abominable misleader of youth" (Henry IV, Part 1, II.iv.455-456). When Falstaff has a battle of wits with the Lord Chief Justice, the latter states that he is "well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way" (Henry IV, Part 2, II.i.107-109). Bloom notes that this is the ordinary accusation against Socrates, that "he makes the worse argument appear the better. And this is not merely an empty accusation. Both Socrates and Falstaff practice such an art, which gives them freedom from conventional reasoning" (p. 407). Falstaff’s bitingly funny analyses of power politics serve Hal well when he ascends to the throne. In contrast to his father’s guilt-driven paralysis, Hal reappropriates the calculating cunning that Falstaff used to play institutions into fulfilling his pleasures in order to run his realm as a true machiavellian. In like manner Stephen will learn from Mulligan, but put that knowledge to his own uses.

In response to Henry IV’s final harangue on the iniquitous life of Hal, Warwick pleads:

This is only partly true; there is little doubt that Hal truly enjoyed parts of his experiences in Eastcheap. In fact, this description is far better suited to Stephen’s relationship with Mulligan. Stephen occasionally laughs with Mulligan in spite of himself, and he probably did it a lot more earlier in their relationship. But with his philosophy of "You will not be master of others or their slave" (U.3.295-296), Stephen is much more likely to see Mulligan’s creed of "Why don’t you play them as I do?" (U.1.505) as a "strange tongue" to be filed and catalogued under experience.

Negative experiences can of course be portals of discovery. In "Scylla and Charybdis," Stephen includes Mulligan in his list of "whetstones": "Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him, then Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock to try you. Act. Be acted on." (U.9.977-979). The inclusion of the librarians in the list indicates that membership on it is not necessarily a laurel. Shakespeare only uses "whetstone" once as a metaphor for sharpening one’s wits; in As You Like It, Celia comments on the entry of Touchstone into a conversation:

For all the antics of Hal and Falstaff, Hal’s education is a serious matter of preparation for his destiny. The scofflaw Falstaff taught Hal by example the practical realities of how success was to be gained under Henry IV’s illegitimate and unsteady reign. Hal also learns Falstaff’s dialectical critique of the medieval institutions that entrap his father’s generation. Falstaff uses his wit to play people and institutions to his own ends. Hal appropriates Falstaff’s methods to play those entities to the service of his state.

Like Falstaff, Mulligan is extraordinarily successful in negotiating the demands of Ireland’s bourgeois power structure. Mulligan teaches Stephen how an intelligent, Catholic urbanite must play the game among Ireland’s divided, competing loyalties. Whereas Stephen’s future remains an enigma, Joyce gives the reader a clear vision of Mulligan’s potential for the future in the appropriately bourgeois style of Eumeus:

Mulligan is climbing his way up through the nets that Stephen has rejected. Mulligan is not, however, the character to analyze the deeper institutional ideologies that he faces. Stephen must do that heavy lifting on his own. In Mulligan, Stephen may observe all the crawling required to succeed in Dublin: Study for a "real job"; Do not bite the hand that feeds you; Be nice to people who you may despise, because they may help you out one day. Currying favor with rich Englishmen like Haines does not hurt either. Most importantly, Mulligan knows how to get along with the Anglo-Irish.

Buck Oldcastle

As Falstaff was Hal’s guide to the underclass pagans of Eastcheap, Mulligan provides Stephen with an entree to the upper-class, Anglo-Irish Protestants of Dublin. Falstaff the knight descended from his class to live amongst the revelers of the Boar’s Head; Mulligan the Roman Catholic has fallen upstairs to the cloistered halls of the Irish National Library and has become a welcomed member of the Irish Literary Revival. "Scylla and Charybdis" makes clear the level of his acceptance amongst these strangers. There is even an indication that it was Mulligan who first piqued Eglinton’s interest in Stephen’s theories (U.9.369-371).

Mulligan’s Protestant connection reinforces his parallel to Falstaff. Falstaff’s character was deeply tied to contemporary issues of Protestantism and even Puritanism. Falstaff’s words echo with allusions to Saint Paul and play out complex subtexts to the play on sixteenth century issues of redemption (Wells and Birkinshaw, 1986). His words are larded with direct scriptural allusions: "Falstaff does quote extensively from Scripture; of the fifty-four biblical references identified in 1 Henry IV, twenty-six ‘come from the mouth of Falstaff’" (Poole, 1995, p. 65). Poole shows that Falstaff is not merely mocking Puritan ideas of his time, but is characterized in the manner of sixteenth century stage-Puritans. It is even probable that he was meant to remind audiences of the stage adaptations of Martin Marprelate. Will Kemp, who had played Marprelate before the subject was banned from the stage, most likely was the comedian responsible for creating the role of Falstaff.

It is well known that Falstaff was originally based on the historical figure of Sir John Oldcastle. Foxe’s Acts and Monuments promoted Oldcastle, against stiff ideological opposition, as an important protomartyr of English Protestantism. Oldcastle’s apotheosis was, however, a very deliberate political construction. Brandes (1899) notes the contrast between Shakespeare’s creation and the original:

Stephen directly alludes to his–and thus Joyce’s–knowledge of the Lollard movement in his "proof" that Shakespeare was a Jew (U.9.784-786). Oldcastle adds to Falstaff the themes of betrayal of the Catholic Church, betrayal of one’s nation, championing of Protestantism, and the manipulation of appearances by ideological forces.

The Body Politic

The Henriad plays and Ulysses use Falstaff and Mulligan, respectively, to gauge the mind of the nation. It is a commonplace of Shakespeare criticism that Falstaff embodies the misrule of England under Henry IV’s unsteady reign. The ascendancy of the "false king" and his freedom to disregard laws follows apace the rise of rebellion in the kingdom as a whole. Hal’s final choice of the Chief Justice as his "father" over the far more entertaining Falstaff vindicates the new king and symbolizes England’s return to legitimacy. In the process Shakespeare conflates public opinion with the personal choice of a strong, legitimate King, but that is a part of Shakespeare’s way with kings.

Mulligan is likewise a barometer of Ireland’s misplaced political and moral sensibilities. We have seen how he can move amongst the Anglo-Irish. Haines the Englishman gets on smashingly with Mulligan. Mulligan is the one invited to the meeting of the literati at Moore’s, while Stephen is repeatedly slighted. Mulligan constantly draws the attention of the librarians from Stephen’s discourse. Perhaps the most blatant incident comes when Stephen raises the question of the homoerotic address of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The narrative highlights the snub by first emphasizing the adroitness of Eglinton’s quick comment "–As an Englishman, you mean, . . . he loved a lord" (U.9.660-661). Stephen compliments Eglinton’s unexpectedly quick wit with his thought of "Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them" (U.9.662). Mulligan, meanwhile, has his own bit of "spontaneity" to add. He interrupts with his quotation of Dowden several minutes later, despite the fact that Stephen’s argument, and the conversation, has moved on to different pastures. Topicality notwithstanding, the librarians interrupt Stephen to admire Mulligan’s citation. As he watches the infinite deference given to Mulligan, Stephen ponders his poor estate: "Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?" (U.9.740). Like the intellectuals, the peasant milkwoman also prefers Mulligan: "Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights" (U.1.418-419). Schutte (1957) deftly sums up the appreciation shown for Mulligan, "The Ireland of 1904 honors only the priest of the beastly world whose charms are potent to drive away a beastly death" (p. 97), but, again, he does not find Stephen to embody the alternative to this worship of soulless materialism. Schutte never even broaches the possibility that Stephen is constructing an argument against serious ideological and political entrenchment.