_(He executes a
daredevil
salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole.
coalhole.
James Joyce - Ulysses
Subsequently
he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said,
in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the
information that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined
from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
_(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)_
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: _(Screaming)_ Stop thief! Hurrah there,
Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
SECOND WATCH: _(Produces handcuffs)_ Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my
frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself
as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate
proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery
and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable,
a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether
extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and
eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which,
he said, he could conjure up. He urged me (stating that he felt it
his mission in life to urge me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit
adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(In amazon costume, hard hat,
jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets
with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she
strikes her welt constantly)_ Also me. Because he saw me on the polo
ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of
Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger
Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob
_Centaur. _ This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car
and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold
after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still.
It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as
he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me
to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He
implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise
him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most
vicious horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.
_(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom. )_
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Stamps her jingling spurs in a
sudden paroxysm of fury)_ I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the
pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM: _(His eyes closing, quails expectantly)_ Here? _(He squirms)_
Again! _(He pants cringing)_ I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much so! I'll make it hot for
you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married
man!
BLOOM: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling
glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Laughs derisively)_ O, did you, my
fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your
life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained
for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM: _(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively)_
Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within
an inch of his life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM: _(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien)_ O
cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.
Let me off this once. _(He offers the other cheek)_
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(Severely)_ Don't do so on any account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Unbuttoning her gauntlet
violently)_ I'll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since
he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in
the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a
wellknown cuckold. _(She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air)_
Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?
BLOOM: _(Trembling, beginning to obey)_ The weather has been so warm.
_(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys. )_
DAVY STEPHENS: _Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph_
with Saint Patrick's Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all
the cuckolds in Dublin.
_(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend
John Hughes S. J. bend low. )_
THE TIMEPIECE: _(Unportalling)_
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
_(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle. )_
THE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
_(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a
Nameless One. )_
THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice)_ Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE: _(Snarls)_ Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in assent)_ Most of us thought as
much.
FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH: _(Awed, whispers)_ And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER: _(Loudly)_ Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of
assizes the most honourable. . .
_(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his
arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic
ramshorns. )_
THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! _(He dons the black cap)_ Let
him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and
detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not
at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
black skullcap descends upon his head. )_
_(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay. )_
LONG JOHN FANNING: _(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance)_
Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
_(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A life
preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs
grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. )_
RUMBOLD: _(To the recorder with sinister familiarity)_ Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or
nothing.
_(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron. )_
THE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM: _(Desperately)_ Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. _(Breathlessly)_ Pelvic
basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. _(Overcome with emotion)_ I left
the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may
I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you
want a little more. . .
HYNES: _(Coldly)_ You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH: _(Points to the corner)_ The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM: No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon)_ Liar!
_(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath.
He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten. )_
PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
from natural causes.
_(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously. )_
BLOOM: _(In triumph)_ You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself)_ How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE: O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton,
solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.
Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The
poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that
bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him)_ A lamp. I must satisfy an
animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.
_(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding
a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey,
chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap,
holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies. )_
FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak)_ Namine.
Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone)_ Dignam,
Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(With pricked up ears, winces)_ Overtones. _(He wriggles
forward and places an ear to the ground)_ My master's voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
_(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked. )_
PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
_(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on
fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is
heard baying under ground:_ Dignam's dead and gone below. _Tom Rochford,
robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned
machine. )_
TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows)_ Reuben J. A florin I
find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare)_ My turn now on.
Follow me up to Carlow.
_(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes.
Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid
the rifts of fog a piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house,
listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly about him,
twittering, warbling, cooing. )_
THE KISSES: _(Warbling)_ Leo! _(Twittering)_ Icky licky micky sticky for
Leo! _(Cooing)_ Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! _(Warbling)_ Big comebig!
Pirouette! Leopopold! _(Twittering)_ Leeolee! _(Warbling)_ O Leo!
_(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins. )_
BLOOM: A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
_(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips
down the steps and accosts him. )_
ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slipperslapper. _(Familiarly)_ She's on the job herself tonight
with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for
her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today.
_(Suspiciously)_ You're not his father, are you?
BLOOM: Not I!
ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
_(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over his
left thigh. )_
ZOE: How's the nuts?
BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.
One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE: _(In sudden alarm)_ You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM: Not likely.
ZOE: I feel it.
_(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips. )_
BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
_(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by
note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her
eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens. )_
ZOE: You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM: _(Forlornly)_ I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to. . .
_(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by
the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity nude, white,
still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth
roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes,
strangely murmuring. )_
ZOE: _(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach,
benoith Hierushaloim. _
BLOOM: _(Fascinated)_ I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE: And you know what thought did?
_(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. )_
BLOOM: _(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand)_ Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE: _(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil)_ No bloody
fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM: _(As before)_ Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device. _(Lewdly)_ The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder
of rank weed.
ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: _(In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
tie and apache cap)_ Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh brought
from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of
pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart,
memory, will understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison
a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the
food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!
_(Midnight chimes from distant steeples. )_
THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM: _(In alderman's gown and chain)_ Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say,
from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future.
That's my programme. _Cui bono_? But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in
their phantom ship of finance. . .
AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
_(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps. )_
THE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!
_(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late
thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and
white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.
They nod vigorously in agreement. )_
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
chain and large white silk scarf)_ That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech
be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which
he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the
thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth
designated Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.
BLOOM: _(Impassionedly)_ These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as
they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they?
Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving
apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual
murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts
upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are
grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges
in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for
rever and ever and ev. . .
_(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends_ Cead Mile Failte _and_ Mah Ttob
Melek Israel _Spans the street. All the windows are thronged with
sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the
royal Dublin Fusiliers, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the Cameron
Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back
the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts,
telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings,
rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the cloud appears. A
fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The
beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and
waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high,
surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession
appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of
Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the
mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish
representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth
of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the
saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop
of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of
Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William
Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief
rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist,
methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society
of friends. After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands
with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper
canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers,
chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers,
Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers,
undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters,
assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers,
fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository
hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers,
egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After
them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter,
Gold Stick, the master of horse, the lord great chamberlain, the earl
marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's
iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.
Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph
Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with
ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove,
the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson
tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. Wild excitement. The
ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed
with essences. The men cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with
branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes. )_
BLOOM'S BOYS:
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH: _(Murmurs)_ For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
scarcely looks thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest
reformer. Hats off!
_(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly. )_
A MILLIONAIRESS: _(Richly)_ Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN: _(Nobly)_ All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST: _(Masculinely)_ And done!
A BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
_(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest. )_
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your undoubted
emperor-president and king-chairman, the most serene and potent and very
puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!
ALL: God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM: _(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and
Connor, with dignity)_ Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(In purple stock and shovel hat)_
Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your
judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM: _(Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears)_ So may the
Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's
head) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. _ Leopold,
Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!
_(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He
ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put
on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ
church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar
fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic
designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and
genuflecting. )_
THE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly
worship.
_(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless
intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception
of message. )_
BLOOM: My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated
our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess
Selene, the splendour of night.
_(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black
Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her
head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst of
cheering. )_
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: _(Raises the royal standard)_ Illustrious Bloom!
Successor to my famous brother!
BLOOM: _(Embraces John Howard Parnell)_ We thank you from our heart,
John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of
our common ancestors.
_(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The
keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows
all that he is wearing green socks. )_
TOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do
we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the
left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering
their warcry _Bonafide Sabaoth_, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear!
he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said,
in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the
information that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined
from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
_(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)_
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: _(Screaming)_ Stop thief! Hurrah there,
Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
SECOND WATCH: _(Produces handcuffs)_ Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my
frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself
as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate
proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery
and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable,
a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether
extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and
eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which,
he said, he could conjure up. He urged me (stating that he felt it
his mission in life to urge me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit
adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(In amazon costume, hard hat,
jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets
with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she
strikes her welt constantly)_ Also me. Because he saw me on the polo
ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of
Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger
Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob
_Centaur. _ This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car
and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold
after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still.
It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as
he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me
to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He
implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise
him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most
vicious horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.
_(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom. )_
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Stamps her jingling spurs in a
sudden paroxysm of fury)_ I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the
pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM: _(His eyes closing, quails expectantly)_ Here? _(He squirms)_
Again! _(He pants cringing)_ I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much so! I'll make it hot for
you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married
man!
BLOOM: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling
glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Laughs derisively)_ O, did you, my
fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your
life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained
for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM: _(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively)_
Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within
an inch of his life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM: _(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien)_ O
cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.
Let me off this once. _(He offers the other cheek)_
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(Severely)_ Don't do so on any account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Unbuttoning her gauntlet
violently)_ I'll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since
he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in
the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a
wellknown cuckold. _(She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air)_
Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?
BLOOM: _(Trembling, beginning to obey)_ The weather has been so warm.
_(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys. )_
DAVY STEPHENS: _Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph_
with Saint Patrick's Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all
the cuckolds in Dublin.
_(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend
John Hughes S. J. bend low. )_
THE TIMEPIECE: _(Unportalling)_
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
_(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle. )_
THE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
_(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a
Nameless One. )_
THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice)_ Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE: _(Snarls)_ Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in assent)_ Most of us thought as
much.
FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH: _(Awed, whispers)_ And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER: _(Loudly)_ Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of
assizes the most honourable. . .
_(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his
arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic
ramshorns. )_
THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! _(He dons the black cap)_ Let
him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and
detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not
at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
black skullcap descends upon his head. )_
_(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay. )_
LONG JOHN FANNING: _(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance)_
Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
_(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A life
preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs
grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. )_
RUMBOLD: _(To the recorder with sinister familiarity)_ Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or
nothing.
_(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron. )_
THE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM: _(Desperately)_ Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. _(Breathlessly)_ Pelvic
basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. _(Overcome with emotion)_ I left
the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may
I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you
want a little more. . .
HYNES: _(Coldly)_ You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH: _(Points to the corner)_ The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM: No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon)_ Liar!
_(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath.
He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten. )_
PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
from natural causes.
_(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously. )_
BLOOM: _(In triumph)_ You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself)_ How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE: O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton,
solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.
Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The
poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that
bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him)_ A lamp. I must satisfy an
animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.
_(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding
a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey,
chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap,
holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies. )_
FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak)_ Namine.
Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone)_ Dignam,
Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(With pricked up ears, winces)_ Overtones. _(He wriggles
forward and places an ear to the ground)_ My master's voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
_(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked. )_
PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
_(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on
fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is
heard baying under ground:_ Dignam's dead and gone below. _Tom Rochford,
robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned
machine. )_
TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows)_ Reuben J. A florin I
find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare)_ My turn now on.
Follow me up to Carlow.
_(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes.
Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid
the rifts of fog a piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house,
listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly about him,
twittering, warbling, cooing. )_
THE KISSES: _(Warbling)_ Leo! _(Twittering)_ Icky licky micky sticky for
Leo! _(Cooing)_ Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! _(Warbling)_ Big comebig!
Pirouette! Leopopold! _(Twittering)_ Leeolee! _(Warbling)_ O Leo!
_(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins. )_
BLOOM: A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
_(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips
down the steps and accosts him. )_
ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slipperslapper. _(Familiarly)_ She's on the job herself tonight
with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for
her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today.
_(Suspiciously)_ You're not his father, are you?
BLOOM: Not I!
ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
_(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over his
left thigh. )_
ZOE: How's the nuts?
BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.
One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE: _(In sudden alarm)_ You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM: Not likely.
ZOE: I feel it.
_(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips. )_
BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
_(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by
note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her
eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens. )_
ZOE: You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM: _(Forlornly)_ I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to. . .
_(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by
the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity nude, white,
still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth
roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes,
strangely murmuring. )_
ZOE: _(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach,
benoith Hierushaloim. _
BLOOM: _(Fascinated)_ I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE: And you know what thought did?
_(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. )_
BLOOM: _(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand)_ Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE: _(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil)_ No bloody
fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM: _(As before)_ Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device. _(Lewdly)_ The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder
of rank weed.
ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: _(In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
tie and apache cap)_ Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh brought
from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of
pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart,
memory, will understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison
a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the
food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!
_(Midnight chimes from distant steeples. )_
THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM: _(In alderman's gown and chain)_ Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say,
from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future.
That's my programme. _Cui bono_? But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in
their phantom ship of finance. . .
AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
_(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps. )_
THE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!
_(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late
thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and
white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.
They nod vigorously in agreement. )_
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
chain and large white silk scarf)_ That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech
be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which
he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the
thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth
designated Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.
BLOOM: _(Impassionedly)_ These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as
they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they?
Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving
apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual
murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts
upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are
grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges
in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for
rever and ever and ev. . .
_(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends_ Cead Mile Failte _and_ Mah Ttob
Melek Israel _Spans the street. All the windows are thronged with
sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the
royal Dublin Fusiliers, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the Cameron
Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back
the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts,
telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings,
rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the cloud appears. A
fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The
beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and
waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high,
surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession
appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of
Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the
mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish
representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth
of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the
saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop
of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of
Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William
Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief
rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist,
methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society
of friends. After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands
with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper
canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers,
chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers,
Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers,
undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters,
assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers,
fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository
hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers,
egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After
them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter,
Gold Stick, the master of horse, the lord great chamberlain, the earl
marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's
iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.
Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph
Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with
ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove,
the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson
tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. Wild excitement. The
ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed
with essences. The men cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with
branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes. )_
BLOOM'S BOYS:
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH: _(Murmurs)_ For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
scarcely looks thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest
reformer. Hats off!
_(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly. )_
A MILLIONAIRESS: _(Richly)_ Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN: _(Nobly)_ All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST: _(Masculinely)_ And done!
A BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
_(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest. )_
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your undoubted
emperor-president and king-chairman, the most serene and potent and very
puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!
ALL: God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM: _(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and
Connor, with dignity)_ Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(In purple stock and shovel hat)_
Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your
judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM: _(Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears)_ So may the
Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's
head) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. _ Leopold,
Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!
_(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He
ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put
on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ
church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar
fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic
designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and
genuflecting. )_
THE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly
worship.
_(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless
intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception
of message. )_
BLOOM: My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated
our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess
Selene, the splendour of night.
_(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black
Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her
head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst of
cheering. )_
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: _(Raises the royal standard)_ Illustrious Bloom!
Successor to my famous brother!
BLOOM: _(Embraces John Howard Parnell)_ We thank you from our heart,
John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of
our common ancestors.
_(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The
keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows
all that he is wearing green socks. )_
TOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do
we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the
left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering
their warcry _Bonafide Sabaoth_, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear!
