The discussion of Shakespeare and theater that dominates Book 9 seemed to set up and lead into a reflective kind of meta-theater enacted by Stephen, Mulligan, Best, and Eglinton. After a couple pages, the narrative starts using epithets, paralleling the Greek prose-poem tradition, for the characters—“beautifulsadness Best,” “ugling Eglinton,” “Monk Mulligan,” “Sonmulligan” (204, 205, 208)—that change according to the role they’re taking on (Buck Mulligan, for example, is at first Monk Mulligan as he intones Latin, but later becomes Sonmulligan when he’s imagining himself to be his own father, clasping his face with “birthaiding hands” (208). As in earlier books, however, the roles assigned and enacted to and by the characters don’t always seem to fit; descriptions in these passages seem discordant and almost nonsensical: Buck Mulligan “gagged sweetly” instead of speaking; all characters “smiled their smiles” (206), a phrase that evokes a kind of strained mechanism.

The role-playing atmosphere also then fits with the play format that’s used for a page: paralleling the discordant role of the descriptions and epithets used earlier, the stage directions seem nonsensical and forced—how does someone speak “A tempo” (209)? I’m not sure at all what that means, but it definitely makes the dialogue seem stiff and unnatural.

Following this passage, I thought the discussion of names was especially meaningful. As Stephen explains it, Shakespeare’s name is “dear to him…dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country” (210). Where Shakespeare’s manipulation of his name is an almost holy revelation, however—“revealed…in the sonnets where this is Will in overplus” (210)—Stephen’s name is a burden, an indication of his spoiled boots and the “holes in his socks” (210). “I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau,” he reflects (211): like Esau, who disguised his voice to claim his brother’s birthright, Stephen finds himself fraudulent and without poetic integrity. Tellingly, when Eglinton calls Stephen a “delusion” and mockingly asks if he believes his own theory (213), Stephen “promptly” replies “No,” voiding any emotional weight or significance his ideas ostensibly held (213).