Galliford Mahayla (Editions)
Shakespeare and Storytelling: The Text and Paratext of James Joyce’s Ulysses
Ulysses, Fifth Edition (1924), Published by Shakespeare and Company
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, there are at least one hundred references to William Shakespeare himself, his plays, and his works, but the first mention of “Shakespeare” appears in the front matter: the publisher is Shakespeare and Company. The object I selected is the earliest edition of Ulysses that Special Collection holds, a fifth edition from 1924, published by Sylvia Beach’s bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. The publication by Shakespeare and Company is highly significant to my research and the presence of Shakespeare in the novel informed my close reading of Ulysses. The topic I explore is how Shakespeare himself as well as his works appear in Ulysses (specifically “Episode 9: Scylla & Charybdis”), and the first publisher: Shakespeare and Company. The edition I selected is a hardcover and it is bound in leather and wood. The leather takes up approximately one-third of the front cover, while the rest of the cover is wood. The wooden cover is quite possibly painted, and various shades of green are swirled around to create a marbled effect. The top and bottom right corners are covered in the same leather as the binding, perhaps to reinforce the edges of the book. The title and author appear only on the book's spine, not on the front cover. The spine is ornately detailed with evenly spaced gold gilding, and the binding is also embossed with gold. Inside the book, the front matter contains a title page that states: ULYSSES / by / JAMES JOYCE. / SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY / 12, RUE DE L’ODÉON / PARIS / 1924. It is important to note that Ulysses is in a bigger font than Joyce’s name. The title and Joyce’s name take up the first two-thirds of the page while the publisher and information take up the bottom third. “By” and the publication information appear to be in the same size font. These details indicate that the title, Ulysses, is more significant than Joyce’s name and that both Ulysses and Joyce hold more clout than the publishing information. This does not, however, diminish the significance of the connection between Shakespeare, Joyce, and Sylvia Beach’s bookshop.
My rationale for choosing this topic and object comes from an interest in Shakespeare and early modern playbooks, printers, and publications. From the first conversation in class about Ulysses and publication I knew that was an aspect that interested me, partially because of the complex history and different variations that made their way to print, and partly because I wanted to research something related to Shakespeare and Ulysses (as Shakespeare is my research focus for my degree). When I found that Sylvia Beach’s bookshop Shakespeare and Company was the publisher of early editions of Ulysses, I knew that I had to try to weave those pieces together.
The scope of my research permitted a brief commentary on the owner of Shakespeare and Company at the time of the publication of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach, but her relationship to Joyce and her contributions to Ulysses as we know it could be an entire research topic in and of itself, and therefore I focused primarily on the connections between Shakespeare, Joyce, and Beach.
The research questions that drove my work were: in what ways does Shakespeare himself as well as his works appear throughout Ulysses, specifically in Episode 9 “Scylla and Charybdis”? How does the early publication by Shakespeare and Company tie into Shakespeare’s role in the book? From these research questions I began to develop an initial argument that Shakespeare himself and his works appear as a constant generally throughout Ulysses and specifically in Episode 9 “Scylla and Charybdis”; Stephen Dedalus’s rambling theory on Hamlet emphasizes Shakespeare’s complex appearance in the book. The early publication of Ulysses by Shakespeare and Company, whether intentional or not, furthers the significance of Shakespeare’s omnipresence. However, as my literature review provided me with more of an understanding of the scholarship around Joyce’s interactions with and interpretations of Shakespeare’s works, I refined my argument to highlight the layered narrative of Beach, Joyce, and Shakespeare as storytellers, reliant on each other to share and continue their literary legacies. Therefore, I argue that the Shakespearean and storytelling throughlines connect Shakespeare, Joyce, and Beach, and relate the physical object of an early edition of Ulysses that Beach published to the literary text of Ulysses. The theme of storytelling through Shakespeare appears through Joyce’s use of the play-text style “Scylla and Charybdis”, Stephen’s ramblings, and ultimately Beach’s publication of the novel with Shakespeare and Company.
Notable Joycean and Shakespearean Scholarship: Ulysses through a Shakespearean Lens
Shakespeare’s appearance in Ulysses draws much scholarly attention because both Shakespeare's and Joyce’s respective works are put on a pedestal as the best of English literature. While Shakespeare as a figure in Ulysses interests me, I aim to highlight the publication of Ulysses by Shakespeare and Company as further evidence of Shakespeare’s appearance in the novel beyond the text and into the paratextual material, which emphasizes Shakespeare’s significance in both the literary text and physical object of Ulysses.
Shakespeare is a touchstone (pun intended) throughout Ulysses. Specifically, in “Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis” the character Stephen Dedalus provides a flawed analysis of Shakespeare. “Scylla and Charybdis” garners a decent amount of scholarly attention on Shakespeare and Ulysses. For example, scholar Hans Walter Gabler focuses his article on “what in 1916 [Joyce himself] called his Hamlet chapter” (Gabler 183). With the evidence of Joyce’s own words, it is inarguable that Joyce was influenced by Shakespeare and intentionally used his works in Ulysses. Additionally, scholar Benjamin Boysen notes, “Joyce was probably engaged with Shakespeare more broadly and deeply than he was with any other author” (Boysen 160). Boysen’s observation is upheld by Stephen’s convoluted claims on Shakespeare in “Scylla and Charybdis”; even for those well-versed in Shakespeare’s biography and works, the Shakespearean aspects of this episode are complicated to comprehend. However, in John Gordon’s scholarly article “Getting Past No in ‘Scylla and Charybdis’” he boldly “suggest[s] that Joyce would not willingly have wasted his reader’s time…especially in an episode that he considered the final curtain of his book’s first half” (Gordon 501). Gordon’s assertion inspires confidence in attempting to understand “Scylla and Charybdis” and emphasizes Shakespeare’s importance to the novel as Stephen’s reflection must have a purpose, even if it is Joyce playing with Shakespeare’s life and works.
While many scholars have sought to understand Stephen’s ramblings on Shakespeare, I seek to link Shakespeare’s textual and paratextual appearance in the novel by considering “Scylla and Charybdis” as well as the first publisher of Ulysses: Shakespeare and Company. The publication of Ulysses by Shakespeare and Company extends Shakespeare’s influence beyond the text itself and into the paratextual material, furthering Shakespeare’s significance not only to the text but to the entirety of Ulysses.
Paratextual Connections: Shakespeare and Storytelling through Joyce and Beach
The publication of Ulysses by Shakespeare and Company adds a layer of paratextual consideration. Sylvia Beach presumably named her bookstore in Paris Shakespeare and Company because of Shakespeare’s influence in the English-speaking world, and as an English bookshop in France, to the English reader, every other writer is “and company” alongside Shakespeare. Beach had a complex relationship with Joyce, but their friendship encouraged her to pen a letter signed by many notable writers such as TS Eliot and EM Forster to call action against the pirated editions of Ulysses making their way to print, which highlights her influence and connections to the literary world (Beach, Appendix II). Significantly, scholar Charles Rossman tracks Sylvia Beach’s involvement in the publication of Ulysses, noting her part in the “eleven printings and two editions between 1922 and 1930” (Rossman 98). However, in 1927, just five years after Beach’s first publication of Ulysses, she wrote a letter that never made its way to Joyce, wherein she complained of the work Joyce expected her to do and the little respect she felt she received from him (Beach, Appendix III). While it just so happens that the first publisher of Ulysses was called Shakespeare and Company, nevertheless the name of the bookshop furthers Shakespeare’s involvement in the novel as the first instance of Shakespeare appears in the paratextual front matter.
Shakespeare the playwright and poet inspired Joyce’s novel Ulysses which features “Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis” wherein Joyce evokes the style of play and Joyce’s character Dedalus tells stories about Shakespeare; Beach published Joyce’s story with her bookshop Shakespeare and Company. The publication by Beach’s Shakespeare and Company is the first instance of Shakespeare in the novel and introduces Shakespeare’s significance before the story begins. Joyce even notes “William Shakespeare and company, limited” (9.729) during “Scylla and Charybdis” in free indirect discourse, which could quite possibly be attributed to Stephen’s Shakespearean ramblings, contributing to a deeper layered narrative as Joyce mentions Beach’s bookshop in his fictional character’s mind. The publication of Ulysses by Beach’s Shakespeare and Company ties together Joyce’s literary reflections on Shakespeare and the physical object of Ulysses.
The text of Ulysses, specifically “Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis”, plays with the stylistic connection and literary features that comment on or parallel Shakespeare’s works. Stephen’s setup of Hamlet is convoluted and complicated, but it reveals an interesting, layered approach to Ulysses, focusing on storytelling:
The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:
Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit,
bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his own son’s name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince Hamlet’s twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway? (9.164-180)
The essence of what Stephen says is fascinating in the connection of style, literary features, and storytelling as it appears in Ulysses, both in the text and in the idea of Beach’s paratextual contribution. Joyce draws attention to the influence of the play structure through the line “the play begins” (9.164). Stephen makes several comments on the structure of the early modern play by referencing “Burbage, the young player” (9.168) who was part of Shakespeare’s acting company. But instead of taking Stephen’s ramblings on Hamlet at face value, I suggest approaching it as a view on layered storytelling; Beach published Joyce’s Ulysses wherein Stephen tells a story about Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Stephen’s bizarre approach to Shakespeare scholarship is not to be taken seriously, however, his discussion of Shakespeare as a person, his company of players, and the most well-known Shakespeare play highlights Shakespeare’s influence on Joyce’s storytelling, and by extension Stephen’s storytelling. Beach’s publication of Ulysses through Shakespeare and Company officially and authoritatively shared Joyce’s story with the public, thus completing the storytelling arc.
Joyce continues the episode inspired by Shakespeare’s works and near the end of the “Scylla and Charybdis”, the stylistic approach turns from a novel into a play-text, similar to a modern edited edition of a Shakespeare play. Joyce’s play-style approach, complete with features of a play such as capitalized and centred speaker prefixes and bracketed stage directions that appear in italics, parallels a Shakespeare play and emphasizes the significance of Shakespeare in the text:
STEPHEN:
(Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John o’Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. (9.920-927)
Joyce’s style of “Scylla and Charybdis” matches what Stephen discusses; at the most fundamental level of literary analysis, Shakespeare inspires both the content and the form of this episode. Joyce’s turn toward play conventions for a section of this episode reveals further evidence of Shakespearean influence and Beach’s publication of Ulysses under Shakespeare and Company furthers Joyce’s unique approach to storytelling.
Conclusion
Sylvia Beach and James Joyce’s inspirations from Shakespeare as a storyteller connects the physical object of the fifth edition of Ulysses (1924) published by Shakespeare and Company to the literary text because Shakespeare appears both in the paratextual material (contributed by Beach) and the novel itself (written by Joyce). Beach revealed her connection to Shakespeare when she named her bookshop. If we consider the publication of Ulysses by Shakespeare and Company, or paratextual material of this edition, as further evidence of Shakespeare’s omnipresence in the novel, William Shakespeare, James Joyce – by extension, Stephen Dedalus – and Sylvia Beach all connect in an abstract layered narrative through the theme of storytelling. The layered narrative considers paratextual and source material for Ulysses and therefore reveals a deeper understanding of the text as a whole.
Works Cited
Beach, Sylvia and Walsh, Keri. The Letters of Sylvia Beach, New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2010. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.7312/beac14536
Boysen, Benjamin. “On the Spectral Presence of the Predecessor in James Joyce - With Special Reference to William Shakespeare.” Orbis Litterarum, vol. 60, no. 3, 2005, pp. 159–82, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0730.2005.00832.x
Gabler, Hans Walter. “James Joyce’s Hamlet Chapter: Stepping Stone to Scylla and Charybdis.” Joyce Studies Annual, 2021, pp. 178–216. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=202225352733&login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Gordon, John. “Getting Past No in ‘Scylla and Charybdis.’” James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3, 2008, pp. 501–522., https://doi.org/10.1353/jjq.2008.0013
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Gabler et al., Vintage, 2022.
Rossman, Charles. “Introduction: A Special Issue on Editing Ulysses.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 51, no. 1, 2019, pp. 98–103, https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2019.0012