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?

--But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
impatiently.

Art thou there, truepenny?

--Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I
mean when we read the poetry of _King Lear_ what is it to us how the
poet lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de
l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day,
the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have _King Lear_: and it is
immortal.

Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed.

_Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan
MacLir..._

How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?

Marry, I wanted it.

Take thou this noble.

Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's
daughter. Agenbite of inwit.

Do you intend to pay it back?

O, yes.

When? Now?

Well... No.

When, then?

I paid my way. I paid my way.

Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe
it.

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got
pound.

Buzz. Buzz.

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
everchanging forms.

I that sinned and prayed and fasted.

A child Conmee saved from pandies.

I, I and I. I.

A.E.I.O.U.

--Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries?
John Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid
for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.

--She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She
saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore
his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed
when he lay on his deathbed.

Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into
this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. _Liliata
rutilantium._

I wept alone.

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.

--The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got
out of it as quickly and as best he could