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Tuesday 28 January 2020

Thursday, 23 January 2020, Episode 5 (5.138 - 5.402)

The reading stopped at "Quis est homo." (5.402)

Summary:

M'Coy finally moves away after telling Bloom, "My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet" (5.148) and asking him to put down his name at Patty Dignam's funeral if he is not there because the drowning case at Sandycove may turn up (5.171). We had heard of the drowning case in episode 1.
Bloom is finally left in peace. He strolls towards Brunswick street. His eyes wander over the multicoloured hoardings (5.192) at the corner of Westland Row and Great Brunswick street. One of them is the playbill of the play Leah with Mrs Bandmann Palmer. (Mrs Bandmann Palmer (1845-1926) was a famous English actress.) Bloom recollects that she had played Hamlet the previous night. That a woman had played Hamlet, makes him wonder at first whether Hamlet was a woman. (Perhaps he was a woman. (5.196)) This thought leads to the next whether that was the reason that Ophelia committed suicide. Thinking of 'suicide' naturally makes Bloom remember his father, who had committed suicide.
Walking on, Bloom comes to a secluded spot near the Westland Row railway station, where he opens the letter he had collected earlier at the post office. The letter addressed to Henry Flower by Martha has a flower pinned to it. Now it is clear that Bloom is carrying on an affair under the assumed name of Henry Flower with Martha, whom he is yet to meet! Could meet one Sunday after the rosary (5.270). The pin which Martha has used brings back to his memory a song he had once heard, O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers. . . (5.281)
This song resurfaces again in Bloom's thoughts - suppose he [the priest] lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to do to. (5.372) - once he comes near the open backdoor of All Hallows (5.318) and enters the church. (All Hallows aka St. Andrew's is a Roman Catholic church on Westland Row.) The paragraphs that follow describing Bloom's observing the rituals which are being conducted involving members of a sodality, and his reactions to what he sees are some of the most hilarious paragraphs in Ulysses.

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