In Proteus Stephen imagines his aunt's family
spying out at a supposed "dun" (a bill collector) "from a
coign of vantage," i.e. an advantageous
corner. The phrase comes from the scene in Shakespeare's Macbeth
in which King Duncan and his cohort ride up to Macbeth's
castle. Stephen's mulling of this phrase seems to have some
influence on his decision not to pay the Gouldings a visit.
The King remarks that "This castle hath a pleasant seat" and
that the air strikes the senses "Nimbly and gently." Banquo
agrees that "the heaven's breath / Smells wooingly here," and
he observes that martins nest all over the walls of the
castle: "no jutty, frieze, / Buttress, nor coign of
vantage, but this bird / Hath made his pendant bed
and procreant cradle. / Where they most breed and haunt, I
have observ'd / The air is delicate" (1.6.1-8).
The thought of birds peering out of their pendant (i.e.,
hanging) beds pops into Stephen's mind, perhaps quite
innocuously, when he thinks of his aunt's family peering down
from cracks in the shuttered windows to see if a "dun"
is at the door. But it is hard to ignore the context in which
Banquo utters his phrase. King Duncan is entering the castle
where he will soon be slaughtered, in his bed, by his hosts.
Moments earlier, Lady Macbeth has invoked a less benign bird
to herald his arrival: "The raven himself is hoarse / That
croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements"
(1.5.38-40). And immediately after Duncan and Banquo speak,
she enters to welcome him under her battlements.
Stephen may not fear being butchered in his aunt's house, but
the allusion does suggest a certain hesitation to enter the
shuttered domicile. He has just been savoring the breezes on
the beach: "Airs romped round him, nipping and eager
airs." After thinking for a good long while of the
kind of scene that will
likely greet him inside the house, he decides not to sample
its air: "This wind is sweeter." Heaven's
breath does not smell so wooingly in Strasburg Terrace. (After
thinking that the wind smells sweeter on the beach, Stephen
goes on to think "Houses of decay, mine, his, and all.
You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and
an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen.
Beauty is not there.")
Later, in Scylla and Charybdis, Stephen again muses
on the passage from Macbeth. Looking on Dublin's
houses, he thinks: "Kind air defined the coigns of
houses in Kildare street. No birds."
