It is hardly surprising that Stephen's thoughts are filled
with references to Hamlet—he is giving a talk on
Shakespeare at the National Library on June 16, a talk that
centers on that play—but Joyce shows that Bloom too is very
familiar with it. His knowledge of the play is particularly
evident in Hades, where the funereal setting prompts
half a dozen allusions, but it first comes up in a couple of
jokey references in Lotus Eaters. One of them,
"Glimpses of the moon," quotes Shakespeare's language exactly.
In the street, Bloom's recollection of Edward Vining's theory that
the Danish prince was really a woman prompts a zany thought:"Why
Ophelia committed suicide." Later, in the church, he
stands up and notices that two buttons of his vest are
unfastened. That Edwardian standards of propriety were strict
even for the top half of the body can be seen in his
embarrassed reaction: "Good job it wasn't farther south."
"Still," he thinks, women "like you better untidy"; they
"enjoy it. Never tell you." Such interactions with the other
sex make him think of moments when the situation is reversed
and a woman has a piece of fluff on her clothes, "Or their
skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed
if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before."
The phrase comes from
Hamlet 1.4, when Hamlet asks his
father's ghost why it has come back to the land of the living:
What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls. (51-56)
The moon glimpsed in Bloom's imagination is a woman's arse.
"Moon" has been used to refer to buttocks since at least the
middle of the 18th century, and the general sense of "mooning"
someone by pulling down one's pants may be older still. As a
verb, the word was used to mean "to expose to light" in the
early 1600s, sometimes possibly in reference to a medieval
practice of defying enemies by baring one's bum.
Bloom reinterprets Shakespeare's language in a
characteristically playful and juvenile way: one can imagine
such a joke being repeated by children on a playground. But it
seems remarkable that Joyce has given him enough detailed
knowledge of Hamlet to make the joke at all. As a
matter of realistic detail, Bloom's familiarity with the play
perhaps comes from having seen multiple stage performances.
Symbolically, it helps to ally him with Stephen, who
recurrently meditates on Hamlet as he tramps about
Dublin in black clothes seeking spiritual fatherhood.
