From Richard Ellmann’s masterpiece biography James Joyce
Several aspects of Joyce’s life converge upon June 16, 1904, the day he afterwards chose for the action of Ulysses. It was on that day, or at least during the month of June, that he began to work out his theory that Shakespeare was not prince Hamlet but Hamlet’s father, betrayed by his queen with his brother as Shakespeare was — Joyce thought — betrayed by Anne Hathaway with his brother. Joyce was at his search for distinguished victims — Parnell, Christ, himself. Instead of making the artist Shakespeare an avenging hero, he preferred to think of him as a cuckold. Joyce developed the theory with excitement …
He was not yet living at the famous Martello tower at Sandycove, as Ulysses would suggest. On June 15 the McKernans, with whom he had his room, encouraged him to leave until he could pay his rent, and he went to his friends James and Gretta Cousins and asked them to take him in. They hospitably turned over the spare room in their tiny house on the sea’s edge at Ballsbridge. After dinner on June 15 the Espositos came to call. Michele Esposito was an accomplished teacher of music who had brought his family, including his two attractive daughters Vera and Bianca, to Ireland several years before. Vera noted in her diary later that Joyce was very quiet and scarcely opened his mouth except to sing, to his own piano accompaniment, Henry VIII’s ‘Pastime with good companee, I love, and shall until I dee,’ and the ballad of ‘Turpin Hero’. These he followed with two sentimental songs, ‘Love, could I only tell thee’ and ‘It is not mine to sing the stately grace.’ The Esposito girls also sang. They and their father were impressed by Joyce and suggested he call on them. But for two reasons this visit never took place. One was that he offended the Esposito girls, the other that he began to fall in love.
