The Influence of James Joyce
“Dublin 1904 is associated with two cultural touchstones: the founding of the Abbey Theatre and the setting for James Joyce‘s Ulysses. Our initial inspiration in making Dublin by Lamplight was to collapse these two shibboleths together and tell the story of an amateur drama group trying to establish a National Theatre, and tell it as the story of a single day.” (DBL-Program) Beyond this general connection there is a myriad of Joycean influences to be found throughout Dublin by Lamplight. Certain structural, thematic, and narrative techniques of Dublin By Lamplight have their roots in Joyce’s work, especially Ulysses, which enriches its connection to Dublin and Irish Literature in general. An familiarity with James Joyce’s work is crucial to fully understanding the breadth of Dublin By Lamplight.
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Style, Structure, and Narration
Despite the distinctly different mediums of Ulysses and Dublin by Lamplight, these two pieces share several strong structural connections that stem from Dublin by Lamplight’s inclusion of third person narration presented by the characters themselves. Although Joyce uses many complex alterations on narrative style, the first few chapters use aspects of conventional third person narrative technique. Michael Sayeau argues, “On the one hand this literary technique relies upon a certain presumption of intimacy on the part of the author, a sense of penetration into the patterns of thought and even inner speech of the rendered character…the sense that is transmitted by the free indirect mode is that the character is permitted to reveal herself or himself as he or she “really” is” (Sayeu 259). Reflecting this technique, characters in DBL frequently describe their own actions as if they were watching themselves perform the action. For example, the play with begins with Martyn describing his process of waking up, “Martyn Wallace awoke in his boarding house and held his aching head. His room was brown and dirty and bare. He called it Reading Gaol” (DBL 1.1).
Due to the mix of styles in Ulysses, the choice for conventionality in these sections is distinctly deliberate but also slightly malleable. In “The Narrative Norm,” Karen Lawrence mentions that in Ulysses, “the narrative borrows the pace and diction of the characters’ language. In other words, the conventions include both the continued presence of a particular style and the adaptability of style to character.” (294) Although its theatrical medium requires dialogue as the primary method of communication, the unique element of novel-style narration is present in this script. Characters speak about themselves in the third person, often detailing their actions as they do them. This stylistically biased narration provides a deeper level of character development because we witness some intimate details of individual lives from a uniquely personal perspective. The actions described by the individuals in Dublin by Lamplight fall under two categories. Similarly to Ulysses, they often describe the mundane details of everyday life such as shaving or the waking and eating breakfast. This method presents small glimpses into the personal lives of these characters, showing us what they do and how they behave in solitude. For example, in scene 2, Eva gives us a detailed description of herself eating an apple: “With a pearl handled knife she peeled it in a single jagged spiral and tossed the skin over her shoulder… Eva was feeling slightly giddy today.” (DBL 1.2) The quality and upbeat nature of her speech gives us as much of a sense of character as the actions she is describing.
The other purpose for this narration technique may be rooted, at least partially, in necessity. The theatrical nature of the piece presents some limitations in terms of staging possibilities and so, these small narration sections sometimes detail actions that cannot actually be performed. For example in scene 23, Martyn describes a group of soldiers on horsebackwho beat down a crowd with batons. This technique can also be connected to Ulysses, which is not bound by the requirements of stage performance. In this novel, some of the physical action is described in a way that suggests it has happened elsewhere. The interest then comes from understanding and imagining how things have happened rather than needing to “see” the events explicitly unfold. (Hayman 17).
-Megan McCarthy and Conor Moore
Location, Location, Location
Both Ulysses and Dublin By Lamplight (DBL) share the convention of sparse visual descriptions of both locations and characters. This device allows for each work to be set within the confines of Dublin without being mired in endless description, as Brian Phillips writes about James Joyce, “Any yet his Dublin remains, in the imagination, a misty and imprecise setting. It is full of references to real people, real places, real songs, which are given no more description than the note of their proper names. A mind which is given some context will imagine a scene more clearly, but for Joyce existence is its own consuming context, revoking distinction (Phillips 194).”
Similarly, in DBL, scene locations are demarcated using the proper name of a location, i.e. Sackville Street, without any further description. Granted, it is theatrically traditional to give less description than one would within a novel, but West does use a similar descriptive style to Joyce in order to properly situate the reader within Dublin itself. By eschewing description, West allows the reader to understand that they are in Dublin, without forcing them to attempt to realistically situate themselves within the city, which is virtually impossible. Instead, they are given some direction as to where in Dublin the scene is located, and then are quickly forced to focus on the dialogue of the scene.
It is difficult to predict how varied the street scenes would be within an actual performance, but, one could imagine a quick theatrical device such as changing street signs to situate the audience within various locations of Dublin without wasting time on long and tedious scene changes. In this way, both West and Joyce use the less-is-more principle to allow the reader/audience member the oppourtunity to craft their own vision of Dublin within the bounds of each author’s overarching image of the city.
Image Source: Nelson’s Pillar and Sackville Street
http://p-www.iwate-pu.ac.jp/~acro-ito/Joycean_Essays/Sackville&column.jpg
-Conor Moore
The Universal and the Mundane
The text of Ulysses is structured as an exploration of the universal and the mundane. As Evan Horowitz argues, “On the one hand, there are streets, pubs, postcards, newspapers, and Bloom’s wayward thoughts. And on the other hand, there is myth, death, nationalism, and the cosmos. If Ulysses deals with colonialism, it does so because Bloom has stepped into Barney Kiernan’s pub; if capitalism, because he is trying to sell an ad or buy some soap. At every turn, there is a welter of particulars set besides an intimation of the universal” (Horowitz 123). Similarly, in Dublin By Lamplight (DBL), the broad and the specific are constantly linked together. Willy’s attempts to sign the contract with Eva to establish the Irish National Theatre, in Act 1 Scene 6, are nearly thwarted by his dizzying hunger, which dulls his wits to the point that Eva believe he wants to pay the ten pound rental fee, which he does not have. Furthermore, in Act 1 Scene 14, Frank ducks behind the King’s Statue, of which the specter of the King of England’s visit to Dublin looms large within the play, and is promptly offered to buy a Union Jack flag by a small boy. Just as in Ulysses, a broad, nearly universal topic, is tied with the personal in order to cement its connection for the average citizens of Dublin.
-Conor Moore
Joyce’s “Dubliners”: Putting the “Dublin” in Dublin By Lamplight
While much of the structure of Dublin By Lamplight (DBL) is based on Ulysses, there are also significant allusions to James Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners. The title of the play itself is taken from the short story “Clay,” which includes a laundry known as “Dublin By Lamplight” (Joyce 96). The laundry is only mentioned in passing in the story, and does not figure into either its plot or thematic exploration. 
Thus, it appears that the title is a straight allusion to the work of Joyce in general, rather than to a specific element of his work. Many of the locations used in DBL are used in the story Two Gallants (Joyce 43). Although the play and this particular story share little thematically, they share many locations within Dublin. There are 28 named locations within DBL (including streets, pubs, hotel, Green’s, etc.) and within the twelve pages of Two Gallants, six of these locations are used: Dame Street, Trinity College, Nassau Street, Stephen’s Green, Grafton Street, and Westmoreland Street. (Jorn Barger has compiled an incredible Map of Dublin that includes all of the Dublin locations that figure prominently in Joyce’s work).
In the introduction to 2000 Penguin Classics edition of Dubliners, Terence Brown argues that both Dubliners and Ulysses are structured around the walking patterns of the characters, “…Note in Dubliners as in Ulysses how time the characters spend on their feet or on brief journeys by cab or tram so that peregrination becomes almost a principle of composition (Brown xvii).” Similarly, in DBL, the characters are frequently making journeys around the city that constitute the motivations for several scenes, such as Act 3 Scene 11, when Maggie flees to the North Wall. Also, the ending of DBL is nearly identical to the ending of “Eveline” (Joyce 29), in which the title character dreams of running away with her lover Frank, and is left behind at the ferry barrier of the North Wall. However, in “Eveline”, Frank wishes for Eveline to join him, and her own inhibitions hold her back, whereas in DBL, Frank has no desire for Maggie to join him. By subverting the ending of “Eveline” West makes the Joycean influence on DBL clear while still maintaining the individuality of his own text. Overall, although Ulysses is definitely the most influential Joycean work on DBL, there are also significant allusions to Dubliners that are integral to understanding the complete Joycean influence on DBL.
Image: The Gates of Trinity College
http://www.headington.org.uk/oxon/broad/buildings/north/trinity_college.htm
-Conor Moore
Irish Myth and Ulysses
“Irish nationalists not surprisingly desired an epic-either medieval or modern- for the prestige it would confer on their national literature and for the centering of the literary tradition it would provide both at home at abroad.” (Tymocozko 1) Often hailed as “the modern Irish epic,” Ulysses gave Ireland what it needed- a text on which to lean its sense of myth and national identity. It provided an updated context for the themes found in Irish hero tales (such as Cuchulain)– the traditional grounding for Ireland’s cultural mythology. (1) The desire to found the Irish National Theatre in Dublin by Lamplight also comes from the same need for a way to unite Ireland and give the people something particular to their culture that can act as a foothold for nationalism.In addition to this thematic connection, both the novel and the play share a relationship with the structure of Irish “Hero tales.” Irish oral tradition is very episodic and contains gaps in between stories. This is style is clearly present in Ulysses: chunks that are important to the understanding of a day’s events are omitted. This technique also manifests itself in Dublin by Lamplight where the chronology of the episodic scenes is slightly fluid and the transitions are often unclear. Both of these works, similar to Irish tales, “present a blurred margin”-they presuppose that their audience has a knowledge of the Irish cultural context. These connections to Irish oral tradition lend an important flavour of Irish culture to the works. (5-8)
Image Source: Young Cuchulain with a spear
http://library.thinkquest.org/C005417/cuclain.htm”>http://library.thinkquest.org/C005417/cuclain.htm
-Megan McCarthy
Ever Present
Dublin and other Irish cities were the most heavily policed places in the United Kingdom in 1904. It is no wonder then that the presence of the police force is felt very strongly in both Ulysses and Dublin by Lamplight. Policing and different forms of monitoring or shadowing are used in both texts to give an overarching sense of constant surveillance. Police officers are seen as intruders that infringe on the lives of the characters. (Devlin 45) In DBL, Constable Flower, Kearns, Eddie and Trench are dislikeable figures that break into personal moments of the other citizens and they give the sense that the police force is more intrusive even than the IRB. (Devlin 45-47)
Image Source: A member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police patrols on Eden Quay c. 1897-1904
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/law_order/Man&Policeman_EddenQuay_clar73.html
-Megan McCarthy