Sinkapace
Sinkapace
In Brief
From the get-go, Scylla and Charybdis features passages of free indirect narration that hew remarkably close to the consciousness of Stephen Dedalus. At the beginning of the chapter, when the director of the library steps forward toward the three men in his office and then back toward the door from which an employee has beckoned to him, the prose dips into Stephen's Shakespearean vocabulary, irreverently presenting Lyster's movements as if they were a sprightly dance in a comedy. The words "sinkapace" and "corantoed" refer to such dances, and "neatsleather" to shoes.
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The narrative presents the librarian's attentive,
deferential, perhaps mincing steps as if they were part of a
brisk dance: "He came a step a sinkapace forward
on neatsleather creaking and a step backward a sinkapace
on the solemn floor." The lively cinquepace (French cinq-pas
= five step) called for dancers to take four hopping steps
followed by one high jump (4 + 1 = 5). It was more or less
synonymous with the galliard (French gaillard =
lively). Several sentences later, the "creaking" sounds of
Lyster's steps and a bit of his phrase "True in the larger
analysis" are joined to a similarly spirited dance:
"Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off." The coranto
(French courante, Italian corrente = running)
was a dance of the Renaissance and Baroque eras that required
dancers to execute a series of running and jumping steps.
Shakespeare refers to the cinquepace by its usual name in Much
Ado about Nothing when Beatrice, holding forth at a
masked ball, says that "wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a
Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace; the first suit is hot
and hasty like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the
wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and
ancientry; and then comes repentance, and with his bad legs
falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into
his grave" (2.1.73-80). But the more anglicized spelling in Scylla,
and the reference to both the cinquepace and the coranto,
suggest that Joyce was thinking of the scene in Twelfth
Night where Sir Toby Belch urges Sir Andrew Aguecheek to
display his dancing skills:
Toby. What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?The spirit of rank mockery underlying all of Toby's encouragements of Sir Andrew, and the latter's imbecilic credulity (one can imagine him seriously entertaining the idea of dancing the galliard while urinating or entering church), raise the possibility that Stephen may be thinking of the librarian as a ludicrous figure, as much out of his depth listening to the Shakespeare talk as Andrew is out of his depth listening to Toby's advice to court Maria. This would no doubt be monstrously uncharitable of Stephen, but the start of the chapter finds him behaving very aggressively. His first words are "sneered" at John Eglinton, and in the narrative voice that sounds so much like his own, both George Russell and Richard Best make their first appearances as caricatures.
Andrew. Faith, I can cut a caper.
Toby. And I can cut the mutton to't.
Andrew. And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria.
Toby. Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain afore 'em? Are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig. I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? (1.3.120-32)
The "neatsleather" on which Lyster creaks forward also
contributes to the feeling that a scene from Shakespeare is
being staged in the library office. Neat's leather is cattle
hide. In Julius Caesar a cobbler boasts that "As
proper men as ever trod upon neat's-leather have gone upon my
handiwork" (1.1.25-26), and in The Tempest Stephano
imagines that if he can get Caliban to Naples "he's a present
for any emperor that ever trod on neat's-leather" (2.2.69-70).
