Fancy bread

In Brief

The smells wafting out of Rourke's bakery elicit three clichés, and a stuffy gloss on the first one, from the narrator of Eumaeus: "our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread." Then, drawing even closer to the consciousness of Bloom––perhaps even entering his interior monologue for a moment––the narrative spins out a jaunty little ditty reminisicent of nursery rhymes and advertising jingles: "O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said." Not the least of this sentence's delights is a terrible pun produced by misreading Shakespeare.

In act 3 scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice Bassanio stands before three caskets of gold, silver, and lead trying to decide which one will win him the hand of Portia. A song is sung while he deliberates:

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?

A chorus replies,

It is engend'red in the eyes,
With gazing fed, and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies. (63-69)

Fancy, a variant of "fantasy," is an old name for love. (People still say "Does she strike your fancy?" or "Do you fancy her?") The song offers Bassanio a hint about how to obtain his love, since "bred," "head," "nourishèd," and "fed" all rhyme with "lead," the casket in which Portia's portrait is housed. But instead of wondering where fantasy is bred Bloom thinks of stores that sell "fancy bread." One can imagine Joyce doubling over in laughter at this pun that would only occur to a man like Bloom. No doubt he savored the way it turns a noun into an adjective, and a participle into a noun.

Bloom does like to go see the occasional Shakespeare play, but he might easily have heard the song in a concert hall, music hall, or parlor. Most of Shakespeare's songs have been set to music countless times for purposes of dramatic performance, and many of the better versions have been published as stand-alone songs for non-dramatic performance. Zack Bowen notes that "Tell me where is fancy bred" was set to music by Thomas Arne (oddly, he calls him T. Augustine Arne), the eminent theater composer who gave the world Rule, Britannia. This beautiful setting, first performed in 1741, is very well known, but there are many others. A webpage on The LiederNet Archive (www.lieder.net) lists 29 different settings of the poem in the 19th and 20th centuries, many of them by famous composers, and the list is not complete.

Someone who had only heard the song performed as a set piece, rather than seeing its relevance to Bassanio's pursuit of a wife, might well lose track of the words after a few bars and remember it only by its title. For Bloom, those poorly understood words suggest a great ad for a bakery.

JH 2023

Fancy bread

In Brief

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