Robots in Finnegans Wake?


From Finnegans Wake by James Joyce:

Every evening at lighting up o’clock sharp and until further notice in Feenichts Playhouse. (Bar and conveniences always open, Diddlem Club douncestears.) Entrancings: gads, a scrab; the quality, one large shilling. Newly billed for each wickeday perfumance. Somndoze massinees. By arraignment, childream’s hours, expercatered. Jampots, rinsed porters, taken in token. With nightly redistribution of parts and players by the puppetry producer and daily dubbing of ghosters, with the benediction of the Holy Genesius Archimimus and under the distinguished patronage of their Elderships the Oldens from the four coroners of Findrias, Murias, Gorias and Falias, Messoirs the Coarbs, Clive Sollis, Galorius Kettle, Pobiedo Lancey and Pierre Dusort, while the Caesar-in-Chief looks. On. Sennet. As played to the Adelphi by the Brothers Bratislavoff (Hyrcan and Haristobulus), after humpteen dumpteen revivals. Before all the King’s Hoarsers with all the Queen’s Mum. And wordloosed over seven seas crowdblast in cellelleneteutoslavzendlatinsoundscript. In four tubbloids. While fern may cald us until firn make cold. The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies, adopted from the Ballymooney Bloodriddon Murther by Bluechin Blackdillain (authorways ‘Big Storey’), featuring:

GLUGG (Mr Seumas McQuillad, hear the riddles between the robot in his dress circular and the gagster in the rogues’ gallery), the bold bad bleak boy of the storybooks, who, when the tabs go up, as we discover, because he knew to mutch, has been divorced into disgrace court by

THE FLORAS (Girl Scouts from St. Bride’s Finishing Establishment, demand acidulateds), a month's bunch of pretty maidens who, while they pick on her, their pet peeve, form with valkyrienne licence the guard for


The series of characters, unfinished sentences segue into the next character’s words. The glosses for the phrases in question (boldface mine) are (Source: Fweet):

219.23

robot in his dress circular and the gagster in the rogues' gallery),

219.23+

Czech robota: hard labour (basis for Karel Capek’s term ‘robot’ in his 1920 play ‘R.U.R.’)

219.23+

dress circle: the lowest and most expensive tier of seats in a theatre

219.23+

(barrel)

219.23+

gangster

219.23+

rogues’ gallery: collection of portraits of criminals

219.23+

gallery: the highest and least expensive platform of seats in a theatre

   

086.07

attempted by the crown (P.C. Robort) to show that King, elois

086.07+

Police Constable (*S*)

086.07+

robot

086.07+

Slang Robert: a policeman

086.07+

German Ort: place

086.07+

alias

See also: The sigla of Finnegans wake.


From Finnegans Wake:

But to return to the atlantic and Phenitia Proper. As if that were not to be enough for anyone but little headway, if any, was made in solving the wasnottobe crime cunundrum when a child of Maam, Festy King, of a family long and honourably associated with the tar and feather industries, who gave an address in old plomansch Mayo of the Saxons in the heart of a foulfamed potheen district, was subsequently haled up at the Old Bailey on the calends of Mars, under an incompatibly framed indictment of both the counts (from each equinoxious points of view, the one fellow’s fetch being the other follow’s person) that is to see, flying cushats out of his ouveralls and making fesses immodst his forces on the field. Oyeh! Oyeh! When the prisoner, soaked in methylated, appeared in dry dock, appatently ambrosiaurealised, like Kersse’s Korduroy Karikature, wearing, besides stains, rents and patches, his fight shirt, straw braces, souwester and a policeman’s corkscrew trowswers, all out of the true (as he had purposely torn up all his cymtrymanx bespokes in the mamertime), deposing for his exution with all the fluors of sparse in the royal Irish vocabulary how the whole padderjagmartin tripiezite suet and all the sulfeit of copperas had fallen off him quatz unaccountably like the chrystalisations of Alum on Even while he was trying for to stick fire to himcell, (in feacht he was dripping as he found upon stripping for a pipkin ofmalt as he feared the coold raine) it was attempted by the crown (P.C. Robort) to show that King, elois Crowbar, once known as Meleky, impersonating a climbing boy, rubbed some pixes of any luvial peatsmoor o’er his face, plucks and pussas, with a clanetourf as the best means of disguising himself and was to the middlewhite fair in Mudford of a Thoorsday, feishts of Peeler and Pole, under the illassumed names of Tykingfest and Rabworc picked by him and Anthony out of a tellafun book, ellegedly with a pedigree pig (unlicensed) and a hyacinth. They were on that sea by the plain of Ir nine hundred and ninetynine years and they never cried crack or ceased from regular paddlewicking till that they landed their two and a trifling selves, amadst camel and ass, greybeard and suckling, priest and pauper, matrmatron and merrymeg, into the meddle of the mudstorm. The gathering, convened by the Irish Angricultural and Prepostoral Ouraganisations, to help the Irish muck to look his brother dane in the face and attended thanks to Larry by large numbers, of christies and jew's totems, tospite of the deluge, was distinctly of a scattery kind when the ballybricken he could get no good of, after cockofthewalking through a few fancyfought mains ate some of the doorweg, the pikey later selling the gentleman ratepayer because she, Francie’s sister, that is to say, ate a whole side of his (the animal’s) sty, on a struggle Street, Qui Sta Troia, in order to pay off, hiss or lick, six doubloons fifteen arrears of his, the villain’s not the rumbler’s rent.


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