Colm Quilligan and Frank Smith were the “hosts and entertainers’’ who greeted us, along with 15 other tourists, at The Duke pub at 7:30 p.m. In an upstairs “snug’’ (a small private room), they warmed up the crowd with a hearty rendition of “The Waxies’ Dargle,’’ then donned little black bowlers and performed a scene from Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.’’ The two-act play, they said, was once critiqued by a London critic: “The only play ever seen in which nothing happens - twice.’’
It was these little details, both humorous and historical, that made the tour lively, and the pints along the way didn’t hurt. The two gave the group a crash course on James Joyce’s epic “Ulysses,’’ explaining the significance of June 16 or Bloomsday. It’s the day in 1904 on which the novel is set, and of Joyce’s first date with Nora Barnacle, who would become his lifelong companion and eventually his wife. At The Duke, our guides reenacted a bar brawl and told us that it’s the best-known scene because it’s in the first chapter “and very few people get beyond it.’’ Smith then read from Molly’s soliloquy that ends the book: “. . . so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.’’
“Now, you don’t have to read the book,’’ Smith said dryly.
Our second stop was not a pub but Trinity College, where we huddled in the early evening chill - though it was June, it was raw - among the severe stone buildings. “A cultural stop without drink,’’ we were told. “The next stop will be a drinking stop without culture.’’ Oscar Wilde attended classes here briefly, in the era when students had to be at their desks at 6 a.m. for a full day of work and prayer services.
