Mr Best has been helping Haines from Oxford with his research into Irish love songs. A.E. espouses his theory on the creative forces of visions, in a peasant’s heart, versus the rarified world of the academy. Mr Best asserts his admiration for Mallarme and his poems about Hamlet. Stephen thinks the drama is based on an excess of murder and that, in the interest of a single soul, nine people are killed - indeed slaughtered - in act five. Stephen analysis Hamlet as a ghost story. He discusses the real circumstances at the time of the first performance and establishes the possibility that Shakespeare might be speaking the words to his own son whose name was Hammet. A.E. makes an impassioned speech for the creators of works of art like the author of King Lear who are immortal and exempt from anyone prying into their personal life. Stephen through a drunken haze remembers he owes the literary A.E. money that he spent on a prostitute Georgina Johnson. He plays with the idea that, as it was five months ago, he is no longer the same person who owes the money but a whole new set of molecules. A.E.I.O.U.