"it will cocommend the widest circulation and a reputation coextensive with its merits"

(355.8-357.17)  Today's reading fully sets aside the Butt-Taff dialogue and squarely situates us back in the pub.  The patrons offer some commentary about the play, with one saying, "Shutmup," just before another adds, "And bud did down well right."  The narrator notes the universality of the tale, because, after all, "the law's own libel lifts and lames the low with the lofty."  Night (the curtains?) closes on the players, and they receive their reward:  "After their battle thy fair bosom."

HCE -- "the lord of the seven days, overlord of sats and suns" -- now delivers an extended analysis of the play that he and his patrons have seen.  It is "tootrue enough," he says.  We are all wanderers in the wilderness ("nobbut wonterers in that chill childreness"), he adds, and then suggests the tale of the Russian General's fall is a metaphor for the "overthrew of each and ilkermann of us."  The tale calls to mind the first riddle of the universe ("the farst wriggle from the ubivence"):  "whereom is man, that old offender, nother man"?  The answer given here is "wheile he is asame."  So, a man is another man when he is the same (as the other man, one would presume).  McHugh notes that this riddle recalls Shem's riddle from the Wake's seventh chapter, and this echo adds nice depth to both passages.

HCE's analysis now begins to really wander.  He begins reminiscing about the meals of his youth before noting that he has lately been reading a suppressed book (perhaps Ulysses, or maybe even the Wake).  He goes on to heap praise upon this story of "a timmersome townside upthecountrylifer."  This thought is soon interrupted when his attention turns toward two figures "among others pleasons whom I love and which are favourests to mind."  Anytime we see two people paired together in the Wake, we can safely bet we're reading about either the twins Shaun and Shem or the two young women from the park, and we quickly see that HCE's recalling those women again.  Regarding one, he says that he has "pushed my finker in for the movement" and that she "is highly catatheristic."  Regarding the other, he says that he has "fombly fongered [her] freequuntly" and that she "is deeply sagnificant."  So, at least for now, HCE is admitting to having engaged in a "manual" form of intimate relations with these young women.  Perhaps tomorrow we'll hear the reaction of the patrons (who are also HCE's judges) to this confession.