SOURCE: Maher, R.A. “James Joyce's Exiles: The Comedy of Discontinuity.” James Joyce Quarterly 9, no. 4 (summer 1972): 461–74.

In the following essay, Maher compares Exiles to Hamlet and examines the relationships of the characters in Exiles.

Joyce described Exiles as “three cat and mouse acts” (Exiles 123); he also called it “a comedy in three acts” (Letters I, 78). The comedy of Exiles will not be felt, however, if we mistake the play for a drama of ideas. If we do, we are the mouse being teased by Joyce. The play is an extraordinarily tactile and auditory play: it shows everything and states nothing. Only if we assiduously avoid trying to make the play fit into a discursive framework, into some message Joyce is developing progressively act by act, will we hear and feel the comedy.

Furthermore, if we focus only on Richard as the hero of the play or as the...