Of the first was he to bare arms and a name
From FinnegansWiki
Jump to navigationJump to search- Hamlet 5.1.29: "[Adam] was the first that ever bore arms"
- of the first: (heraldry) heraldic term referring to the first named colour on a coat of arms → this paragraph corresponds to Vico's second age, which is characterized by the language of heraldry
- arms and the man: Virgil, Aeneid, 1.1: Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris ("I sing of arms [weapons] and the man who first came from the shores of Troy")
- name: man (near-anagram) → "Arms and the man I sing" (Dryden's translation of the opening verse of Virgil's Aeneid) → George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man
- bear arms → a nobleman bears arm
- bare arms → a proletarian bares arms (to do manual labour)
- arms: cf. the Dublin City coat of arms
- the first to bear arms and name: W... B... : W.B. Yeats was the leader and first major figure of the Irish Renaissance → the cultural explosion of which Joyce was part.
- to bear arms: the right to hold and bear arms is the second amendment to the U.S. constitution. The first guarantees freedom of speech and religion.
