Time is changing;
the West waning, a wind rising
in the waxing East. The world falters.
It is surely the fall of Rome and Roman Christendom that they see approaching in ‘the tides of time’.
But however these aspects of The Fall of Arthur are interpreted, it is clear that Arthur’s great expedition to the Continent, while as equally without root in history as the assault on Roman power of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his successors, is set more nearly within the historical circumstances from which the Arthurian legend arose: the struggle of the Britons in the fifth century against the Germanic invaders. In The Fall of Arthur the mark of the enemy is that he is heathen. This is the fate of the Frisian sea-captain who brought to Mordred the news of Arthur’s return to Britain (II.89–93):
Radbod the red, rover fearless,
heathen-hearted to hate faithful,
died as his doom was. Dark was the morning.
To sea they cast him, of his soul recked not
that walks in the waters, wandering homeless.
He ‘passed to hell’ (II.67). Thus the heathen barbarians are dispatched to inevitable perdition in the metre that the barbarians brought to the conquered lands. Wild blow the winds of war in Britain! says Sir Cradoc, when telling King Arthur (I.160) of the heathen dragon ships driving in on the unguarded shores; and five centuries later Torhthelm, in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, repeats his words with reference to the Norsemen:
So the last is fallen of the line of earls,
from Saxon lords long-descended,
who sailed the seas, as songs tell us,
from Angel in the east, with eager swords
upon war’s anvil the Welsh smiting.
Realms here they won and royal kingdoms,
and in olden days this isle conquered.
And now from the North need comes again:
wild blows the wind of war to Britain!
A distinctive feature of the first canto of The Fall of Arthur concerns Mordred, who at the very outset of the narrative is portrayed as in his ‘malice’ sustaining King Arthur in his resolve to carry war into the lands of the barbarous peoples, for a hidden purpose lay beneath his words (I.27–9):
And Britain the blessed, thy broad kingdom,
I will hold unharmed till thy home-coming.
Faithful hast thou found me.
Where Geoffrey of Monmouth devoted no more than a single sentence to the matter (‘He made over the task of defending Britain to his nephew Mordred and his Queen Guinevere’), in the alliterative Morte Arthure the king is remarkably long-winded in his exposition of the burden – and Mordred begs (unsuccessfully) to be excused from it and to be allowed to accompany Arthur to the war. There is no hint of what is to come. In The Fall of Arthur it is said that Sir Gawain had no inkling of ‘guile or treason’ in Mordred’s ‘bold counsel’, for (I.36–8)
he was for battle eager,
in idle ease the evil seeing
that had rent asunder the Round Table.
With these words my father introduced an element into the narrative that sets it altogether apart from works in the ‘chronicle’ tradition. A few lines later (I.44–5) it is said that Lancelot and other knights were not with Arthur in his campaign, and later in the first Canto, after he had heard the news of Mordred’s treason from Sir Cradoc, King Arthur consulted with Sir Gawain (I.180) and told him how greatly he missed Sir Lancelot and ‘the mighty swords of Ban’s kindred’, and thought it the wisest course to send to Lancelot’s people and ask their aid. From this Sir Gawain sternly dissented.
None of this is comprehensible as it stands, and it may well be that my father anticipated some familiarity on the reader’s part with the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. The causes of the estrangement between Arthur and Lancelot do indeed appear in the third canto of the poem, but in a very oblique fashion.
It would lie far outside my intention here to enter into any account of the ‘strains’ or ‘streams’ of mediaeval Arthurian legend, the ‘pseudo-historical’ or ‘chronicle’ tradition on the one hand, and the vast ‘romantic’ development of the ‘Matter of Britain’ in French prose and poetry. I am concerned solely to indicate the characteristics of my father’s treatment of the legend of Lancelot and Guinevere.
I have noticed already that in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae there is no mention whatever of Sir Lancelot. In the alliterative Morte Arthure he does appear several times, but in almost every case he is named merely as one among the chief knights of the Round Table.6 Of his appearance in Malory’s Tale of the Noble King Arthur that was Emperor Himself (see here) Professor Vinaver observed:
Malory’s account gives the impression that Lancelot is nothing but a warrior, and that all his great qualities of mind and heart are to be placed for ever in the service of his king. No reader [of Malory’s Tale] would gather from it that Lancelot had been from the very beginning a courtly hero, that he had first appeared in medieval romance as a champion of courtoisie, and that it was as the protagonist of Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte de la Charette7 that he had won his world-wide fame. It was because Lancelot had only been known as a courtly knight that he had had so few attractions for earlier English writers: they had found little in him to support and illustrate their epic treatment of Arthurian romance. The author of the [alliterative] Morte Arthure, no doubt for this very reason, had relegated Lancelot to comparative insignificance. Malory’s attitude was at first much the same: his mind, like that of his English predecessors, dwelled on problems of human heroism, not on the subtle issues of courtly behaviour. And in order to restore Lancelot to fame he made him into a genuine epic hero, more akin to the Gawain of the Morte Arthure than to Chrétien’s ‘knight of the cart’. We do not know how much of the French tradition was directly accessible to him when he wrote his Tale of Arthur and Lucius. What is certain is that he was then primarily an epic writer, unwilling and perhaps even unable to follow the romanticized knight-errantry and understand its fascination. The great adventure of the French books had not yet begun.
Of Lancelot in The Fall of Arthur, introduced in so allusive a way, it can be said at once that he is no fantastic figure out of ‘romanticized knight-errantry’; and the source of the story that he was introducing is not doubtful. In the French romance in prose entitled the Mort Artu, the theme of the adulterous love of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere was combined with that of the treason of Mordred and the fall of King Arthur. The Mort Artu was the source for an English poem of the fourteenth century named Le Morte Arthur, commonly referred to as the stanzaic Morte Arthur (to distinguish it from the alliterative Morte Arthure), a long poem of nearly 4000 lines composed in eight-line stanzas. Sir Thomas Malory made use of both the Mort Artu and the English poem, closely consulting and comparing them to provide the narrative structure on which he founded his last book, The Morte Arthur properly so called.8
*
The stanzaic Morte Arthur and Malory’s Tale of the Death of Arthur
I shall here recount Malory’s narrative in brief, but before doing so I will cite a few stanzas of the English poem from the beginning of the final tragedy to give some indication of its manner and form.
A tyme befelle, sothe to sayne,
The knyghtis stode in chambyr and spake,
Both Gaheriet, and syr Gawayne,
And Mordreite, that mykelle couthe of wrake;
‘Allas,’ than sayde syr Agrawayne,
‘How fals men schalle we us make,
And how longe shalle we hele and layne
The treson of Launcelote du Lake!
Wele we wote, wythouten wene,
The kynge Arthur oure eme sholde be,
And Launcelote lyes by the quene;
Ageyne the kynge trator is he,
And that wote alle the curte bydene,
And iche day it here and see:
To the kynge we shulde it mene,
Yif ye wille do by the counselle of me.’
/> ‘Wele wote we,’ sayd sir Gawayne,
‘That we are of the kyngis kynne,
And Launcelot is so mykylle of mayne,
That suche wordys were better blynne;
Welle wote thou, brothyr Agrawayne,
Thereof shulde we bot harmys wynne;
Yit were it better to hele and layne,
Than werre and wrake thus to begynne.9
The first scene, the matter of these stanzas, is thus introduced by Malory:
hit befelle in the moneth of May a grete angur and unhappy [disastrous] that stynted nat tylle the floure of chyvalry of the worlde was destroyed and slayne. And all was longe uppon [due to] two unhappy [pernicious] knyghtis whych were named sir Aggravayne and sir Mordred, that were brethirn unto sir Gawayne. For thys sir Aggravayne and sir Mordred had ever a prevy hate unto the quene, dame Gwenyver, and to sir Launcelot; and dayly and nyghtly they ever wacched uppon sir Launcelot.
It happened that Gawain and his brothers Agravain, Gareth, and Gaheris (the sons of Arthur’s sister Morgause and king Lot of Lothian), and also Mordred (who in the tradition followed by Malory was the son by unwitting incest of Arthur and Morgause10), met together in King Arthur’s chamber. Agravain declared that it was known to everyone ‘how sir Launcelot lyeth dayly and nyghtly by the quene’, and that he intended to inform on Lancelot to the king. To this Gawain, being himself devoted to Lancelot, most illustrious of the knights of the Round Table, was profoundly opposed, foreseeing the likelihood of disastrous strife, as were his brothers Gareth and Gaheris also; and after blunt words they left the chamber as King Arthur entered, demanding to know what was toward. And when Agravain told him, he was greatly troubled, for although he had a suspicion of the truth he had no wish to pursue the matter against so great a man as Lancelot. He said therefore that he would do nothing without the proof that could only be had if Lancelot were taken in the act.
To this end Agravain proposed the setting of a trap. The king should ride out hunting on the next day, and he should send word to the queen that he would not return that night. Then Agravain and Mordred and twelve other knights would go to her chamber and bring back Lancelot alive or dead. But this did not befall. When Lancelot was with the queen the fourteen knights came to the door and with high words Agravain and Mordred called him out as a traitor; but Lancelot was wholly without armour and weapons, and he and the queen were in great distress. Then Lancelot unbarred the chamber-door and opened it only so far as to let one man pass through; and when Sir Colgrevance did so and struck at him with his sword Lancelot felled him with a single blow. Then he put on the dead man’s armour, and striding out among the other knights he slew without hurt to himself all of them, including two sons of Gawain and his brother Agravain, save Mordred, who was wounded and fled away.
When the king learned of all this from Mordred he foresaw that the fellowship of the Round Table was broken for ever, for many knights would hold with Lancelot; but Guinevere must ‘have the law’, and he commanded that the queen be taken to the fire and there to be burnt. Gawain ardently urged Arthur to be less hasty in passing this judgement, pleading the possibility that Lancelot had gone to the queen in all innocence, but the king was adamant. He said that if he laid hands on Lancelot he should die as shameful a death, and why should this trouble Sir Gawain since he had slain his brother and his sons? To this Gawain replied that he had warned them of their peril, and that they had brought about their own deaths. But the king was unmoved, and ordered Gawain with his brothers Gareth and Gaheris to put on their armour and bring the queen to the fire. Gawain refused the command of King Arthur. Then let Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris be present, said the king. They were unable to refuse, but said that they would go to the burning greatly against their will, and that they would wear no armour. Then Gawain wept bitterly, and said ‘Alas, that ever I shulde endure to se this wofull day!’
Now Lancelot with a great number of armed knights, who supported him and his determination to rescue the queen if she were condemned, were waiting in a wood at no great distance, and when it was reported that the queen was about to die they raced to the place of the burning and a fierce battle arose. Lancelot hewing to right and left at all who withstood him smote two men who were ‘unarmed and unwares’ and ‘he saw them nat’; but they were Gawain’s brothers Gareth and Gaheris, and Gawain had extraordinary devotion to Gareth, as did Gareth to Lancelot.
Lancelot went to Guinevere where she stood, and setting her on his horse he rode with her to his castle of Joyous Garde, and they remained there. King Arthur fell into an extremity of grief at these events. He ordered that no one should tell Gawain:
‘for I am sure,’ seyde the kynge, ‘whan he hyryth telle that sir Gareth is dede he wyll go nygh oute of hys mynde’. ‘Merci Jesu,’ seyde the kynge, ‘why slew he sir Gaherys and sir Gareth? For I dare sey, as for sir Gareth, he loved sir Launcelot of all men erthly.’
The death of his brothers, said the king, will cause the greatest mortal war that ever was. For Gawain of course soon learned of it; and he was changed in a short space from Lancelot’s devoted friend to his implacable foe. In the words of the stanzaic Morte Arthur he cried out:
Betwixte me and Launcelote du Lake
Nys man in erthe, for sothe to sayne,
Shall trewes sette and pees make
Er outher of vs haue other slayne.
Or as he said to the king in Malory’s tale: ‘For I promyse unto God, for the deth of my brothir Sir Gareth, I shall seke sir Launcelot thorowoute seven kynges realmys, but I shall sle hym, other ellis he shall sle me.’
To which King Arthur replied: ‘Sir, ye shall nat nede to seke hym so far, for as I here say, sir Launcelot woll abyde me and us all wythin the castell of Joyous Garde.’
Then the king with Sir Gawain at the head of a great host laid siege to Joyous Garde. Much time passed before Sir Lancelot would issue from the castle with his knights, but at last he appeared on the walls and spoke to Arthur and Gawain below, replying to their verbal assault in conciliatory words, seeking to avoid conflict of arms with them, and most especially with the king. He spoke of the many dangers that he had rescued them from, asserted his wholly unwitting slaying of Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris, the perfect innocence of Guinevere, and the rightness of his rescue of her from the burning. But all this was to no avail, and a great battle arose at Joyous Garde, in which Lancelot went so far in his refusal to return the attempted blows of King Arthur, who was ‘ever about sir Launcelot to have slain him’, that he raised him up when he had been unhorsed by Sir Bors de Ganis and set him on his horse again.
After two days of fierce fighting, in which Gawain was wounded, the hosts separated, that of Sir Lancelot being now in the ascendant; and at this time there came to King Arthur an envoy from Rome bearing an edict of the Pope, charging him that on pain of an interdict on all England he must receive back the queen and come to an accord with Sir Lancelot.
Lancelot did all in his power to further the Papal demand. He brought back Guinevere to the king; but against the coldly implacable hatred of Gawain he could not prevail. The end of it was banishment, and he departed from the court in bitterness, saying, in Malory’s tale:
Most nobelyst Crysten realme, whom I have loved aboven all other realmys! And in the I have gotyn a grete parte of my worshyp [honour], and now that I shall departe in thys wyse, truly me repentis that ever I cam in thys realme, that I shulde be thus shamefully banysshyd, undeserved and causeles! But fortune is so varyaunte, and the wheele so mutable, that there ys no constaunte abydynge.
But Gawain said:
Wyte thou well we shall sone com aftir, and breke the strengyst castell that thou hast, uppon thy hede!
In the stanzaic Morte Arthur Lancelot asked that he should be safe from pursuit in his own lands in France, but:
Syr Gawayne than sayd, ‘naye,
By hym that made sonne and mone,
Dight the as welle as euyr thou may,
For we shalle after come fulle sone.’
Then Lancelot said farewell to Guinevere and he kissed her, and then he said ‘all opynly’:
‘Now lat se whatsomever he be in thys place that dare say the queen ys nat trew unto my lorde Arthur, lat se who woll speke and [if] he dare speke.’ And therewith he brought the quene to the kynge, and than sir Launcelot toke hys leve and departed. …
And so he toke his way to Joyous Garde, and than ever afftir he called hit the ‘Dolerous Garde’. And thus departed sir Launcelot frome the courte for ever.
Then he gathered many knights about him and they took ship for France.
Sir Lancelot was the son of King Ban, who ruled over a city and a realm in France named, both in the stanzaic Morte Arthur and in Malory, Benwick; in the Mort Artu it is Benoic. Some of the Knights of the Round Table were close kin of Lancelot, among them Sir Ector de Maris (his brother), Sir Lionel, Sir Bors de Ganis, and Sir Blamore de Ganis (these knights are named in The Fall of Arthur, I.44–5, and again in III.131–2). Thus the destination of these exiles was Benwick; but where it was thought to be has not, to my knowledge, been discovered. Malory said at this point in his tale that they ‘sayled unto Benwyke: som men calle hit Bayan and some men calle hit Beawme, where the wyne of Beawme ys.’ But no such identification is made elsewhere; and since Benwick is clearly a port, it cannot be Beaune, which is many hundreds of miles from the Atlantic; while if Bayan is Bayonne, that is very far to the south.
But wherever Benwick was, it was not long before King Arthur and Sir Gawain, the leading spirit in the enterprise, carried out his threat. The king ‘made sir Mordred chyeff ruler of all Ingelonde, and also he put the quene undir hys governunace’, and with a great host they crossed the sea, and began to burn and lay waste Sir Lancelot’s lands. Still striving for peace, despite the opinion among his knights that ‘youre curtesy woll shende [ruin] us all’, Lancelot sent to King Arthur, but again received the response, that the king ‘wolde acccord with sir Launcelot, but sir Gawayne woll nat suffir hym’. Then at the gate of the besieged town of Benwick Gawain appeared and cried out a challenge to the defenders. Sir Bors and then Sir Lionel rode against him, but both were badly worsted and hurt, and so it went on until at last and reluctantly Lancelot took up the challenge.