Introduction xix
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ut his passion for the Queen, here shown directly for thefirst time, stands in the way of any hope that can come bymortal means. The search for the Holy Grail, which formsthe subject of the next poem, offers some hope again. Butbecause of Lancelot’s sin, for him the Grail “was veil’dand cover’d.”” And Arthur himself sees the futility of sucha quest for all except the Galahads and Percivales. He re-gards the Grail as A sign to maim this Order which I made. One of the knights made to fill the gaps in that maimedOrder was Pelleas, the hero of “‘Pelleas and Ettarre,” in-nocent at first as was Gareth, but horribly disillusioned,first as to the friendship and loyalty of Gawain, and then asto the purity of Lancelot and Guinevere. He takes refugein a castle where he establishes a court the very oppositeof what Arthur’s outwardly is, but frankly representingwhat he considers the real condition of Camelot. Andumeanwhile Modred, the traitor, thinks, ‘“The time is hardat hand.” The corruption and the tragedy and the doomof the court fill the atmosphere of “The Last Tournament.”In the absence of the King, Lancelot presides at the joustso ironically called the Tournament of the Dead Innocence,and sadly gives to Tristram the prize intended for the mostpure. Some nights later Tristram is slain by Mark, Lance-lot is surprised by Modred and his men in the Queen’schamber, and Arthur returns to find Guinevere fled. Thetragedy continues in ‘‘Guinevere,” where the King, fight-ing Lancelot and threatened by Modred, takes his lastfarewell of the Queen, but the sordidness is gone. And“The Passing of Arthur,” the Epilogue to the whole series,sums up all the pathos and tragedy, but also concentratesall the beauty of the story of Arthur’s fate. So throughout the “Idylls of the King,” the tragic force XX Introduction that brings the story to its conclusion is the love of Lancelotand Guinevere. As was the case in the work of many otherwriters who used the story, Lancelot is the real hero of thepoem. So he is, we feel, in Malory, and Robinson hasfrankly centered his treatment of the story upon him. Arthurbecomes a figure either vague or conventional. Lancelotis the human being in whom we are truly interested. Ina very real way the poem does shadow ‘“‘Sense at war withSoul,” as Tennyson said. But there is no need of makingArthur symbolize Soul and Lancelot Sense. The forcesof the spiritual and the material are in marked contrast andin bitter conflict throughout the poem, and nowhere arethey warring more fiercely than in Lancelot’s own being. The great and guilty love he bare the Queen,In battle with the love he bare his lord,Had marr’d his face, and mark’d it ere his time. The final triumph of the material makes the tragedy. Andas in King Arthur’s court, so in the world that Tennysonknew and in the world that we know today, these two oppos-ing forces are at war. The moral struggle of the poem isas fresh and significant today as it ever was, for it is a peren-nial conflict. The details of the allegory we can afford to neglect. “I hate,” said Tennyson in his later life, whenthey pestered him for explanations of his allegory,“to be tied down to say, ‘This means that.’ ... Poetry is like shot-silk with many glancing colours. Every readermust find his own interpretation according to his ability,and according to his sympathy with the poet.” The “many glancing colours” of the “Idylls of the King”(to use Tennyson’s phrase in a different sense) are some oftheir greatest charms. When we begin to question thefitness of expression to subject, to be sure, we may longat times for the vigorous narrative style of Malory to tell
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