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                            LE MORTE DARTHUR

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[Illustration]

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                            LE MORTE DARTHUR


                       _Sir Thomas Malory’s Book
                of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights
                          of the Round Table_


                          =The Text of Caxton=

                     _EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION_

                                   BY

                       SIR EDWARD STRACHEY, BART.


             Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges,
             Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem;
             Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae
             Magnanimos Heroas.—MILTON.




                                =London=
                           MACMILLAN AND CO.
                              AND NEW YORK
                                  1893

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                                 Oxford

                 HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

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                                   TO

                            FRANCES STRACHEY

                     HER FATHER INSCRIBES THIS BOOK

                       THE INTRODUCTION TO WHICH

                   COULD NOT HAVE BEEN NOW RE-WRITTEN

                            WITHOUT HER HELP

                 IN MAKING THE EAR FAMILIAR WITH WORDS

                   WHICH THE EYE CAN NO LONGER READ.

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                 ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT EDITION.


The Introduction to the first edition of this volume included an
account of the Text in the various editions of Sir Thomas Malory’s
‘Morte Darthur,’ and an attempt to estimate the character and worth of
his book. The publication of Dr. Sommer’s edition of the Text and
Prolegomena, demands that I should complete my bibliography by an
account of this important work; and it enables me, by help of this
learned writer’s new information, to confirm, while enlarging, my
former criticism. I have, therefore, revised and re-written the two
first sections of the Introduction. The Essay on Chivalry remains, but
for a few verbal changes, as it was first printed.

  SUTTON COURT,

    _November, 1891_.

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                               CONTENTS.


                             INTRODUCTION.

               §1. THE AUTHORSHIP AND MATTER OF THE BOOK.

                                                                    PAGE

Origin of the Book.—Its claim to be called a poem.—Epic in
  plan.—Malory’s use of the old romances.—His History and
  Geography.—Camelot.—Glastonbury.—Almesbury.—Joyous Gard.—The
  Sangreal.—Influence on our language, letters, life.—Morality of
  the Book.—Spenser, Milton, Tennyson.—Malory, Caxton

                                                                      ix


                 §2. THE TEXT AND ITS SEVERAL EDITIONS.

The edition of Caxton, 1485.—Those of Wynkyn de Worde, 1498
  and 1529.—Of Copland, 1557.—Of East, without date.—Of
  Stansby, 1634.—Editions of 1816.—Southey’s edition of
  1817.—Discovery of interpolations in that edition.—Mr.
  Wright’s editions, 1858 and 1866.—Character and object of
  the present edition.—Abridgements.—Extracts.—Dr. Sommer’s
  edition, 1889-91

                                                                    xxxi


                       §3. AN ESSAY ON CHIVALRY.

Origin of Chivalry.—Contest of Civilization with Barbarism.—The
  Chevalier and the Knight.—His education.—Amadis and
  Oriana.—The Black Prince.—Birth not essential to
  Knighthood.—The Lady.—Queen Philippa.—Decay of
  Chivalry.—Knights of Malta.—Modern Manners

                                                                 xxxviii


                        THE BOOK OF KING ARTHUR


         PREFACE OF WILLIAM CAXTON                            1

         THE TABLE OR RUBRYSSHE OF THE CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS   3

         THE BOOK OF KING ARTHUR, BOOKS I TO XXI             25

         NOTES                                              488

         GLOSSARY AND INDEX                                 493

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                             INTRODUCTION.


               §1. THE AUTHORSHIP AND MATTER OF THE BOOK.


                          ORIGIN OF THE BOOK.

We owe this our English Epic of Le Morte Darthur to Sir Thomas Malory,
and to William Caxton the first English printer. Caxton’s Preface shows
(what indeed would have been certain from his appeal to the ‘Knights of
England’ at the end of ‘The Order of Chivalry’) that however strongly
he, ‘William Caxton, simple person,’ may have been urged to undertake
the work by ‘divers gentlemen of this realm of England,’ he was not
less moved by his own love and reverence for ‘the noble acts of
chivalry,’ and his deep sense of his duty and responsibility in
printing what he believed would be for the instruction and profit of
his readers, ‘of whatever estate or degree.’ But to Sir Thomas Malory
he gives all the honour of having provided him with the copy which he
printed. And ever since, for more than four hundred years, successive
generations have approved the fitness of Caxton’s choice. For it is
Malory’s book, and not the older forms of King Arthur’s story which we
still read for enjoyment, and for the illustration of which scholars
edit those earlier books. Only a true poem, the offspring of genius,
could have so held, and be still holding its ground, age after age. It
may be said that it is chiefly with boys, and with men who have formed
the taste by their boyish reading, that the book is so popular. But is
not this so with the Iliad too? Men of mature intellect and taste read
and re-read the Iliad with ever new discoveries, appreciation, and
enjoyment; but it may be questioned whether there are many, or even
any, of them who did not begin those studies at school, and learn to
love Homer before they knew that he was worthy of their love. And they
who have given most of such reading, in youth and in manhood, to
Malory’s Morte Darthur will be the most able and ready to recognise its
claim to the character of an Epic poem.


                             MALORY A POET.

Malory wrote in prose, but he had ‘the vision and the faculty divine’
of the poet, though ‘wanting the accomplishment of verse’; and, great
as that want is, we may apply Milton’s test of ‘simple, sensuous, and
passionate,’ and we shall find no right to these names more real than
is Malory’s. Every incident, the description of every event, is
‘simple,’ that is to say, complete in itself, while making a part of
the whole story. The story is ‘sensuous,’ like that of Homer, and as
every true poem must be, it is a living succession of concrete images
and pictures, not of abstractions or generalized arguments and
reasonings. These are the characteristics of the book, from its opening
story of Igraine, which ‘befell in the days of Uther Pendragon,’ down
to the death of the last four remaining knights who ‘went into the Holy
Land, there as Jesus Christ was quick and dead,’ and there ‘did many
battles upon the miscreants or Turks, and there they died on a Good
Friday for God’s sake.’ And for ‘passion,’ for that emotion which the
poet first feels in a special manner, and then awakens in his hearers,
though they could not have originated it in themselves, with the
adventures of the Round Table and the San Greal, or the deaths of
Arthur, of Guenever, and of Launcelot, we may compare the wrath of
Achilles, its cause and its consequences, or the leave-taking of Hector
and Andromache. It would, indeed, be hard to find anywhere a pathos
greater than that of Malory’s description of the death or ‘passing’ of
Arthur, the penitence of Guenever, and her parting with Launcelot, or
the lament of Launcelot over the King and Queen, and of Sir Ector over
Launcelot himself. The first is too long to quote, but I may say that
Malory has re-cast the old story, and all the poetry is his own. I give
the two last:—

  ‘Truly, said Sir Launcelot, I trust I do not displease God, for He
  knoweth mine intent, for my sorrow was not, nor is not, for any
  rejoicing of sin, but my sorrow may never have end. For when I
  remember of her beauty, and of her noblesse, that was both with her
  king and with her; so when I saw his corpse and her corpse so lie
  together, truly mine heart would not serve to sustain my careful
  body. Also when I remember me, how by my default, mine orgule, and
  my pride, that they were both laid full low, that were peerless
  that ever was living of christian people, wit you well, said Sir
  Launcelot, this remembered, of their kindness and mine unkindness,
  sank so to my heart, that I might not sustain myself.’

And again:—

  ‘Ah, Launcelot, he said, thou were head of all christian knights;
  and now I dare say, said Sir Ector, thou Sir Launcelot, there thou
  liest, that thou were never matched of earthly knight’s hand; and
  thou were the courtiest knight that ever bare shield; and thou were
  the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou
  were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and
  thou were the kindest man that ever strake with sword; and thou
  were the goodliest person ever came among press of knights; and
  thou was the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall
  among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe
  that ever put spear in the rest[1].’

The former passage is all Malory’s own: the beauty of the latter is
enhanced, if we set by its side the old version which he follows:—

             ‘Alas, sir [said] Bors, that I was born,
             That ever I should see this indeed,
             The beste knight his life hath lorn,
             That ever in stoure [fight] bestrode a steed,
             Jesu, that crowned was with thorn,
             In heaven his soul foster and feed[2].’

Humour is akin to passion; and it may not be out of place to notice
here Malory’s vein of humour, as shown, for instance, in the way in
which he tells the adventures of La Cote Male Taile, and of Beaumains;
the pranks of the braver knights with Dinadan and Dagonet; the story of
Arthur’s wedding feast, when a lady who ‘cried and made great dole,’
was forcibly carried out of the hall by a strange knight, and Arthur
‘was glad, for she made such a noise,’ and was thereupon rebuked by
Merlin for thinking so lightly of his royal and knightly duties; or
that of the usurper Mordred and the Bishop of Canterbury, when after
each had defied the other, the bishop ‘did the curse in the most
orgulous wise that might be done,’ and then retired to live ‘in poverty
and holy prayers, for well he understood that mischievous war was at
hand.’


                         THE BOOK EPIC IN PLAN.

In the Drama the action is present, actually unwinding itself and going
on before our eyes. The Epic is the story of the past, a cycle of
events completed, while through the one and the other may be traced a
thread of destiny and providence, leading either to a happy triumph
over circumstances, or to a tragic doom, which, too, is in the end, a
triumph also. Thomas Hughes, the early Elizabethan dramatist, in his
‘Misfortunes of Arthur,’ concentrated and deepened the horror of such a
tragedy by transferring the guilt of Launcelot to Mordred the son of
Arthur and his unknown sister. He would better have recognised and
followed the finer art of Malory. For though the motive of Malory’s
epic is less gross and exaggerated than that of Hughes’s drama, the
thread of guilt and doom which runs from first to last through the
former is not less real than in the latter. The crime of Uther
Pendragon, with which the story opens, leads to the concealment of
Arthur’s parentage from himself, and this to his illicit love for her
whom he does not know to be his sister, and so to the birth of Mordred.
Then comes the prophetic doom:—‘Ye have done of late a thing that God
is displeased with you: and your sister shall have a child that shall
destroy you and all the knights of your realm.’ Arthur tries in vain to
prevent the fulfilment of this doom by the only cruel deed of his life:
and then—after another warning of the woe which his marriage with
Guinevere will bring on him, through her guilty love for
Launcelot—these germs of tragic destiny remain hidden through long
years of prosperity. Arthur, aided by his fellowship of the Round
Table, reduces universal anarchy into order: and not only ‘gets into
his hand’ all England, Wales, and Scotland, but by his march to Rome
makes himself emperor, and the head of all the kingdoms as well as of
all the chivalry of Christendom. Still the fame and the honour of the
king and his knights of the Round Table open continually into new and
brighter forms, which seem above the reach of any adverse fate, till
the coming of the Sancgreal, into the quest of which all the knights
enter with that self-reliance which had become them so well in the
field of worldly chivalry, but which would be of no avail now. They are
now to be tried by other tests than those by which they had been proved
as ‘earthly knights and lovers,’ tests which even Launcelot, Ector de
Maris, Gawaine, and the other chiefest of the fellowship could not
stand. The quest is achieved by the holy knights alone: two depart from
this life to a higher, while Sir Bors, not quite spotless, yet forgiven
and sanctified, the link between the earthly and the spiritual worlds,
returns to aid in restoring the glory of the feasts and tournaments at
Camelot and Westminster. But the curse is at work: the severance
between good and evil which had been declared through the Sancgreal
cannot be closed again; and the tragic end comes on, in spite of the
efforts—touching from their very weakness—of Arthur and Launcelot to
avert the woe, the one by vainly trying to resist temptation, the other
by refusing to believe evil of his wife and his dearest friend. The
black clouds open for a moment as the sun goes down; and we see Arthur
in the barge which bears him to the Holy Isle; Guenever, the nun of
Almesbury, living in fasting, prayers, and almsdeeds; and Launcelot
with his fellowship, once knights but now hermit-priests, ‘doing bodily
all manner of service.’

Nor are the marks of harmony and unity less plain in the several
characters than in the events of the story. Arthur is a true knight,
sharing the characteristics of his nobler knights, yet he differs from
them all in showing also that he is, and feels himself to be, a king;
as when—with an imperiousness which reminds us of Froissart’s story of
Edward III refusing to listen to Sir Walter of Manny’s remonstrances on
behalf of the burgesses of Calais—he tells Sir Launcelot that he
‘takes no force whom he grieves,’ or insists on his entering the lists
against a tired knight whom he is not willing to see victorious over
the whole field; or as when he sadly regrets that he cannot do battle
for his wife, though he believes her innocent, but must be a rightful
judge according to the laws. There are many others of the Round Table
who are ‘very perfect gentle knights, yet we feel that Launcelot stands
distinct among them all in the pre-eminence of his knightliness,
notwithstanding his one great sin. Thus, to take one of many instances,
who but Launcelot would have borne the taunts and the violence of
Gawaine with his humble patience and ever-renewed efforts for a
reconciliation, when he was leaving the realm, and when he was besieged
in Joyous Gard. Modern critics of great name agree in censuring Sir
Thomas Malory for departing from the old authorities who represented
Gawaine as the very counterpart of Launcelot in knightly character: but
I rather see a proof of Malory’s art in giving us a new Gawaine with a
strongly individual character of his own. Gawaine’s regard for his
mother’s honour, his passion for Ettard, and his affection for his
brothers, are fierce impulses driving him to unknightly and unworthy
deeds, yet he is far from being represented as a mere savage. If Malory
depicts him thirsting to revenge upon Launcelot the unintentional
killing of Gaheris and Gareth, he depicts also his long previous
affection for Launcelot and his opposition to the hostility of his
other brother, Mordred, against him; his devotion to his uncle Arthur;
his hearty repentance towards Launcelot at the last; and his entreaty
that he would ‘see his tomb, and pray some prayer more or less for his
soul.’ Nor must we forget that it was by the prayer of those ladies for
whom Gawaine had ‘done battle in a rightwise quarrel,’ that his ghost
was permitted to give Arthur a last warning. Distinct again from the
character of this fierce knight is that of the Saracen Palamides, whose
unquestionable courage and skill in deeds of chivalry also want—though
in another way than Gawaine’s—the gentleness, the meekness, and the
delicate sense