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 of honour of the Christian knight. Sir Dinadan again,
who can give and take hard knocks if need be, though he has no great
bodily strength, and who is always bantering the good knights who know
and esteem him with his humorous protests against love and arms, is a
distinctly drawn character. So is Merlin, half Christian, half
magician, but always with dog-like loyalty to the house of Uther
Pendragon. So is the Bishop of Canterbury, who appears at intervals in
the story. So are many others whose names I might recite. The dignity
of queen Guenever towards her husband and her court is not less marked
than her guilty passion for Launcelot, and the unreasoning jealousy it
excites in her. The wife-like simplicity of Igraine, the self-surrender
beyond all limit, though from different impulses, of the two Elaines,
the pertness of the damsel Linet, and the piety and self-sacrifice of
Sir Percivale’s sister, will occur to the reader among the distinctive
characteristics of the different ladies and damsels who live and move,
each in her own proper form, in the story. Sir Thomas Malory, as we
know, found many of these men and women already existing in the old
romances as he represents them to us; but we may believe that those
earlier books were to him something of what the pages of Plutarch and
Holinshed were to Shakespeare.