A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 20: How I Read Malory

“I’m always sleeping with the wrong people.”  Or perhaps, “Ego semper in malo populum dormientes.”   No, the Latin doesn’t sound any better.  It sounds like a rock star’s lament or a motto for Sir Lancelot.  First, there was that evening when he was riding alone through deep woods and came across a beautiful, if somewhat eerie, red silk pavilion replete with an empty bed.  He disarmed, climbed in and went to sleep, whereupon another knight, the pavilion’s owner arrived, saw the shape of the sleeping knight, presumed it was his mistress, and climbed in beside Lancelot and “toke hym in his armys and began to kysse him.   And whan sir Lancelot felte a rough berde kissing hym he sterte oute of the bedde lyghtly, and the other knight after hym.”

The two went for their swords.  And, as T. H. White re-imagined it, fought naked in the moonlit glade until Lancelot wounded Sir Beleus “sore nyghe unto the deth.”

Later, there was the terrible incident with Elaine that changed his life.  That was a result of sleeping with the wrong person, too.

This is episode 20 of my investigation into the life and works of Sir Thomas Malory.  Episode 1 can be found here.

White portrays the first incident as comedy.  It certainly begins that way, like something out of The Canterbury Tales, but read simply and directly, it then takes a surprising, dark turn of violence that isn’t at all comic.  In Le Morte d’Arthur, violence has real and terrible consequences.  People die.

This post is simply about how I read Malory.  In my investigation of his life I’ve reached the period of his lengthy imprisonments when he most likely translated, compiled and wrote the majority of Le Morte d’Arthur.  It seems appropriate to spend some time discussing the work itself and, therefore, how I approach reading it.

My first and most important goal is to enjoy Malory.  My second is to read it as clearly, directly and with as much immediacy as possible.  As much as I love T. H. White and others who have retold the tales, I want it to be my reading, not a reading through the lens of someone else’s imagination and interpretation, even a beloved one.  If you’re reading Malory no matter the reason, I recommend you do the same.

I prefer the famous edition of Eugene Vinaver, (entitled Malory Works,) which is a compilation of both the Winchester and Caxton editions and provides original spellings.  However,  serviceable editions with modernized spellings exist if they’re more to your taste.  Remember the first goal.

I read slowly, and do everything I can to make the scene and situation visual and tactile.  I want to engage with characters’ emotions as much as possible.  Here’s a simple example.  Lancelot and his cousin Lionel leave court together to “preve” [themselves] “in straunge adventures.”  After some time they come to a shadowed copse and Lancelot declares “for this seven yere I was not so slepy as I am nowe.”

“So there they alyted and tyed there horsys unto sondry treis, and sir Launcelot lade him downe undir this appyll-tre, and his helmet undir his hede.  And sir Lyonell waked whiles he sl[e]pte.  So sir Launcelot slepte passing faste.”

For me the place is the Danebury Iron Age fort in Hampshire and my images of it come from a solitary midsummer walk around it when I had a ferocious cold and was feeling warm, sleepy and distant.  There were copses of beech trees there but I don’t recall an apple tree so I have to provide one from a different context.  When I was a child, our neighbor had an immense, tall one in his wild and extensive backyard.  On early summer afternoons, a neighborhood girl, a tomboy ironically named Gwen, and I would sneak into his yard, climb the tree and sit together on a high limb and eat small, green under-ripe apples.  So now I have the place and the apple tree.  Lancelot places his helmet under his head.  What kind of helmet is it?  Indeed, what does his armor, his harness, look like?  I ask myself what would Malory have imagined.  So I see early fifteenth century armor.  It’s plain and simple plate with chainmail at points as necessary for flexibility that fits very well.  The helmet is not a large heavy tilting casque, such as Henry V’s in Westminster, but rather something more practical, nevertheless with a face covering visor and no crest.  His simple and traditional shield has the coat-of-arms attributed to him by Gerard J. Brault painted upon it:  argent three bends gules.  He is sleeping in his armor but his physique is long and sinewy, like a climber’s.

Of course, you can imagine the scene differently.  And you should imagine it for yourself.  But that’s how I take those three sentences from 500 years ago and make them personal, direct and mine.

I’ve always found Malory’s portrayal of evil intriguing.  For example, the psychology of the giant who horrifically murders the Duchess of Brittany is never discussed.  He simply seems to be an embodiment of an evil passion.  But there are others, of whom we learn more because we observe more of their behavior.  Sir Turquine is the stuff of nightmares.

We observe him three times.  First, as Lancelot is sleeping, his cousin Lionel observes three knights riding, “as faste fleynge as they myght ryde” from another “grete” knight who over takes the three and defeats each in turn.  Lionel pursues the great knight, jousts against him and is also defeated.  Sir Turquine, the knight, then binds the four to their horses and takes them to his castle where “he unarmed them and bete them with thornys all naked, and aftir put them in depe preson where were many mo knyghts that made grete dole.”  Malory’s language is concrete and specific and if you let it do its work, the incident and scene is grotesque and frightening.

Next, Sir Ector de Maris, Lancelot’s half-brother, who is following Lancelot and Lionel, comes to Sir Turquine’s castle.  There he sees a lonely tree before the castle and “many fayre shylds” hanging from it, including his brothers “the whyche greved his herte.”  It is one of the eeriest, gothic scenes in Malory and it deserves some additional imagination.  For me the tree is a bare Hawthorne.  There’s a  cold wind and the castle is a severe square, Norman keep, like Castell Dolwyddelan in Conwy County, Wales (or perhaps one of the Scottish border castles.)  No one else is around.  A copper basin also hangs from the tree.  In the failing afternoon light, Sir Ector beats upon it with his lance which summons Sir Turquine.

I don’t need to describe Sir Turquine, do I?  It also doesn’t take much effort to imagine yourself in Sir Ector de Maris situation:  alone, looking for your brother and cousin in cold, wild country, coming across your cousin’s shield hanging from that tree, wondering what horrors have befallen him.  The knight that appears, is larger, stronger, on a greater horse and though you know you’re good you also know that there’s only so much you can do against the advantages of greater strength and force.  I can make my heart pound.

They joust.  And though Sir Ector is a more capable opponent, he, too, is defeated.  Malory tells us how Turquine’s lance catches Sir Ector under his right arm and bears him clean out of the saddle.  I imagine the sudden, terrible blow, the pain literally shocking him into breathlessness on the ground.

Turquine takes him into his castle and throws him down onto the middle of the floor in his great hall.  I imagine the hall dark but for a great fire burning in a fireplace.  Turquine, then, surprisingly, shows a ghost of something like gallantry.  Because Sir Ector fought so well he offers Sir Ector his life if he will promise to be Sir Turquine’s “trew prisoner” which I interpret to mean his servant.

I ask myself would I have the courage to say no and I think Malory wants us to ask this question of ourselves.  Sir Ector finds the courage.  And Turquine takes aways his arms and clothes, tortures him as he has the others and throws him into the dungeon with the rest.  And “whan sir Ector saw sir Lyonell, than made he grete sorow.”

When, at last, Lancelot arrives at the castle, after several adventures throughout which I’ve worried about poor Lionel and Ector, Sir Turquine is tardy.  Lancelot beats on the basin hanging from the tree until the bottom falls out and rides back and forth before the castle for half an hour before Sir Turquine finally appears with yet another knight tied to his saddle.  Malory understood suspense.

Of course they fight, and Malory’s description of their combat is detailed and visual.  How can Lancelot hope to vanquish such an opponent who is almost a sadistic force of nature?  And, in the midst of it, when they’re exhausted and leaning on their swords, (I always recall how exhausted you can in a fencing tournament after only a few DE bouts),  Turquine in one of his weird moments of magnanimity offers to free all of his three score and four prisoners if Lancelot will but tell him his name and if he is anyone but the one knight whom he hates above all and is the reason he has slain and cruelly maimed so many.

Turquine explains why he has acted as he has, or at least why he believes he has acted as he has.  And great evil often is that banal, simple, and simply self-serving.  And yet, it has made him into the stuff of nightmares.

Lancelot’s story, like so many in Malory’s tales, combines domestic comedy, epic conflict, the stuff of nightmares and asks us to face our deepest selves.  That’s why I read Malory.  Hopefully, I’ve made you want to read him, too, and maybe given you some practical help with how to do so.

Episode 21 can be found here.