“…unhappy the land that needs a hero…”
Berthold Brecht
Legend has it that, around the year 500 AD, after the collapse of Roman rule in Britain, the Britons launched a final, defensive action against the Saxons who had been harrying the islands for a century or more. This campaign supposedly brought forty years of peace before the islands were finally overrun. Was the leader of this last, patriotic convulsion a man named Arthur?
There are two King Arthurs. The first, a chieftain who resisted Saxon invaders, the second the glittering king of literature: the latter figure undoubtedly a development of the former. But rather like the walls of an ancient suburban living room, the Arthur of literature has been covered in so many layers of decoration and alteration, that it is impossible to discern the original pattern.
One of the earliest known texts to mention Arthur is The History of the Britons, attributed to the Welsh monk, Nennius. He lists twelve battles at which Arthur led the islanders against the invaders. The final battle at a place named Badon Hill, where Arthur personally slew nine hundred and sixty of his opponents, was his greatest victory. Another Welsh monk, Guildas, identifies the “Battle of Mount Badon” as bringing a period of peace to the British Isles. However, his text, On the Ruin of Britain, fails to name the Britons’ chief.
Elements of these two texts were used by Geoffrey of Monmouth when he wrote his History of the Kings of Britain in the twelfth century. Geoffrey, who at one time was bishop of St. Asaph in North Wales, created a work of fiction that provided the basis for much of the Arthurian literature that was to follow. Geoffrey cites as his main source a “certain ancient book”, of which no trace has ever been found. It is likely that this “certain book” never existed, but Geoffrey uses it as an excuse for developments in Arthur’s story.
Geoffrey’s Arthur is no longer simply a hairy war leader. He is now a King who presides over a magnificent court at Carleon. Here lie the roots of the Camelot of the middle ages. Geoffrey refines the character of Mordred the traitor, who seizes the throne while Arthur is fighting in Gaul. Merlin also makes his first appearance, probably a mixture of several folkloric mystics. It appears that by collecting various folk tales, legends and half-truths, combined with his own fantasy and setting it down as a solemn and considered piece of scholarship, Geoffrey created the first official biography of Arthur.
Geoffrey’s history was translated into French in the twelfth century by Wace. He expanded the text, introducing the round table, for example. Wace’s history was to have a profound effect on the authors of the great French Arthurian romances during the following century.
It is in Chretien de Troyes Le Chevalier de la Charette and Le Conte del Graal that Lancelot, his adulterous affair with Guinivere, Percival and the search for the Grail are introduced. In the 13th century these themes were expanded in the anonymous and vast Vulgate Cycle of prose romances: The Lancelot, The Quest for the Holy Grail and The Death of Arthur. The life of the legendary king and his knights, their internal and external struggles and the concepts of chivalry and courtly love were established.
Sir Thomas Mallory (a man whose true identity is equally elusive as Arthur’s) used the Vulgate Cycle when writing his Le Morte d’Arthur in the 15th century. His original title for the work was The Whole Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table. As such it was a collection of the most important tales with a coherent beginning, middle and end.
And it was, of course, to Mallory whom Tennyson turned when composing his
Idylls of the King in the late 19th century. The result being an abundance
of orange hair and pouty swollen lips. This play will not advance our understanding
of Arthur and the zone he occupies.