Le Morte Darthur
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LE MORTE DARTHUR
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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