|
|
The lady of Shalott
a poem by Tennyson, in four parts. Part I. tells us that the lady passed her life in the island of Shalott in great seclusion, and was known only by the peasantry. Part II. tells us that she was weaving a magic web, and that a curse would fall on her if she looked down the river. Part III. describes how Sir Lancelot rode to Camelot in all his bravery; and the lady gazed at him as he rode along. Part IV. tells us that the lady floated down the river in a boat called The Lady of Shalott, and died heart-broken on the way. Sir Lancelot came to gaze on the dead body, and exclaimed, “She has a lovely face, God in his mercy grant her grace!” This ballad was afterwards expanded into the Idyll called “Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat”, the beautiful incident of Elaine and the barge being taken from Le Morte d'Arthur By Sir Thomas Malory
“While my body is whole, let this letter be put into my right hand, and my hand bound fast with the letter until I be cold, and let me be put in a fair bed with all the richest clothes that I have about me, and so let my bed and all my rich clothes be laid with me in a chariot to the next place whereas the Thames is, and there let me be put in a barge, and but one man with me such as ye trust to steer me thither, and that my barge be covered with black samite over and over.” ... So when she was dead, the corpse and the bed and all was led the next way unto to the Thames, and there a man and the corpse and all were put in a barge on the Thames, and so the man steered the barge to Westminster, and there he rowed a great while to and fro, or any man espied. Le Morte d'Arthur By Sir Thomas Malory. Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lancelot and Elaine
King Arthur saw the body and had it buried, and Sir Lancelot made an offering, etc. much the same as Tennyson has reproduced it in verse.
The lady of Shalott. “It is not generally known that the lady of Shalott lived, last summer, in an attic at the east end of South Street.” Thus begins a story of an incurable invalid, whose only amusement is watching street scenes reflected in a small mirror hung opposite the one window of her garret-room. A stone flung by a boy shatters the mirror, and the fragile creature never recovers from the shock. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Lady of Shalott.
"Pure Romance, such as is found in the old Northern poems, is very rare in the French stories of the twelfth century; the magical touch and the sense of mystery, and all the things that are associated with the name romance, when that name is applied to the Ancient Mariner, or La Belle Dame sans Merci, or the Lady of Shalott, are generally absent from the most successful romances of the great medieval romantic age, full though they may be of all the forms of chivalrous devotion and all the most wonderful romantic machines. Most of them are as different from the true irresistible magic of fancy as Thalaba from Kubla Khan." Epic and Romance, by W. P. Ker
"The "Camaletic Mount" is one of Nature's hallowed places, a place of wondrous stillness and magic charm, a place to regard as the stronghold of romance, and yet not the place that poets have sung. One can easily imagine the Lady of Shalott prisoned here in her bower, and seeing all the moving world as shadows in a mirror; and one can deem the scene appropriate for the meeting of Lancelot and the Lily-maid who lifted up her eyes and lov'd him with that love which was her doom. It is not well to inquire more deeply and more closely into the past of Camelot, but to heed the poet's warning" The Lost Land Of King Arthur By J. Cuming Walters. Chapter VII
