Idylls of the King Read online

  PENGUIN ENGLISH POETS

  GENERAL EDITOR: CHRISTOPHER RICKS

  TENNYSON

  Idylls of the King

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON was born in 1809 at Somersby, Lincolnshire, the sixth of eleven children of a clergyman. He went up to Cambridge in 1828 but did not obtain a degree. He never had any other occupation than poet. In 1845 he was granted a state pension of £200 a year and in 1850 he was created Poet Laureate. He accepted a peerage in 1883. His first important book, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, was published in 1830, and was not a critical success. Three years later his close friend Arthur Hallam died and this event had a lasting influence on his life and writing: In Memoriam, a series of lyrics and speculations on mortality in tribute to Hallam, appeared in 1850 and is considered by many to be his most important poem. His longest and most ambitious work, Idylls of the King, was composed in two creative spells (1856–9 and 1868–74), and it reflects Tennyson’s lifelong interest in the Arthurian legend. Tennyson has been neglected, but his verse is now receiving the serious attention and acclaim that it deserves. T. S. Eliot wrote of Tennyson: ‘He had three qualities which are seldom found together except in the greatest poets: abundance, variety and complete competence. He had the finest ear of any English poet since Milton.’ After a short illness Tennyson died in 1892 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

  J. M. GRAY has in turn been editor, schoolteacher, university lecturer and author. He has been fascinated by Tennyson since first reading him at school and has written a study of the sources of the Idylls entitled Thro’ the Vision of the Night. As Martin Gray he has published poems on Amedeo Modigliani, Charlie Parker and Jackson Pollock.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  Idylls of the King

  Edited by J. M. GRAY

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published 1983

  Reprinted with a revised Further Reading 1996

  Reprinted 2004

  27

  Editorial matter copyright © J. M. Gray, 1983, 1996

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without die publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

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  Contents

  Table of Dates

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  IDYLLS OF THE KING

  Dedication

  The Coming of Arthur

  Gareth and Lynette

  The Marriage of Geraint

  Geraint and Enid

  Balin and Balan

  Merlin and Vivien

  Lancelot and Elaine

  The Holy Grail

  Pelleas and Ettarre

  The Last Tournament

  Guinevere

  The Passing of Arthur

  To the Queen

  Notes

  Table of Dates

  1809 6 August: Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire.

  1815–20 Pupil at Louth Grammar School.

  1820 Leaves Louth, to be privately educated at home by his father.

  1823–4 Writes, in imitation of Elizabethan drama, The Devil and the Lady.

  1827 April: Poems by Two Brothers, by Tennyson and his brother Charles, with a few poems by Frederick.

  November. Enters Trinity College’, Cambridge.

  1829 Friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam.

  May. Elected a member of the undergraduate debating society at Cambridge, the ‘Apostles’.

  June: Wins the Chancellor’s Gold Medal with his prize poem, ‘Timbuctoo’.

  1830 June: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.

  1831 March: Death of his father; leaves Cambridge without taking degree.

  1832 May: Hostile review of 1830 by ‘Christopher North’ (John Wilson) in Blackwood’s Magazine.

  December. Poems (title-page dated 1833).

  1833 April: Venomous review of 1832 by J. W. Croker in Quarterly Review.

  1834 Falls in love with Rosa Baring, with whom he seems to have become disillusioned by 1835–6.

  1836 May: Marriage of Charles to Louisa Sellwood, and the beginning of Tennyson’s love for her sister, Emily Sellwood.

  1837 May. The Tennysons move from Somersby to High Beech, Epping.

  1838 Engagement to Emily Sellwood recognized by her family.

  1840 Engagement broken off, partly because of Tennyson’s financial insecurity. The Tennysons move to Tunbridge Wells (and in 1841 to Boxley).

  1840–41 Invests his fortune (about £3,000) in a wood-carving scheme, which has collapsed by 1843.

  1842 May: Publishes Poems; the first volume selects poems from 1830 and 1832 together with a few written c. 1833; the second volume consists of new poems.

  1845 September. Is granted a Civil List pension of £200 p.a.

  1848 Visits Ireland and Cornwall, taking up again the idea of writing a long poem on the Arthurian legend.

  1849 Renews correspondence with Emily Sellwood.

  1850 May. Publishes In Memoriam anonymously in the last week of May.

  June: Marries Emily.

  November. Appointed Poet Laureate, Wordsworth having died in April.

  1852 August: Birth of his son Hallam Tennyson.

  November. ‘Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington’.

  1853 November. Moves to Farringford, Isle of Wight, which he buys in 1856.

  1854 March: Birth of his son Lionel.

  1855 July. Maud, and Other Poems.

  1859 July. First set of Idylls of the King (named ‘Enid’, ‘Vivien’, ‘Elaine’ and ‘Guinevere’ titles later expanded, the first split, and the second supplemented).

  1862 January. Writes Dedication for a new edition of the Idylls.

  1864 August: Enoch Arden.

  1865 January. A Selection from the Works of Alfred Tennyson.

  February. Death of his mother.

  1868 April: Foundation stone laid of his second home, Aldworth, at Blackdown, Haslemere.

  1869 December. The Holy Grail and Other Poems (title page dated 1870).

  1871 December. ‘The Last Tournament’ published in Contemporary Review.

  1872 October. ‘Gareth and Lynette’ published with ‘The Last Tournament’. The Imperial Library edition of the Works (1872–3) brings together the Idylls of the King (with a new Epilogue: ‘To the Queen’), virtually complete except for ‘Balin and Balan (written 1872–4).

  1875 June: Queen Mary.

  1876 December. Harold (title-page dated 1877).

  1878 February. Marriage of his son Lionel to Eleanor Locker.

  1879 May. After repeated piracies, publishes ‘The Lover’s Tale’, which had been omitted from 1832. />
  1880 December: Ballads and Other Poems.

  1883 Accepts the offer of a barony, taking his seat in the House of Lords in March 1884.

  1884 February: The Cup and the Falcon.

  1885 December. Tiresias and Other Poems (which contains the last idyll to be published, ‘Balin and Balan’).

  1886 April: Death of his son Lionel, aged thirty-two, returning from India.

  December. ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’.

  1889 December. Demeter and Other Poems.

  1892 April: The Foresters.

  September. His last illness.

  6 October. Dies at Aldworth.

  28 October: Posthumous publication of The Death of Oenone, Akbar’s Dream, and Other Poems:

  Introduction

  As the dates of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (1832) and the autobiographical ‘Merlin and the Gleam’ (1889) show, Tennyson’s poetry on Arthurian themes and subjects reflects a lifetime’s interest in the legend. Midway through his poetic career is his major serial poem on Arthurian themes Idylls of the King, composed in two creative spells (1856–9, 1868–74). The first series, published in 1859, capitalized on the legend’s popularity earlier created by the poet in ‘Morte d’Arthur’ (1842), which was itself to be incorporated in turn into the expanded Arthurian scheme in 1870. Running to well over ten thousand lines of blank verse, Idylls of the King is Tennyson’s longest and most ambitious work. As early schemes and outlines suggest, the poet had set out almost from the first to treat the legend comprehensively. But to make a suitable poetic synthesis was to take maturity and time. It was not until 1856, when he was forty-seven, that Tennyson knew he was ready, and in 1859 he published the first set of four Idylls (later the longest of these was split, making a fifth) based on a very wide reading and assimilation of Arthurian sources and traditions. Of the first series (even then titled Idylls of the King) 40,000 copies were sold within a few weeks, and the poem was repeatedly reprinted. Apart from a dedication in 1862 the series was not immediately supplemented, despite its popularity. Tennyson delayed almost a decade, chiefly because of uncertainty as to how the crucial central episode of the Grail should be treated. The poet resolved these difficulties late in 1868, and composed ‘The Holy Grail’ in a ten-day blaze of inspiration. After this the rest of the poem rapidly took shape. Four more, including the ‘Morte d’Arthur’ (unchanged except for suitably framing lines to incorporate it into the whole), were published in December 1869 (dated 1870). The next few years saw the remaining three poems completed, and further important supplementation to two others, but Tennyson withheld publication of the last written, ‘Balin and Balan’, for another decade, until 1885. To the last Tennyson made small but significant supplementation.

  Neither these additions and minor modifications nor the long period of supplementation is to be taken as uncertainty over the plan of the serial poem. Each episode is designed and executed to fulfil a separate segment of the whole. The dominant figure round which everything is grouped is Arthur. He is the essential connecting link to the whole series.

  There are few difficulties associated with editing the text of the Idylls. Two editions are of importance. The Eversley Edition is that authorized by Tennyson himself, and it has annotations supplied by the poet and by his elder son, Hallam (indicated by T. and H. T. respectively in the notes). This however has recently been superseded by the comprehensive edition edited by Christopher Ricks. I am greatly indebted to this, especially for identifying major passages of Malory and other Arthurian sources which Tennyson utilized for his poem.

  Further Reading

  Editions

  Idylls of the King annotated by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, edited by Hallam,

  Lord Tennyson (the Eversley Edition), Macmillan, 1908, 1913.

  The Poems of Tennyson edited by Christopher Ricks, Longman, 1969.

  A Variorum Edition of Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ edited by John Pfordresher,

  Columbia University Press, 1973

  Bibliographies and Reference Works

  A. E. Baker, A Concordance to the Poetical and Dramatic Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Routledge, 1914, reissued 1965 (inaccurate and incomplete but indispensable).

  Nancie Campbell, Tennyson in Lincoln, A Catalogue of the Collections in the Research Centre, The Tennyson Society, Vol. I (1972), Vol. II (1973).

  Recent material is listed in F. E. Faverty, ed. The Victorian Poets: A Guide to Research, Harvard, 1968, and in the annual bibliographies of studies in Victorian literature in the MLA International Bibliography and Victorian Studies.

  Biography and Criticism

  James Eli Adams, ‘Harlots and Base Interpreters: Scandal and Slander in Idylls’of the King’, Victorian Poetry XXX (1992), 421–39.

  W. Bpnney, ‘Tennyson’s Sublunary Grail’, Philological Quarterly LXXII (1993). 237–59.

  William R. Brashear, ‘Tennyson’s Tragic Vitalism: Idylls of the King’, Victorian Poetry VI (1968), 29–49.

  William Buckler, Man and His Myths: Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ in Critical Context, New York University Press, 1984.

  Jerome H. Buckley, Tennyson: The Growth of a Poet, Harvard University Press, 1960.

  Ann Colley, Tennyson and Madness, University of Georgia Press, 1983.

  A. Dwight Culler, The Poetry of Tennyson, Yale University Press, 1977.

  S. C. Dillon, ‘Milton and Tennyson’s Guinevere’, ELHLIV (1987), 129–55.

  ‘Scandals of War: The Authority of Tennyson’s Idylls’, Essays in Literature XVIII (1991), 180–95.

  Martin Dodsworth, ‘Patterns of Morbidity: Repetition in Tennyson’s Poetry’, The Major Victorian Poets: Reconsiderations, ed. Isobel Armstrong, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.

  J. Phillip Eggers, King Arthur’s Laureate, New York University Press, 1971.

  Edward Engelberg, ‘The Beast Image in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King’ English Literary History XXII (1955), 287–92.

  Randy J. Fertel, ‘Antipastoral and the Attack on Naturalism in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King’, Victorian Poetry XIX (1981), 337–50.

  Elizabeth A. Francis (ed.), Tennyson: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1980.

  Arthur W. Glowka, ‘Tennyson’s Tailoring of Source in the Geraint Idylls’, Victorian Poetry XIX (1981), 302–7.

  David Goslee, ‘The Stages in Tennyson’s Composition of “Balin and Balan”’, The Huntington Library Quarterly XXXVIII (1975), 247–68.

  Tennyson’s Characters: Strange Faces, Other Minds, Iowa University Press, 1989.

  J. M. Gray, ‘A Study in Idyl: Tennyson’s “The Coming of Arthur” ’, Renaissance and Modern Studies XIV (1970), 111–50.

  Tennyson’s Doppelgänger: ‘Balin and Balan’, The Tennyson Society, Lincoln, 1971.

  Thro’ the Vision of the Night: A Study of Source, Evolution and Structure in Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, Edinburgh University Press, McGill-Queens University Press, 1980.

  Donald S. Hair, ‘Tennyson’s Idylls of the King: Truth “In the Fashion of the Day”’, English Studies in Canada II (1976), 288–98.

  Domestic and Heroic in Tennyson’s Poetry, University of Toronto Press, 1981.

  Tennyson’s Language, University of Toronto Press, 1990.

  Ward Hellstrom, On the Poems of Tennyson, University of Florida Press, 1972.

  Linda K. Hughes, The Manyfacèd Glass: Tennyson’s Dramatic Monologues, Ohio University Press, 1987.

  John Dixon Hunt, ‘The Poetry of Distance: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King’, Victorian Poetry, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer, Edward Arnold, 1972.

  ‘”Story Painters and Picture Writers”: Tennyson’s Idylls and Victorian Painting’, Tennyson, ed. D. J. Palmer, Bell, 1973.

  E. D. H. Johnson, The Alien Vision of Victorian Poetry, Princeton University Press, 1952.

  Elaine Jordan, Alfred Tennyson, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

  Gerhard Joseph, Tennyson and the Text: The Weaver’s Shuttle, Cambridge

 
University Press, 1992.

  John D. Jump, Tennyson, the Critical Heritage, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.

  Fred Kaplan, ‘Woven Faces and Waving Hands: Tennyson’s Merlin as

  Fallen Artist’, Victorian Poetry VII (1969), 285–98.

  James R. Kincaid, ‘Tennyson’s “Gareth and Lynette”’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language XIII (1972), 663–71.

  Tennyson’s Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns, Yale University Press, 1975.

  James D. Kissane, Alfred Tennyson, Twayne Publishers Inc., 1970.

  U. C. Knoepflmacher, ‘Idling in Gardens of the Queen: Tennyson’s Boys, Princes and Kings’, Victorian Poetry XXX (1992), 365–86.

  Henry Kozicki, Tennyson and Clio: History in the Major Poems, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.

  George P. Landow, ‘Closing the Frame: Having Faith and Keeping Faith

  in Tennyson’s “The Passing of Arthur”’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library LVI (1974), 423–42.

  Peter Levi, Tennyson, C. Scribner Sons and Macmillan, 1994.

  Margaret Linley, ‘Sexuality and Nationality in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King’, Victorian Poetry XXX (1992), 365–86.

  Harold Littledale, Essays on Lord Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, Macmillan, 1893, repr. with appendix, 1907, 1912.

  M. W. MacCallum, Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ and Arthurian Story from the XVIth Century, Maclehose, 1894.

  Joseph B. McCullough and Claude C. Brew, ‘A Study of the Publication of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King’, PBSA LXV (1971), 156–69.

  Ian McGuire, ‘Epistemology and Empire in Idylls of the King’, Victorian Poetry XXX (1992), 387–400.

  K. M. McKay, Many Glancing Colours, University of Toronto Press, 1988.

  Kerry McSweeney, Tennyson and Swinburne as Romantic Naturalists, University of Toronto Press, 1981.

  Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, Oxford University Press with Faber & Faber, 1980.