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The Last Tournament

In his portrayal of the Last Tournament Tennyson chants the Swan Song of a decadent chivalry.

The prize of this tourney was to be a circlet of rubies which had belonged to Guinevere's adopted child who had died in infancy, and she could no longer bear the sad memories which the rubies brought to her mind. She therefore gave the circlet to the King, suggesting that these be the prize in the tourney —

rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer
But the sweet body of a maiden babe.

The tournament was called, therefore, the Tournament of the Dead Innocence, to the ironic delight of the knights.

Arthur knew well that evil was aboard in his court, and that the courtly love between Lancelot and Guinevere was an open jest, and he hinted as much to Lancelot when, greatly to the latter's dismay, he appointed him to judge the tournament and award the prize. Lancelot spent the night tossing miserably, unable to sleep, for he loved the King and yet could not give up the Queen.

But when the morning of the tournament,
By these in earnest those in mockery called,
The Tournament of the Dead Innocence,
Brake off with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,
Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey,
The words of Arthur flying shrieked, arose,
And down a streetway hung with folds of pure
White samite, and by fountains running wine,
Where children sat in white with cups of gold,
Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps
Ascending, filled his (Arthur's) double-dragoned chair.

Forced by the King to judge the tourney, Lancelot sits in the dragon chair in deep agony of soul, avoiding the bright eyes of the brilliantly clad ladies, paying scant attention to the fray raging below him, allowing foul play without word of rebuke, beheld the laughing, irreverent, but formidable, Sir Tristram of the Woods wearing a holly-spray for crest, strike his opponents down with light-hearted ease, until he muttered to himself: "Craven crests! O shame! What faith have these in whom they sware to love? The glory of the Round Table is no more."

So Tristram won the rubies and received them from Lancelot's hands, who said bitterly, "Hast thou won? Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand wherewith thou takest this is red!" and Tristram replied angrily: "Wherefore toss me this like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound? Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine." For Tristram's fateful love for Isolt was as publicly known as Lancelot's for Guinevere.

Then boldly, without shame, Tristram made his horse caracole around the gallery where the ladies sat, bowed his homage and said: "Behold, this day my Queen of Beauty is not here!" And many were offended by this frank mention of his illicit love, and many murmured, "All courtesy is dead;" and one said, "The glory of our Round Table is no more."

Then the thick rain fell, plume drooped and mantle clung, and the wan day went glooming down in wet and weariness, and a swarthy lady shrilled: "Praise the patient saints, our one white day of Innocence hath past, though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. The snowdrop only, flowering through the year, would make the world as blank as wintertide. Come, let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen's and Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity with all the kindlier colors of the field."

So dame and damsel glittered at the feast variously gay, clad in all the bright bold colors of the summer, full and ripe and with nothing of delicacy or innocence. Then the feast became so loud and boisterous that the Queen, disapproving, angry at Tristram and the lawless jesting, broke up the feast and departed slowly to her bower.

And Arthur's jester, Dragonet, skipping about the hall, makes bitter jests to Tristram who has asked, in response to a quip, "Is the King thy brother fool?", replying: "Ay, my brother fool, the king of fools! Conceits himself as God that he can make figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk from burning spurge, honey from hornet-crumbs, and men from beasts — long live the king of fools!" Then down the city Dragonet danced away; and slowly through the woods Tristram rode to Lyonesse, bearing the ruby-chain as a gift for Isolt, and received his death at the hand of her husband King Mark.

It was this famous love story of the knight Tristram and Isolt, the wife of King Mark of Brittany, on which Richard Wagner built his glorious music-drama, Tristram and Isolde.

That night came Arthur home, and while he climbed
All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom
The stairway to the hall, and looked and saw
The great Queen's bower was dark — about his feet
A voice clung sobbing till he questioned it,
"What art thou?" and the voice about his feet
Sent up an answer, sobbing, "I am thy fool,
And I shall never make thee smile again."

The bower was dark indeed, for Guinevere had fled to the nuns at Almesbury. There she asked protection, saying, "Mine enemies pursue me, Oh peaceful Sisterhood. Yield me sanctuary, nor ask her name to whom ye yield it." Once more her beauty, grace and power worked as a charm, upon these saintly women as on all others, and the stately Queen abode for many weeks among the nuns. There pondering on the past, she remembers how when she first saw the King she thought him cold, high, self-contained and passionless, "not like him, not like my Lancelot." Then one night the light of the Dragonship blazed amid the gloom, and there were cries: "The King comes!"

She sat stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet
Through the long gallery from the outer doors
Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell.
And grovelled with her face against the floor.

There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair
She made her face a darkness from the King,
And in the darkness heard his armed feet
Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice,
Monotonous and hollow like a ghost's!

An ancient bard had once prophesied concerning Arthur:

... That his grave should be a mystery
From all men, like his birth; and could he find
A woman in her womanhood as great
As he was in his manhood, then, he sang,
The twain together well might change the world.

This was not to be. Now the King speaks:

Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies
Have erred not, that I march to meet my doom.
Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me
That I the King should greatly care to live;
For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life.

O O O O

But I was first of all the kings who drew
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
The realms together under me, their Head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world
And be the fair beginning of a time.
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honor his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion of a maid
Not only to keep down the base in man
But teach him high. thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot,
Then came the sin of Tristram and lsolt;
Then others, following these my mightiest knights.

In some versions of the legend, as we have shown, Arthur condemns his Queen to the stake; she is rescued by Lancelot and taken to France; the pope commands Arthur to receive her back with honor, which he consents to do; Guinevere enters a nunnery; and meanwhile Modred has led a rebellion against Arthur, in which Arthur is slain and disappears, and Lancelot and Guinevere die in their respective sacred retreats.

Tennyson, however, shows only, of all this, King Arthur forgiving his Queen. "Lo, I forgive thee, as Eternal God forgives! do thou for thine own soul the rest." Then he leaves her, while she is yet silent and unable to speak, and peering through the window she glimpses his helmet-"to which for crest the golden dragon clung of Britain," disappearing in the mist and gloom as he rides away "to slay and be slain."

And near him the sad nuns with each a light
Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen
To guard and foster her forevermore.
And while he spake to these his helm was lowered,
To which the golden dragon clung
Of Britain; so she did not see his face
Which then was as an angel's, but she saw,
Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.

Overtaken by remorse she weeps bitterly, "I thought I could not breathe in that fine air, that pure severity of perfect light; I yearned for warmth and color which I found in Lancelot."

"Ah my God," she prays, "what might I not have made of thy fair world, had I but loved thy highest creature here? It was my duty to have loved the highest; it surely was my profit had I known; it would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it. Not Lancelot, nor another.

— Corinne Heline

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