Books & recordings

Morte D’Arthur

By John Matthews.

TFilled with colour pictures and black and white impressions by artist Anna Marie Ferguson, the first woman to ever illustrate the whole of Malory’s portrait of the Arthurian world, this edition by John is a fully amended text. The passionate, headlong tale by a man whose own life was hardly circumspect (he was in prison for grievous bodily harm and possibly rape!) is given here in modern English spelling. It carries the essential cadence of medieval chivalry in Malory’s world where knightly conceits and courtesies were breaking down under the Wars of the Roses. This is a book that does exactly what it says on the tin: read it aloud and see what effect it has upon you and your loved ones – if you are unmoved, you haven’t an honourable, chivalrous or romantic bone in your body! Here is an extract from Book 20 where Bors and the other knights try to persuade Lancelot to rescue Guinevere who’s been condemned to death upon the pyre for her liaison with him:

Extract:

MY lord, Sir Launcelot, said Sir Bors, by mine advice ye shall take the woe with the weal, and take it in patience,and thank God of it. And sithen it is fallen as it is, I counsel you keep yourself, for an ye will yourself, there is no fellow- ship of knights christened that shall do you wrong. Also I will counsel you, my lord, Sir Launcelot, than an my lady, Queen Guinevere be in distress insomuch as she is in pain for your sake, that ye knightly rescue her; an ye did otherwise, all the world will speak of you shame to the world's end. Insomuch as ye were taken with her, whether ye did right or wrong, it is now your part to hold with the queen, that she be not slain and put to a mischievous death, for an she so die the shame shall be yours. Jesu defend me from shame, said Sir Launcelot, and keep and save my lady the queen from villainy and shameful death, and that she never be destroyed in my default; wherefore my fair lords, my kin, and my friends, said Sir Launcelot, what will ye do? Then they said all: We will do as ye will do. I put this to you, said Sir Launcelot, that if my lord Arthur by evil counsel will to-morn in his heat put my lady the queen to the fire there to be brent, now I pray you counsel me what is best to do. Then they said all at once with one voice: Sir, us thinketh best that ye knightly rescue the queen, insomuch as she shall be brent it is for your sake; and it is to suppose, an ye might be handled, ye should have the same death, or a more shamefuler death. And sir, we say all, that ye have many times rescued her from death for other men's quarrels, us seemeth it is more your worship that ye rescue the queen from this peril, insomuch she hath it for your sake.

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