Poem: Idylls of the King

Overview

Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, first issued in 1859 as a set of four linked poems, reshapes Arthurian legend into a Victorian meditation on idealism and human frailty. Framed by King Arthur’s civilizing mission and the chivalric code of the Round Table, the 1859 idylls, Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere, trace a moral arc from suspicion within marriage, through seduction and deception, to the cost of adulterous love and the queen’s remorse. Each episode stands alone yet echoes the others, showing how private compromises corrode public ideals and foreshadowing the fall of Camelot.

Enid (Geraint and Enid)

A tale of marital strain resolved through steadfast love, Enid follows Sir Geraint and his wife after courtly slander breeds jealousy. Geraint suspects Enid’s fidelity and orders her to ride with him in silence through hostile country, a harsh test of obedience and trust. Though commanded not to speak, Enid repeatedly warns him of ambushes, helping him overcome brigands and rivals at risk to herself. Her quiet courage and truthful warnings pierce his suspicion. The idyll restores harmony not through triumph in battle but through repentance and mutual recognition, sketching a model of conjugal love under pressure and suggesting how rumor and pride can unsettle the Round Table’s moral center.

Vivien (Merlin and Vivien)

Vivien presents the corrosive force of cunning and sensuality set against wisdom grown weary. The court enchantress flatters and goads the aging Merlin, prying into secrets while slandering Guinevere and the knights. She demands the charm that can imprison a man forever, feigning vulnerability and love until Merlin, exhausted by doubt and the court’s whispering malice, yields. Once she has the spell, she seals him within an enchanted hawthorn. The loss of Merlin, the king’s counselor and conscience, signals a deepening crack in Arthur’s realm: knowledge undermined by cynicism, and the king’s ideals weakened by those who find virtue mere pretense.

Elaine (Lancelot and Elaine)

In Elaine, purity and devotion meet the impossibility of a divided heart. Elaine of Astolat loves Lancelot with absolute, innocent ardor; he accepts her favor but cannot return her love, bound already by his secret tie to Guinevere. Wounded in tournament and nursed by Elaine, he remains honorable yet distant. She dies of unrequited love and is sent downriver in a barge, her letter proclaiming a love that never sought reward. Guinevere’s jealousy flares, exposing the peril of the queen’s concealed bond with Lancelot. The idyll contrasts Elaine’s chaste ideal with the adulterous passion that shadows the court, turning private feeling into public fault.

Guinevere

After the affair with Lancelot becomes undeniable and the fellowship falters, Guinevere flees to a convent at Almesbury. Arthur visits her once, not to punish but to mourn the breach between the high vision he offered, knighthood as service and purity, and the human frailty that has undone it. His measured grief and reluctant forgiveness, given without self-pity, cast a solemn light on the Round Table’s failure. Guinevere accepts shame and begins a life of penitence, while Arthur rides away toward darkening wars, the ruin already seeded by betrayal and distrust.

Themes and Design

The four idylls form a sequence of decline: fidelity tested and redeemed; wisdom entrapped by falsehood; innocent love extinguished by a tainted court; a queen’s sin confessed, too late to save the ideal. Tennyson’s supple blank verse binds pageantry to psychological scrutiny, making Camelot a mirror for Victorian concerns about duty, marriage, and the fragility of moral order. The king’s “blameless” ideal is less a spotless fact than a demanding vision, one that falters when whispered slanders, private indulgences, and half-truths gain rule over the heart.