Glossing Tennyson: The Platypus Reads Part XCII

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere,
And whiter than the mist that all day long
Had held the field of battle was the King:

Tennyson gives us another picture of Arthur as Leodogran’s “phantom king.”  Bedivere stands with Arthur at the last, like John at the crucifixion, and so is able to record a true testimony of Arthur’s final words and deeds.

   'Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world,
And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move,
And beats upon the faces of the dead,
My dead, as though they had not died for me?--
O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fallen
Confusion, till I know not what I am,
Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King.
Behold, I seem but King among the dead.'

The “great voice that shakes the world” is in a literal sense the sound of the surf (“and rolling far along the gloomy shores”).  Figuratively, it may be the voice of Death or Time, “the voice of days of old and days to be.”  Looking at the break-down of time and space in this archetypal moment, however, it may be that Arthur’s crucifixion is coming under the power of The Crucifixion.  If so, in this moment when Arthur is alone and forsaken his cry of helplessness is caught up into the great “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani” of the dying Son of God.

   Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: 'My King,
King everywhere! and so the dead have kings,
There also will I worship thee as King.
Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live
Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought
The heathen back among us, yonder stands,
Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house.'

Here again, we see that though Arthur is a Christ-figure, he does not have to bear Christ’s burden.  By grace, Bedivere is with Arthur and able to offer him comfort in his final hour.  As before, Bedivere calls Arthur to himself by reminding him of his name and role.  This should remind us of “Merlin and Vivian” where Merlin confesses that he fears the loss of “name and fame” only as they decrease his usefulness.  When Vivian strips the wizard of his power, he is “lost to life and use and name and fame.”  Unlike Merlin, Arthur has not isolated himself from society and is thus saved from the great moment of weariness and despair that Merlin leaves himself open to when he sails away from Camelot.

   Then spake the King: 'My house hath been my doom.

Arthur realizes that it is his inability to keep his own house in order that has caused his downfall.  This is not specific to Modred, but includes, Guinevere, Gawain, and Lancelot as well.  Tennyson may be commenting on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s ability to weld their public and private lives into a unified whole and thus make their “house” their greatest political asset.  It is also interesting to note that Albert, who Tennyson says admired Arthur “Perchance as finding there unconsciously/Some image of himself,” contracted the typhus which killed him while visiting Cambridge to rebuke his son for a sexual liaison with a chorus girl thus making Albert’s “house” the source of his doom.

But call not thou this traitor of my house
Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof with me.
My house are rather they who sware my vows,
Yea, even while they brake them, owned me King.

This echoes Christ’s words to the crowds when his mother and brothers come to keep him from embarrassing the family: here are my mother and brothers.

And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,
When all the purport of my throne hath failed,
That quick or dead thou holdest me for King.

Unlike the apostles, Bedivere is here in Arthur’s “dark hour” to confess him as the true king.  The fact that the title “Christ” is a hold-over from the Greek often keeps us from remembering that when Peter confessed Jesus as “Christ” he was confessing him as the “anointed king.”

King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
Yet, ere I pass.' And uttering this the King
Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege
Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword
Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow,
Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.

Arthur, knowing his role, knows himself and thus has power to act.  This is Arthur’s final test.  He and Bedivere outnumber Modred.  They could declare victory and go home.  In time, however, Modred could gather a new army and Arthur’s Round Table would take a lifetime to rebuild.  Even though Arthur will pass, he can at least insure that the coming order can emerge free from the corruption of Modred.  This matches Arthur’s cryptic words at the end of “The Holy Grail” where he tells his knights: “And some among you held, that if the King/Had seen the sight he would have swore the vow:/Not easily, seeing that the king must guard/That which he rules, and is but as the hind/To whom a space of land is given to plow./Who may not wander from the allotted field/Before his work be done; but, being done,/Let visions of the night or of the day/Come, as they will…”  Here Arthur keeps to his word and does his duty to the last but, his duty done, the visions of Avilion will now swiftly catch him up.  In the same passage of “The Holy Grail” Continuing the quotation, Arthur also explicitly identifies with Christ: “…and many a time they come,/Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,/This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,/This air that smites his forehead is not air/But vision-yea, his very hand and foot-/In moments when he feels he cannot die,/And knows himself no vision to himself,/Nor the high God a vision, nor that One/Who rose again…”  Arthur fulfills his role as Christ-type in smiting down Modred the Satan figure: “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”  We should also note that Tennyson has changed this scene from Mallory where Arthur attacks Modred with a spear.  The switch allows Arthur to use Excalibur, the symbol of his office, and thus enhance the sense that Arthur is fulfilling his final duty as king.

   So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land:
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Tennyson tells us that the whole Round Table died in battle about King Arthur.  It is important to remember that more of the knights of the Round Table fell attacking Arthur than defending him.  Thus, Tennyson is pointing us to the fact that even the traitor knights somehow belong to Arthur.  This may remind us of what Brother Ambrose says about the members of the Round Table in “The Holy Grail”: :”For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,/Some true, some light, but every one of you/Stamp’d with the image of the King…”  Bedivere carries his lord in fashion similar to that of Sam Gamgee bearing Frodo on his back at Mount Doom.  Further parallels between Tennyson and Tolkien can be seen in this poem leading one to wonder if claims of Tolkien’s supposed rejection of the Arthur legends as source material for “The Lord of the Rings” are inaccurate.  The broken chancel and the broken cross can be seen as icons for the loss of faith and the breaking of sacred vows.  The ocean plays an important role in Tennyson’s poetry as a symbol of death and the infinite.  This is most evident in the poem “Crossing the Bar” which he requested to be placed at the end of any collection of his poems: “Sunset and the evening star/And one clear call for me!/And may there be no moaning of the bar,/When I put out to sea,/But such a tide as moving seems asleep,/Too full for sound and foam,/When that which drew from out the boundless deep/Turns again home./Twilight and the evening bell,/And after that the dark!/And may there be no sadness of farewell,/When I embark;/For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place/The flood may bear me far,/I hope to see my Pilot face to face/When I have crost the bar.”  The water may be the temporary lake that surrounds Glastonbury abbey, often thought to be Avilion, at certain times of the year.