Dark Knight

Letters

Vol. 16 No. 5 · 10 March 1994

From Brian Stone

The grisly details from Malory’s account of the aftermath of the last battle, cited by Tom Shippey speculatively as indications that Malory may have been at the Battle of Towton, are in fact taken from the source poem, the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur, and very slightly embroidered. In the first example (lines 3416-25 of Malory’s source), concerning the threat to the lives of Arthur, Lucan and Bedivere posed by body-robbers during the night, Malory’s only addition is to add the moon to the night. In the second example, concerting Lucan’s death during his effort to lift the wounded Arthur, Malory uses the actual words of the poem: ‘He held the king to his own herte brast.’ And he follows out the implications of that and of ‘fomed in the blood’ a few lines later, when he writes of Lucan’s guts falling out of his body. References to guts falling out of bodies were then, as they are now, common in battle reporting and literature.

Brian Stone
London W8

Vol. 16 No. 6 · 24 March 1994

From Robert Ross

Tom Shippey’s description (LRB, 24 February) of Malory’s bravura escapes from Coleshill and Colchester smack of what might be called medieval special pleading. To read Early Chancery Petitions in the Public Record Office is to wallow in the formulae of violence: ‘and men of werre cam to the place of youre seid besecher atte Trewonwell in the same Counte with force and armez that is to sey with bowys Arous Jakkez Salettez Cures Haberiouns Longedebefas atte Middenyght in the mooste riotes wise that kouth be thought bryngynge with them Gunnys Crossbowes Speres Paveys with many othir ablementez of werre.’ French petitions are equally fertile: ‘les ditz Hugh et Johan ove cc hommes darmes after de guerre arraiez deconuz … viendront a dite ville de Barowe ove force et armes cestassavoir ove haubergeons et paletz de fere arkes setes espees bastone et bokelers.’

In another petition our poor Besecher is sitting quietly at dinner with his good friend when the evil ‘mysdoer’ attacks him and he ‘eschuyng bodely harme trustyng in thair fayth and promisse come un to theym and thayre sayde promisses and faythes not withstandyng they hym there and then with grete violence dyspoyled of his bowe arrowes swerde bokeler and dagger.’ Dinner? Fourteenth and 15th-century England would appear filled with ‘grete mysdoers’ armed to the teeth and incessantly beating half to death people of all sizes, shapes, ages and sex: ‘the seid mysdoers with Gunshott and othir engynes broke the gates and doores … and there the servantez … bette wounded and evyll entretyd takynge his norys and his iiii younge children beynge naked in bed keste tham oute into the fore withoute pitee or mercy betynge the seid norys soo that she was in despeir of hir lyff.’ The charge sheet on Malory’s escapes looks like an attempt on the part of lackadaisical or suborned (or both) keepers to make the best of a tricky situation. To me, the detail itself is a dead give-away. How else was he to cross the moat? Fly?

That said, the rape rap sheet looks good. I suppose that rapere might conceivably be ambiguous in medieval Latin (even legal Latin) as it certainly is in Classical Latin. But carnaliter concubuit is not at all. If he got nailed on this one, he fucked her, not once, but twice. Tom Shippey (last paragraph) might agree: it’s too bad she wasn’t named Guinevere.

Robert Ross
London NW6