The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Foreword

  Introduction

  MERLIN

  THE KNIGHT WITH THE TWO SWORDS

  THE WEDDING OF KING ARTHUR

  THE DEATH OF MERLIN

  MORGAN LE FAY

  GAWAIN, EWAIN, AND MARHALT

  THE NOBLE TALE OF SIR LANCELOT OF THE LAKE

  APPENDIX

  THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS

  JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) was the author of The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, and many other American classics. He was one of the most prolific and influential authors of his generation and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

  CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI is the author of the number-one New York Times bestsellers Eragon and Eldest. His most recent novel, Brisingr, completes the Inheritance series. He lives with his family in Paradise Valley, Montana.

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  First published in the United States of America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1976

  Edition with a foreword by Christopher Paolini published by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007

  Published in Penguin Books 2008

  Copyright (c) Elaine Steinbeck, 1976 Foreword copyright (c) Christopher Paolini, 2007

  eISBN : 978-1-44065552-4

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  (Previous page: The author's dedication in script by John Stanley. The literal transcription below is followed by a modern rendering.) Whan of IX wyntre age

  I toke siege wyth Kinge Arthurs felyship emonge knyghtes most orgulus and worshyppful as ony on lyve

  In tho dayes grate lack was of squyres of hardynesse and noble herte to bere shylde and glayve to bockle harnyss and succoure woundid knyghtes

  Than yit chaunced that squyre lyke dutyes fell to my systir of vi wyntre age that for jantyl prouesse had no felawe lyvynge

  Yt haps somtymes in saddnesse and pytie that who faythful servys ys not faythful sene so my fayre and sikker systir squyre dures yet undubbed

  Wherefore thys daye I mak amendys to my power and rayse hir knyghte and gyff hir loudis

  And fro thys hower she shall be byght Syr Mayrie Stynebec of the Vayle Salynis

  God gyvve hir worshypp saunz jaupardye

  Jehan Stynebec de Montray

  Miles

  When I was nine, I took siege with King Arthur's fellowship of knights most proud and worshipful as any alive.--In those days there was a great lack of hardy and noble-hearted squires to bear shield and sword, to buckle harness, and to succor wounded knights. --Then it chanced that squire-like duties fell to my sister of six years, who for gentle prowess had no peer living.--It sometimes happens in sadness and pity that faithful service is not appreciated, so my fair and loyal sister remained unrecognized as squire.--Wherefore this day I make amends within my power and raise her to knighthood and give her praise.--And from this hour she shall be called Sir Marie Steinbeck of Salinas Valley.--God give her worship without peril.

  John Steinbeck of Monterey

  Knight

  FOREWORD

  LIKE JOHN STEINBECK, I read the Caxton version of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur when I was nine. And like Steinbeck, I fell in love with that immortal book. It introduced me to an older, more potent form of the English language--the arcane words and grammar fascinated me--and to fantasy; for whatever its historical basis, the legend of King Arthur contains as many fantastical elements as any modern sword-and-sorcery novel.

  The appeal of Le Morte d'Arthur has endured since it was published in 1485; few books have influenced Western culture the same way. One can hardly go a day without stumbling across references to Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Excalibur, the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, or some other fragment of Arthurian mythology. From Idylls of the King to Monty Python's Spamalot, Malory's legacy surrounds us.

  Although Le Morte d'Arthur occupies a treasured place within popular consciousness and contains thrilling accounts of derring-do, Malory can be hard going for those accustomed to a steady diet of movies, television, comic books, and the straightforward prose of today's writers. It's understandable, then, why Steinbeck wanted to retell Le Morte d'Arthur in a style more accessible to modern children. Numerous authors have tried their hand at this, but few as distinguished as Steinbeck.

  Steinbeck began The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, the last novel he ever worked on, in 1958. At first he decided to, as he put it, "translate" Malory, but since Le Morte d'Arthur is already in English--albeit an archaic form--Steinbeck ended up doing little more than paraphrasing. When his literary agent, Elizabeth Otis, and his editor, Chase Horton, read the initial chapters of The Acts of King Arthur, they expressed concern about the direction his work was taking. Their exact comments are lost to us, as only Steinbeck's letters on this topic have been preserved; however, it's clear from his subsequent responses on May 13 and 14, 1959, that they spurred him to reexamine his assumptions about the shape of The Acts of King Arthur.

  That advice, combined with Steinbeck's growing comfort with the project, gave him the confidence to tell the story the way he felt it ought to be told, regardless of Malory's precedent. One can watch as, paragraph by paragraph, Steinbeck's writing comes to life over the course of the two chapters "The Death of Merlin" and "Morgan Le Fay." For the first time the characters move and talk like real people, not like enigmatic icons of a lost age. The land they inhabit becomes a tangible place as Steinbeck lengthens his descriptions. His language is strong and direct, powered by his use of Anglo-Saxon words, a style all too rare in a genre dominated by clotted prose. And he finally allows himself to tender his own opinions and observations on the nature of humanity, the very things that make him a great writer.

  The transformation is not entirely complete until the last and longest chapters: "Gawain, Ewain, and Marhalt" and "The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot of the Lake." To me these are masterpieces of both Arthurian fiction and fantasy in general. Here Steinbeck gives us Gawain's handsome selfishness; Marhalt's tragic battle with the giant and his bittersweet stab at romance; Ewain's extraordinary training under the fierce old damosel Lyne (one of the most believable warrio
r women I've encountered in fiction); and a Lancelot who seems superhuman in his abilities and determination, and all too vulnerable when it comes to Guinevere. These chapters, filled with action, comedy, and a deep appreciation for the joys and sorrows of life, are truly wonderful.

  It's surprising, considering his earlier fidelity, how far Steinbeck strays from Le Morte d'Arthur in these segments. Not only does he create entire scenes, but he delves into the characters' thoughts and feelings in a way Malory never did. He gives equal weight to the women, whom he portrays with a level of dignity, respect, and empathy rare in Malory's time.

  Steinbeck conducted a vast amount of research before and during the writing of The Acts of King Arthur, studying hundreds of books and making multiple visits to locations associated with Le Morte d'Arthur. The fruits of his labor can best be seen in "Gawain, Ewain, and Marhalt" and "The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot." His England is a fully realized place, not an idealized fairy-tale kingdom conjured up by an author more familiar with cars and concrete than swords and horses. The setting is of an indeterminate historical period--a melange of medieval and premedieval elements--and yet Steinbeck makes his world seem as real as ours. He furnishes us with precise details of the land's agriculture, architecture, class structure, economics, gender roles, and religion, details that rely on a thorough understanding of history. An excellent example of this is when Lancelot arrives at the abbey and speaks with the abbess. Those few pages are packed with information, yet Steinbeck weaves it into the narrative in such a graceful manner that it never feels as if he's lecturing us.

  Anachronisms such as stirrups, castles, and plate armor--none of which existed when the historical King Arthur supposedly lived--as well as more modern expressions and attitudes (see the character of Lyne) do appear in the text, but not by accident. Steinbeck uses them to evoke our preconceived notions of Arthur's age and to help make a strange culture more accessible.

  Steinbeck stopped working on The Acts of King Arthur sometime in late 1959, just as he seemed to hit his stride. Nine years later, he died. Why did he lose interest in the book? His correspondence with Ms. Otis and Mr. Horton indicates that he had difficulty finding a unifying theme or focal point for the story. Also, having to follow a preexisting outline may have inhibited his ability to write, and perhaps his desire to completely understand the history of Arthurian mythology, while initially helpful, ended up paralyzing him.

  With a subject so large, there are always more books to read, more experts to interview, more places to visit. At a certain point you have to say "Good enough," and put pen to paper. Malory, after all, was in prison when he wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, and by necessity relied mostly upon memory to retell stories from his youth. If only Steinbeck had been locked up in a similar manner, with two or three reference books at the most, he might have completed The Acts of King Arthur in short order, and with less agonizing over whether he was being faithful enough to the original story.

  I also wonder what would have happened if Steinbeck had forsaken Le Morte d'Arthur and invented a world of his own. Free to follow his own course, he might have crafted a major work of fantasy. It's not as unlikely as it may seem. His first novel, Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History, was one of high adventure, with more fiction than history.

  As it stands, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is an incomplete collection of first and second drafts. For writers and Steinbeck scholars, it provides a valuable glimpse into the inner workings of Steinbeck's creative process, and reveals difficulties that even the best authors can encounter. For everyone else--and especially nine-year-old boys who love accounts of "kyngs and knyghtes and grete dedes"--it is a worthy addition to one's library.

  I wish I had read Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights when I was nine.

  --Christopher Paolini January 2007

  INTRODUCTION

  SOME PEOPLE THERE ARE WHO, being grown, forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child. An adult is rarely successful in the undertaking--the reduction of experience to a set of symbols. For a thousand thousand years these humans have existed and they have only learned this trick--this magic--in the final ten thousand of the thousand thousand.

  I do not know how usual my experience is, but I have seen in my children the appalled agony of trying to learn to read. They, at least, have my experience.

  I remember that words--written or printed--were devils, and books, because they gave me pain, were my enemies.

  Some literature was in the air around me. The Bible I absorbed through my skin. My uncles exuded Shakespeare, and Pilgrim's Progress was mixed with my mother's milk. But these things came into my ears. They were sounds, rhythms, figures. Books were printed demons--the tongs and thumbscrews of outrageous persecution. And then, one day, an aunt gave me a book and fatuously ignored my resentment. I stared at the black print with hatred, and then, gradually, the pages opened and let me in. The magic happened. The Bible and Shakespeare and Pilgrim's Progress belonged to everyone. But this was mine--It was a cut version of the Caxton Morte d'Arthur of Thomas Malory. I loved the old spelling of the words--and the words no longer used. Perhaps a passionate love for the English language opened to me from this one book. I was delighted to find out paradoxes--that cleave means both to stick together and to cut apart; that host means both an enemy and a welcoming friend; that king and gens (people) stem from the same root. For a long time, I had a secret language--yclept and hyght, wist--and accord meaning peace, and entente meaning purpose, and fyaunce meaning promise. Moving my lips, I pronounced the letter known as thorn, th, like a "p," which it resembles, instead of like a "th." But in my town, the first word of Ye Olde Pye Shoppe was pronounced "yee," so I guess my betters were no better off than I. It was much later that I discovered that "y" had been substituted for the lost p. But beyond the glorious and secret words--"And when the chylde is borne lete it be delyvered to me at yonder privy posterne uncrystened"--oddly enough I knew the words from whispering them to myself. The very strangeness of the language dyd me enchante, and vaulted me into an ancient scene.

  And in that scene were all the vices that ever were--and courage and sadness and frustration, but particularly gallantry--perhaps the only single quality of man that the West has invented. I think my sense of right and wrong, my feeling of noblesse oblige, and any thought I may have against the oppressor and for the oppressed, came from this secret book. It did not outrage my sensibilities as nearly all the children's books did. It did not seem strange to me that Uther Pendragon wanted the wife of his vassal and took her by trickery. I was not frightened to find that there were evil knights, as well as noble ones. In my own town there were men who wore the clothes of virtue whom I knew to be bad. In pain or sorrow or confusion, I went back to my magic book. Children are violent and cruel--and good--and I was all of these--and all of these were in the secret book. If I could not choose my way at the crossroads of love and loyalty, neither could Lancelot. I could understand the darkness of Mordred because he was in me too; and there was some Galahad in me, but perhaps not enough. The Grail feeling was there, however, deep-planted, and perhaps always will be.

  Later, because the spell persisted, I went to the sources--to the Black Book of Caermarthen, to "The Mabinogion and Other Welsh Tales" from the Red Book of Hergist, to De Excidio Britanniae by Gildas, to Giraldus Cambrensis Historia Britonum, and to many of the "Frensshe" books Malory speaks of. And with the sources, I read the scholarly diggings and scrabblings--Chambers, Sommer, Gollancz, Saintsbury--but I always came back to Malory, or perhaps I should say to Caxton's Malory, since that was the only Malory there was until a little over thirty years ago, when it was announced that an unknown Malory manuscript had been discovered in the Fellows Library of Winchester College. The discovery excited me but, being no scholar but only an enthusiast, I had neither the opportunity nor the qualifica
tion to inspect the find until in 1947 Eugene Vinaver, Professor of French Language and Literature at the University of Manchester, edited his great three-volume edition of the works of Sir Thomas Malory, for Oxford University, taken from the Winchester manuscript. No better man could have been chosen for the work than Professor Vinaver, with his great knowledge, not only of the "Frensshe" books, but also of the Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Breton, and English sources. He has brought to the work, beyond his scholarly approach, the feeling of wonder and delight so often lacking in a school-man's methodology.

  For a long time I have wanted to bring to present-day usage the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These stories are alive even in those of us who have not read them. And, in our day, we are perhaps impatient with the old words and the stately rhythms of Malory. My own first and continuing enchantment with these things is not generally shared. I wanted to set them down in plain present-day speech for my own young sons, and for other sons not so young--to set the stories down in meaning as they were written, leaving out nothing and adding nothing--perhaps to compete with the moving pictures, the comic-strip travesties which are the only available source for those children and others of today who are impatient with the difficulties of Malory's spelling and use of archaic words. If I can do this and keep the wonder and the magic, I shall be pleased and gratified. In no sense do I wish to rewrite Malory, or reduce him, or change him, or soften or sentimentalize him. I believe the stories are great enough to survive my tampering, which at best will make the history available to more readers, and at worst can't hurt Malory very much. At long last, I am abandoning the Caxton of my first love for the Winchester, which seems to me more knee-deep in Malory than Caxton was. I am indebted to Professor Eugene Vinaver for his making the Winchester manuscript available.

  For my own part, I can only ask that my readers include me in the request of Sir Thomas Malory when he says: "And I pray you all that redyth this tale to pray for him that this wrote that God sende hym good delyverance and sone and hastely--Amen."