19
The Medieval English Tristan
The Chertsey Abbey tiles (c. 1270), which show more than thirty scenes from the story of Tristan and Yseult, are part of the ample evidence of the familiarity of the tale in medieval England. In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century texts the central figures appear as proverbial illustrations both of the power of love and of truth and beauty. The company they keep may be that of other traditional pairings of lovers, as in the elegiac Love-Rune of Thomas of Hales:
Hwer is Paris and Heleyne
þat weren so bryht & feyre on bleo,
Amadas & Ideyne,
Tristram, Yseude and alle þeo?
(lines 65–8)
They may, on the other hand, be in Arthurian company, as in Cursor Mundi, when the author, listing the topics that audiences like to hear about, moves on from Kyng Arthour þat was so rike and Wawan, Cai and oþer stabell to Tristrem and hys leif Ysote,/ How he for here becom a sote (Prologue). They head Gower’s list of lovers when, in the vision which brings Confessio Amantis to its end, he describes among the sondri routes which Cupid brings with him the company of lusty Yowthe dancing and discoursing:
of knyhthod and of armes,
And what it is to ligge in armes
With love, whanne it is achieved.
Ther was Tristram, which was believed
With bele Ysolde, and Lancelot
Stod with Gunnore, and Galahot
With his ladi …
(Confessio Amantis, bk VIII, lines 2497–503)
The particular conjunction of figures suggests Gower’s knowledge of the Prose Tristan (Hardman et al. 2003: 95).
In the romance Emaré the four corners of the magic cloth which comes to represent the power of the heroine’s beauty are embroidered with the figures of lovers, Amadas and Ydoine in the first corner:
In that other corner was dyght
Trystram and Isowde so bryght,
That semely wer to se.
And for they loved hem ryght,
As full of stones ar they dyght,
As thykke as they may be …
(Emaré, lines 133–8)
The approval indicated by “they loved hem ryght” is there too in Chaucer’s comic picture of himself as trewe Tristam the secounde in To Rosemounde; he cites bele Isawde as the most beautiful of women in The House of Fame and in the company of Helen in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women. A darker view is suggested by the lovers’ appearance with the tragic figures depicted in the temple of Venus in The Parliament of Fowls:
Semyramis, Candace, and Hercules,
Biblis, Dido, Thisbe, and Piramus,
Tristram, Isaude, Paris, and Achilles,
Eleyne, Cleopatre, and Troylus …
(The Parliament of Fowls, lines 288–91)
The insertion of the medieval names into the list (derived from Boccaccio) of instances from Virgil, Ovid, and Statius confirms their classic status, but all are compromised by Chaucer’s treatment of Venus and her temple, which many interpreters have seen as “a moral allegory, signifying selfish, lustful, illicit, disastrous love” (Brewer 1972: 31). The view that they loved hem wrong is explicitly expressed by Gower in the series of ballades written as an appendix to Confessio Amantis:
Open been bothe cronyk and historie
Of Lancelote and of Tristram also –
And yhit their foly is in þe memorye
For ensampil, yheuyng vnto all tho
That been alyve nat for to lyuen so.
(Traitié, Ballade XV, trans. John Quixley, c. 1400)
Gower’s theme is adultery: the occurrence here of the name of Tristram harks back to the controversy about the tale which was there from the start.
The two treatments of the story that exist in Middle English, the late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century romance Sir Tristrem and Malory’s long fifth book of Le Morte Darthur, represent contrasting historical stages in the development of the material, as well as different ways of interpreting the events and the characters. Sir Tristrem presents the pre-Arthurianized tale turned into a hero-centered, “whole life” romance. In Malory’s post-Arthurianized telling, the figures of Tristan and Yseult have been absorbed into the multi-threaded narrative and reduced to parallels for Lancelot and Guenevere.
Sir Tristrem survives in a unique but incomplete copy in the well-known Auchinleck manuscript. The text consists of 3,344 lines in eleven-line stanzas, punctuated by enlarged capitals that divide the poem into 21 portions; one hesitates to call these sections or fitts, because the division is rhetorical rather than structural, and inconsistently used, but it provides one way of describing the long sequence of episodes, which cover the plot material usually attributed to the Tristran of Thomas of Britain, as it is represented in the translation into Norwegian in Friar Robert’s Saga of Tristram and Isönd. In a short prologue “Tomas” is identified as the poem’s source and the name is referred to also in lines 10, 397, 412, and 2787; these references may indicate knowledge of Thomas of Britain’s poem; if so, the mention of Erceldoune in the first line (as indicated by the preceding catchword), which led Sir Walter Scott and others to attribute the romance to Thomas the Rhymer, is a confusion with a later northern tradition of minstrelsy (Cooper 2005). Sections 2–6 (lines 34–759) narrate the love of Tristrem’s parents, his birth and their deaths, his upbringing by Rohaud, abduction by Norwegian merchants, arrival in England and acceptance at Mark’s court. Sections 7–11 (lines 760–1617) cover Tristrem’s conquest of Brittany (by which he avenges his father), his fighting Moraunt on Mark’s behalf, his journeys to Ireland, and his meeting with Ysoude.1 The central sections (lines 1618–2255) deal with the marriage of Ysoude to Mark, Ysoude’s aborted plan to kill Brengwain, who has taken her place in the marriage bed, Tristrem’s recovery of Ysoude from the Irish harper, and plots, led by Meriadok, to catch Tristrem and Ysoude together. After the reconciliation between king and queen when Ysoude has survived trial by ordeal through subterfuge, Tristrem goes to Wales, and then is exiled with Ysoude to the woods for a year, after which he is forced to leave again, this time alone, and goes to Spain and Brittany, where he marries the other Ysoude (section 17, lines 2256–739). In the final sections (lines 2740–3344), Tristrem in Brittany overcomes the giant Beliagog, has him build a hall with statues, and returns to England with his brother-in-law, Gauhardin; the two men are entertained as lovers by Ysoude and Brengwain, who are fending off the unwelcome attentions of Canados, and at a final tournament they take vengeance on Meriadok and Canados. Tristrem is wounded on his return to Brittany but the text breaks off before Tristrem’s death.
In his edition of Sir Tristrem (1804) Sir Walter Scott filled the manuscript’s gap with fifteen stanzas of his own, clearly identified, bringing the story to the black sail and the deaths of the lovers. In one of the first scholarly printed versions of a Middle English text, with introduction, notes, and glossary, Scott made this tale, unlike many other medieval romances, available to Romantic and Victorian writers, but:
the narrative probably aroused little interest because of its difficult Northern Middle English, which is complicated by … abrupt transitions, and obscure diction; this version scarcely represents the compelling qualities of the traditional love story. (Taylor & Brewer 1983: 29)
The low critical esteem which this indicates had been the usual reaction to Sir Tristrem until recently; standard histories of Middle English romance have tended to view the poet’s eccentric verse form as akin to Chaucer’s rym dogerel and the “skeletal” treatment of the plot material as “unworthy of such a subject” (Barron 1987: 154–5). The accusation that the narrative is “skeletal” is a very familiar type of criticism of shorter English versions of rhetorically ample, courtly French romances: the poet of Sir Tristrem covers the complex plot material of Thomas’s Tristran, but in a style closer to ballad, a staccato, short-lined stanza, which reads at times like mere subtitles to the story. So, the conception and birth of Tristrem is conveyed in a single stanza in which Mark’s sister visits the wounded knight, Rouland:
Sche seyd, “Waylaway”,
When hye herd it was so. [ie. that Rouland was wounded]
To her maistresse sche gan say [governess]
That hye was boun to go
To the knight ther he lay.
Sche swouned and hir was wo.
So comfort he that may,
A knave child gat thai two
So dere;
And sithen mon cleped him so:
Tristrem the trewe fere.
(lines 100–110)
This sort of poetry clearly will not offer full, formal expression of thought and feeling; one has to adjust to the laconic registration of key events as a rapid strip-cartoon version of the tale. The poet is not without self-consciousness: not only does his prologue identify a source, but also conveys the transitoriness of life and fame which the poem will illustrate, and the voice of the narrator is heard at intervals; selection and direction are apparent, not merely summary.
What some critics have seen in the romance is a redirection of the material into the mould of a hero-centered biography. Signs of this are the inclusion of Tristrem’s parents, his birth and upbringing, his training in courtliness, his undertaking as a chosen champion single combats and traditional heroic challenges from dragon and giant, his winning the hand of three princesses in three different countries, and the narrative’s covering the whole span of his life. The English version’s brevity in some key scenes of the love story can be set beside some detailed accounts of Tristrem’s fighting: the duel with Moraunt on an island (lines 1024–89), his killing of the dragon (lines 1442–85), the fight with Urgan in Wales (lines 2322–98), and the vengeance taken on Meriadok and Canados (lines 3246–89). These scenes provide some of the reason why Sir Tristrem appears with Horn Childe, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, and the like in the Auchinleck manuscript.
Moreover, Tristrem remains the most cultivated of chivalric heroes, distinguished from a killing machine by his skill as a chess-player and harpist, and his artistry in the chase. He loses some of his accomplishments in the English poem, given no opportunity to display fluency in many languages or knowledge of the seven liberal arts which Friar Robert specifies (Saga, chapter 17), nor does the medical technology which enables him to fashion and fit a wooden leg to the giant Moldagog after he has chopped off one leg at the knee (Saga, chapter 76) survive, except as implied in the passing reference to the giant Beliagog’s use of a “stilt” (line 2956). But he keeps those accomplishments which are essential to specific episodes and themes: chess, where he is particularly artful, in the abduction episode, knowledge of the craft of venery as passage into Mark’s court, and musicianship as the basis for his intimacy with Ysoude and his later rescue of her from the Irish harpist. Neither does the greater emphasis on Tristrem’s heroic exploits ultimately change the unique quality of the story, though it may shift its balance. Ysoude does not enter the narrative until over halfway through the poem, but it is the love relationship that comes to dominate Tristrem’s actions. He goes to Wales only because a fight, wherever it is, will be a release from frustration:
For he ne may Ysoude kisse,
Fight he sought aywhare.
(lines 2298–9)
There is a sharp perceptiveness in the English poet’s focusing of some scenes, which makes up for brevity. Take, for example, Tristrem’s fury when he returns from hunting to find that Mark has been tricked by the Irish harpist into handing over his wife. In Friar Robert’s account it is simply the speed with which Tristan goes to the rescue that is stressed but in the English poem we find the most direct confrontation between nephew and uncle. Mark’s weakness is ruthlessly exposed:
Tho was Tristrem in ten
And chidde with the King:
“Gifstow glewemen thi Quen?
Hastow no nother thing?”
(lines 1849–52)
In place of one night’s rest in the forest after Tristrem has rescued Ysoude (Saga, chapter 50), Sir Tristrem awards them seven nights of joy in the woods before their return to court and Tristrem’s laconic reproof to Mark: “Gif minstrels other thing!” (line 1925).
There are many minor differences between Sir Tristrem and the Saga, as one might expect since there is no direct textual relationship between them: the comparison is interesting, nevertheless, since the same motifs appear in different guises. Only a Scandinavian redactor would seize on the arrival of the Norwegian merchants in England as an opportunity for local color:
The cargo included much fur-stuff, ermine pelts and beaver pelts, black sable, walrus tusks and bearskin cloaks, goshawks, gray falcons and many white falcons, wax and cowhides, goatskins, dried fish and tar, train oil and sulphur, and all kinds of Norwegian wares. (Schach 1973, chapter 18)
In Sir Tristrem the merchants bring only haukes white and gray / And panes fair yfold (lines 300–301). If one looks for equivalent local variations in the English romance, the episode in Wales (lines 2293–420), which occurs where in Friar Robert’s text Tristram goes to Poland, is suggestive either of a Welsh path of transmission for the material (supported by the Welsh names Morgan and Roland Rhys), or of influence from other romance texts; Wales does not appear often as a venue in romance, and there is a close enough parallel in Horn Childe for it to have been thought that one might have been an influence on the other (Mills 1988: 55–6, 69–70). Tristrem, like Horn, becomes the Welsh king’s champion; fighting on his behalf achieves part of his vengeance for the death of his father (the giant Urgan being the brother of Morgan) and wins the love of a princess who has to be put aside, since the hero is committed elsewhere. The earlier episode when Rohaud, his clothes reduced to rags by the length of time and distance he has spent seeking Tristrem, has to overcome the hostility of porter and usher in order to gain access to Mark’s court (lines 617–49) is a motif introduced by the English poet which may have Welsh connections: the only other English romance where it occurs (in a fuller and more explicitly comic version) is Sir Cleges, another of the small group of romances set in Wales.
One of the places where Sir Tristrem differs from the Saga is the famous scene when Mark hides in a tree to spy on the lovers. Friar Robert gives us striking pictures of the tryst, Isönd enveloped in a white fur cloak, with covered head, approaching the trees through the garden, while Tristram arrives from the opposite direction through the paling fence; at that moment the moon emerges from a cloud, Tristram sees King Markis’s shadow and halts in his tracks, afraid that the queen will not realize the danger, but she too sees the king and they both withdraw, leaving Markis uncertain enough to abandon his anger for a time. In Sir Tristrem there appears the more complex idea, present in the texts of Béroul, Eilhart, and Gottfried, that the lovers deliberately exploit the situation in order to deceive Mark. There is typically nothing of Friar Robert’s visuality, but concentration on dialogue. No sooner has Tristrem seen Mark than he improvises loudly to alert Ysoude: Thou no aughtest nought here to be! (line 2108). They then feign a debate in which Tristrem takes up the position of one sinned against, and determined to leave the court:
“Ysoude, thou art mi fo;
Thou sinnest, levedi, on me.
Thou gabbest on me so
Mi nem nil me not se.
He threteneth me to slo.
More menske were it to the
Better for to do,
Bi God in Trinité,
This tide.
Or Y this lond schal fle
Into Wales wide.”
(lines 2113–23)
Ysoude both defends herself and reproves Tristrem, swearing her faithfulness with careful ambiguity:
“Men said thou bi me lay,
Thine em so understode.
Wende forth in thi way;
It semes astow were wode,
To wede.
Y loved never man with mode
Bot him that hadde mi maidenhede.”
(lines 2128–34)
In comparison to Gottfried’s courtly discourse at this point, the English poet’s version might well be seen as lacking subtlety, but the dramatic dialogue conveys the tense improvisation of the moment with a more powerful directness, closer in spirit to Béroul. This is often the case in Sir Tristrem; setting himself to render the plot material of the Thomas tradition, the poet’s chosen idiom creates vivid snapshots of action and feeling.
A significant absence from Sir Tristrem is any reference to Arthur and his court. Friar Robert twice uses the Arthurian story as context, even though, as he puts it, “this does not belong to the subject-matter of the story” (Saga, chapter 71). The comparison in the English romance is among the several courts where Tristrem has a temporary place: his position at the courts in Ireland and Wales is that of guest, though he performs the deed that would earn him the hand of the king’s daughter in both; his position in Brittany is a sequence of half-measures, winning power but handing it to another, marrying the Duke’s daughter but never fulfilling the role of husband or loyal vassal; his position at Mark’s court seesaws between high position with the promise of future rule and disgrace and exile. The complexity and absence of stable points of reference partly account for the critical view of the poem as “lacking any sustained moral dimension” with no interest in “the ethical problems raised by Thomas in his story” (Barnes 1993: 94; see also Crane 1986: 195; Sweeney 2000: 125–31). It is true that there is neither clear-cut defense nor criticism of Tristrem and Ysoude’s adultery, but the poet displays both positive and negative aspects of the central situation in his narrative. The most romantic episode is the idyllic happiness of the lovers’ woodland exile (lines 2454–508), in what is described as an ideal place, an ancient house of earth created by giants with a secret entrance, where love is enough to keep them well fed, though Tristrem’s hunting skills and the two dogs, Hodain and Petticrew, also supply their table:
In winter it was hate;
In somer it was cold.
Thai hadden a dern gat
That thai no man told.
Ne hadde thai no wines wat,
No ale that was old;
Ne no gode mete thai at.
Thai hadden al that thai wold
With wille.
For love ich other bihalt,
Her non might of other fille.
(lines 2487–97)
The bliss of this simple life, reminiscent of Boethius’ picture of the Golden Age, is enough to explain the emphasis on dogs in this version of the story: Hodain’s licking of the dregs of the love potion and his consequent total devotion to the lovers has struck a number of critical readers as an indicator that the poem is meant to be read as parody, with comedy used to expose the dubious morality of the lovers’ actions (Lupack 1994: 147–8; Sweeney 2000: 129), but the training of Hodain and Petticrew as hunting dogs (lines 2470–75) makes them a practical part of the self-sufficient family unit; their images accompany Ysoude in the hall of statues. The negative aspects of the adulterous love relationship are expressed not in explicit moral judgment of the lovers as deceivers and breakers of faith, but in registration of Tristrem’s sense of injustice and the shilly-shallying of King Mark, who has little judgment of his own. A rare passage of reflection and self-awareness for Tristrem occurs after his marriage:
Tristrem a wil is inne,
Has founden in his thought:
“Mark, min em, hath sinne;
Wrong he hath ous wrought.
Icham in sorwe and pine;
Therto hye hath me brought.
Hir love, Y say, is mine;
The Boke seyt it is nought
With right.”
(lines 2663–71)
Though this stanza will not satisfy readers who look for the lengthy inner debate which Thomas gave to his Tristran at this point, it expresses a recognition of moral conflict which is consistent with the poet’s handling of the material as primarily the hero’s story. In the scenes that bring the poem to its incomplete close, bitterness and pain are assuaged, both for Ysoude, whose tart invocation of God, Mary, and St Katherine to curse Canados and her frantic disappointment when Tristrem appears to have deserted her are melted away by seeing him again, and for Tristrem, who enjoys the love of Ysoude one last time (lines 3224–5) and then pays back Meriadok and Canados; revenge and vindication are his, rather than remorse.
Whatever the omissions of Sir Tristrem, there is nothing like the same intensity of feeling in the story when its scenes are dispersed among the mixed adventures of the Round Table, as is the case in the Prose Tristan and in Malory’s Morte Darthur. Malory’s enormous Boke of Sir Trystrams de Lyones, “Book of Sir Tristram”, which occupies nearly 200 of the surviving 480 folios of the Winchester manuscript, was based on two books of a three-book version (as yet not precisely identified) of the French Prose Tristan. Though he has mentioned Tristram earlier, in the tale of Marhalt and as a noble knight and the lover of Isode, both with a sense of him as an outsider, Malory now goes back to the beginnings of the story. The first book (Vinaver 1971: 229–343) tells of Tristram’s birth and upbringing, the killing of Marhalt, visits to Ireland, the love potion, Isode’s marriage to King Mark, Tristram’s marriage to Isode le Blaunche Mains, Tristram’s madness in the forest and his being sent into exile, and his encounters with other knights in separate combats and in tournament, though these episodes are intermingled with the adventures of others. The second book (Vinaver 1971: 343–511) sees Tristram become a member of the Round Table, which completes one narrative sequence, and, within a mesh of adventures involving a large cast of characters, tells of Mark’s malicious plots against his nephew, Tristram’s rivalry with Palomydes, Mark’s imprisonment of Tristram, and the escape of Tristram and Isode to the haven of Joyous Garde, which could be said to complete a second main sequence, bringing the story of Tristram and Isode to a temporary happy ending. But here ys no rehersall of the thirde booke, Malory tells us, where presumably the tragic ending would have been reached; instead he moves to the noble tale of the Sankegreall.
A changed perspective is clear in the episode of Segwarydes’ wife (Wimsatt 1997). Between Tristram’s first visit to Ireland (when he has already promised Isode that he will be all the dayes of my lyff your knyght, Vinaver 1971: 243) and his second visit (to ask for Isode’s hand on Mark’s behalf), uncle and nephew become rivals for the beautiful wife of a Cornish earl. King Mark, resenting Tristram’s success, ambushes him on the road to her house; they wound each other in the dark, causing Tristram to leave telltale blood stains in the lady’s bed. Segwarydes thus discovers the affair, and in the consequent fight is unhorsed by Tristram. Though the situation puts Tristram in a less than flattering light, it does provide cause for Mark’s enmity towards him. But it goes further when Bleoberys, kinsman of Lancelot, also falls for this Cornish siren, boldly asks a boon of Mark, claims the lady, and rides off. The potentially comic picture of an ineffectual husband failing to barricade his marriage against three lustful lovers becomes, lengthily in the Prose Tristan and in an abridged form in Le Morte Darthur, an exercise in weighing the obligations of love and the duties of husband and lover. Should Tristram, as a true courtly lover, have challenged Bleoberys and prevented the abduction, as is the view of a court lady who rebuked sir Trystrams in the horrybelyst wyse, and called him cowarde knyght? Or was it, as Tristram says in his defense, his duty to leave it to the husband and conceal his own involvement? The wife, after Tristram and Bleoberys have fought for a time and Bleoberys proposes that they should let her choose between them, opts for Bleoberys, expressing disillusion with Tristram: … untyll that tyme I wente ye had loved me. Bleoberys takes her back to her husband, for which, surprisingly, Tristram gets some of the credit.
Not only does the representation of Tristram in these scenes as an experienced adulterer undermine an idealized concept of Tristram as hero, but rating him in a tally of courtly points scored gives the story a shallowness which does not compensate for the greater narrative variety and larger cast list in the prose version. It is no surprise, therefore, that the tragic outcome of the story of Tristram and Yseult almost disappears in Malory, being reported only in retrospect, first in the list of knights assembled in the episode of the healing of Sir Urry, where his murder by Mark is linked to the death of Lamorak because both were greatly lamented and were with treson slayne (Vinaver 1971: 666), and more fully in a conversation between Launcelot and Bors as to whether Launcelot should rescue Guenevere from being burnt at the stake, and if he were to do so, where would he keep her? When Bors suggests Joyous Garde, citing the three years spent there by Tristram and Isode, Lancelot resists:
“… for by sir Trystram I may have a warnynge; for whan by meanys of tretyse sir Trystram brought again La Beall Isode unto kynge Marke from Joyous Garde, loke ye how shamefully that false traytour kyng Marke slew hym as he sat harpynge afore hys lady, La Beall Isode.” (Vinaver 1971: 681)
Such off-stage reporting sets the seal on the evidence that for Malory the story of Tristram is a secondary matter. It is true that the fifth book is the longest and therefore contains the most substantial body of narrative illustration of the chivalric themes that interested Malory and that the “Book of Sir Tristram” invites comparison with the earlier adventures of Lancelot and Gareth, but it is an overlong hotchpotch including more or less self-contained stories with only oblique reference to Tristram (“La Cote Male Tayle,” “Alexander the Orphan”), episodes in the career of Lancelot (particularly the story of Lancelot and Elayne and the birth of Galahad), the adventures of Palomydes, also in love with Isode, and most powerfully the melodramatic tale of Lamorak, lover of Gawain’s mother, shamefully ambushed in a pryvy place (Vinaver 1971: 428) by Gawain, Aggravaine, Gaheris, and Mordred, and stabbed in the back by Mordred some time after Gaheris had beheaded their mother. Tristram is, as Terence McCarthy put it, “never quite the hero of his own book” (McCarthy 1988: 32). Helen Cooper puts forward the most positive argument for this multiplicity, suggesting that the original story of Tristan and Yseult was too limited to have served Malory’s purpose:
it was essentially a story of private love, with little or no Arthurian reference and no apparent scope for displaying the broad patternings of chivalrous action that Malory required. (Cooper 1996: 183)
The Arthurian version of the story of Tristram is, in broad terms, the restructuring of a love story between a young Cornish hero and an Irish princess, later Queen of Cornwall, who are caught up in a conflict of loyalties, partly determined by magic events outside their control, and involving not only husband, wife, and lover, but the political relationships of Cornwall, Ireland, and Brittany, into a contributory strand in a multiple narrative of Arthur’s court and chivalric brotherhood. Tristram is, in a sense, domesticated from his sea-journeys and shifts of setting into the mainly landlocked world of chivalric adventure, a less precise place populated by wandering knights, singly or in groups, looking for temporary lodgings as they move from tournament to private fight, from meetings with friends to challenges from strangers. The main thrust of Malory’s treatment of Tristram is of his becoming a knight of the Round Table, earning a place high in the league table of the best knights, second only to Lancelot. The “Book of Sir Tristram” is a series of staged combats for Tristram, among others, by which reputation may be measured. In the course of the book Tristram unhorses or otherwise buffets, bruises, and overwhelms knights (not necessarily named but identified as individuals) on nearly a hundred occasions, together with many others referred to in groups at tournaments (as with all of Orkeney); some of these repeat defeats of the same opponent, as with Palomydes, Bleoberys, Ector, and even Arthur (twice). He kills or mortally wounds Marhalt, Earl Grype, Nabone, the Giant Tauleas, Sir Hemysoun (lover of Morgan), Elyas (leader of the Saxons), together with other Saxon knights, twelve knights out of thirty that ambush him and Dynadan, and three other unnamed knights. He is himself unhorsed on occasion by Palomydes (twice), Lamorak, Arthur, and Lancelot, and more than once calls a halt to a combat, so that honors are even between him and Lamorak, Lancelot, and, eventually, Palomydes, whose career is crowned by his accepting baptism. In the various fights Tristram appears in several identities: as king’s nephew and champion of Cornwall; in disguise in Ireland as potential winner of the hand of a princess (until his real identity is discovered); as a young, known knight gradually establishing himself on the chivalric ladder of honor; and as an anonymous, errant knight fighting in disguise, as in the tournament at Lonezep, where he twice withdraws from the mêlée only to return newly armed in red or in black to win honor as an unknown. In the first book, where Tristram is climbing the ladder toward joining the Round Table, he is matched against knights of various levels of prowess, so that a sense of his placing in relation to known knights is cumulatively established. In the second book, where his story is more widely scattered, interspersed with illustrations of Mark’s villainy (and periods of imprisonment by Mark) and other adventures, such as those of Palomydes, Tristram’s chivalric acts are concentrated in the tournaments, particularly at Lonezep, where he fights disguised in the party opposing Arthur, but then changes sides when Arthur needs support, so demonstrating his shift from individual hero to valued member of the brotherhood.
Part of the chivalric normalizing of the tale is the building up of the roles of knights who act as foils to Tristram: Palomydes, his rival in love, and Dynadan. If the self-lacerations of an anguished Palomydes, together with his impulsive inconsistencies, his combination of respect and enmity toward Tristram, provide a more extreme version of Tristram’s own intensity, the elements of comic realism in Dynadan’s deflating comments on the foolhardy excesses of chivalry offer a measure for Tristram’s fearless, at times reckless, conduct.
The result of this recasting of the narrative is the displacement of the other main characters in the original story. Isode, though she remains the motivation for Tristram’s greatest acts of endurance and courage, recedes from the forefront of the narrative, once the bare bones of her situation as Mark’s wife and Tristram’s mistress have been established, and becomes a mainly absent icon of beauty and desirability, nearly always referred to as “La Beale Isode,” as if she were a picture, which is how Arthur treats her in leaving the tournament simply to view her. Mark, through whom in some versions of the story the complexity of the morality of the relationships is interestingly explored, is reduced to a cardboard villain representing the opposite of chivalric values. There is no sense here that the king loves his wife and only reluctantly believes ill of her, nor that he values Tristram as his sister’s son and heir until court intrigue forces him to recognize his nephew’s disruptive disloyalty. From the rivalry over the wife of Segwarydes Mark becomes Tristram’s enemy: aftir that, thoughe there were fayre speche, love was there none (Vinaver 1971: 246), and even fair speech does not last long. After Tristram has become a member of the Round Table Mark sets out from Cornwall to kill him, and when the two knights he has taken with him refuse to aid him, he immediately kills one, and later gives the other his death wound in an episode which identifies Mark as a murderer and a coward. Later he swears falsely to Arthur that he will keep to the terms of reconciliation forced on him at Camelot, but subsequently tricks and imprisons Tristram, and further plots against his life, despite the fact that he has to swallow his pride and call on the wounded Tristram to rescue Cornwall from successive invasions by Saxons and Saracens.
Such moral simplification is accompanied by ambiguity elsewhere which stems from conflicting attitudes toward adultery in Malory’s sources. Insofar as adulterous love is registered as “true love,” it is Tristram’s marriage that brings explicit condemnation from Lancelot:
Than seyde sir Launcelot, “Fye uppon hym, untrew knyght to his lady! That so noble a knyght as sir Trystrames is sholde be founde to his fyrst lady and love untrew, that is the quene of Cornwayle! … the love betwene hym and me is done for ever, and I gyff hym warnyng: from this day forthe I woll be his mortall enemy.” (Vinaver 1971: 273)
Knowledge of Lancelot’s enmity matters more to Tristram than the possible response of Isode herself, as seems clear from the letter Tristram sends to Lancelot:
… excusynge hym of the weddynge of Isod le Blaunche Maynes, and seyde, … as he was a trew knyght, he had never ado fleyshly with Isode le Blaunche Maynys. And passynge curteysly and jantely sir Trystrames wrote unto sir Launcelot, ever besechynge hym to be hys good frende and unto La Beall Isod of Cornwayle, and that sir Launcelot wolde excuse hym if that ever he saw her. (Vinaver 1971: 288)
On the other hand, when, at a later stage of the story, Perceval reproves Mark for his enmity toward Tristram and points out that Mark could not survive if Tristram were to make war on him, the standpoint is very different:
“That is trouthe,” seyde kynge Marke, “but I may nat love sir Trystram, bycause he lovyth my quene, La Beall Isode.”
“A, fy for shame!” seyde sir Percivale. “Sey ye never so more! For ar ye nat uncle unto sir Trystram? And by youre neveaw ye sholde never thynke that so noble a knyght as sir Trystram is, that he wolde do hymselff so grete vylany to holde his uncles wyff. Howbehit,” seyde sir Percivale, “he may love youre quene synles, because she is called one of the fayryst ladyes of the worlde.” (Vinaver 1971: 414)
Another theme is Tristram’s progress as a young knight from Cornwall who has to overcome prejudice from the Round Table against outsiders; he gradually wins respect, earns the commendation of Lancelot and Arthur, and is accepted into the brotherhood, with a designated chair at the table waiting for him (formerly Marhalt’s). This thread is built up over a number of dramatized encounters. Early in his career Tristram is challenged as a feeble Cornish knight by Sagramoure and Dodynas le Sauvage, but he unhorses them both, declaring:
“Fayre knyghtes, wyll ye ony more? Be there ony bygger knyghtys in the courte of kynge Arthure? Hit is to you shame to sey us knyghtes of Cornwayle dishonour, for hit may happyn a Cornysh knyght may macche you.” (Vinaver 1971: 248)
Later Tristram encounters Kay, who says yet harde I never that evir good knyght com oute of Cornwayle (Vinaver 1971: 299), to which Tristram gives a tart rejoinder, before finding himself sitting down to supper with Kay, Tor, and Braundiles, who spake all the shame by Cornysh knyghtes that coude be seyde; Tristram says little but next day unhorses two of them. The theme develops greater complexity when Mark’s actions earn more disparagement for the Cornish, and in the persons of nephew and uncle Cornwall is both honored and shamed. The contrast between the courts of Cornwall and Camelot is pointed out several times but the parallel is identified by Isode, when she incautiously and tactlessly uses Palomydes as the messenger to Guenevere:
“… and tell her that I sende her worde that there be within this londe but four lovers, and that is sir Launcelot and dame Gwenyver, and sir Trystrames and quene Isode.” (Vinaver 1971: 267)
Tristram is himself manipulated by Morgan le Fay into bearing to Camelot a shield depicting Arthur and Guenevere dominated by Lancelot, with the intention of bringing shame on the court; this brings the first book to an ominous close and suggests that the figure of Tristram, who defeats both Arthur and Uwayne when challenged in the scene that follows and rides off unidentified, is being set up as a warning to Camelot. This theme is, however, not brought to a head; later moral comment is concentrated on the murder of Lamorak, the subject of one of Malory’s longest passages of discussion among knights when Tristram, Palomydes, and Dynadan speak with Gareth about the actions of his brothers, foreseeing the split in the Round Table between the kin of Gawain and of Lancelot.
Elsewhere Malory shows awareness of alternative versions of Tristram’s story. Of the multiple talents of the French Tristan as the heroic model of all the graces of courtliness, chivalry, and polished education, only his role as huntsman is given specific accolade:
And every day sir Trystram wolde go ryde an-huntynge, for he was called that tyme the chyeff chacer of the worlde and the noblyst blower of an horne of all maner of mesures. For, as the bookis reporte, of sir Trystram cam all the good termys of venery and of huntynge … that all maner jantylmen hath cause to the worldes ende to prayse Sir Trystram and to pray for his soule. AMEN, SAYDE SIR THOMAS MALLEORRE. (Vinaver 1971: 416)
Malory seems here to add a footnote to fill one of the gaps in the Prose Tristan’s version of the tale. Even more striking is the inclusion of the episode of Tristram’s madness, which opens up a chasm between Malory’s normal plodding accounts of men in armor hitting each other and the wild eccentricity of passion. The episodes involving Tristram as a naked fool in the forest, Isode (believing Tristram dead) planning suicide, which is prevented by Mark, who then sets a watch upon her, Tristram’s gradual recovery, his return to court recognized only by his dog, and then his banishment from court all belong to the other “heroic” version of the tale, as does at least the beginning of the bitter speech in which Tristram bids farewell, though Malory weakens the effect by letting it lapse into a summary of all his adventures up to that point:
“Grete well kyng Marke and all myne enemyes, and sey to hem I woll com agayne whan I may. And sey hym well am I rewarded for the fyghtyng with sir Marhalt, and delyverd all hys contrey frome servayge. And well am I rewarded for the fecchynge and costis of quene Isode oute off Irelonde and the daunger I was in firste and laste … ” (Vinaver 1971: 310)
However, the intense and tragic aspects of the love story are merely glimpses of the path from which the main course of the narrative has been diverted so that it may follow the high road towarde Camelot where that kynge Arthure and quene Gwenyvir was, and the moste party of all the knyghtes of the Rounde Table were there also (Vinaver 1971: 510), which is, more or less, where the lengthy mélange of the “Book of Sir Tristram” comes to rest.
It has been argued that the two Tristan texts discussed here may be connected: Malory perhaps knew Sir Tristrem and borrowed details as he did from other English romances (Hardman 2004). But to the reader the differences are more striking. Sir Tristrem gives an English slant to the story, with more individuality than many Middle English romances: unique in verse form, with some northernisms but in a London manuscript, swift in narrative style with unusual flashes of life, its exact origins and literary placing invite further research. Malory’s treatment is more complicated; only a part of his Arthurian explorations, nevertheless in its length and multiplicity of action it provides massive illustration of the practice and ethics of knighthood and in this respect has been seen as “the center of the Morte Darthur, the heart of the work” (Mahoney 1979/2002: 253). The fullest representation in English of the “interlace” of French prose romance, the book has many interesting strands not examined here – the use of letters, the elegiac note in the laments of Lamorak, Palomydes, and Tristram, and the manipulation of the story of Tristram to enhance the standing of Lancelot.
Note
1 The forms Ysoude, Rohaud, and Gauhardin are to be preferred to the Ysonde, Rohand, and Ganhardin printed by Sir Walter Scott, McNeill (1886), etc.; see Hardman (2005: 87).
Primary Sources
Brewer, D. (ed.) (1972). Geoffrey Chaucer. The Parlement of Foulys, 2nd edn. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Lupack, A. (ed.) (1994). Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem. TEAMS. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute.
Mills, M. (ed.) (1988). Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
McNeill, G. P. (ed.) (1886). Sir Tristrem. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society.
Schach, P. (trans.) (1973). The saga of Tristram and Isönd. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska.
Vinaver, E. (ed.) (1971). Malory. Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
References and Further Reading
Barnes, G. (1993). Counsel and strategy in Middle English romance. Cambridge: Brewer.
Barron, W. R. J. (1987). English medieval romance. London: Longman.
Cooper, H. (1996). The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones. In E. Archibald & A. S. G. Edwards (eds), A companion to Malory. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 183–201.
Cooper, H. (2005). Thomas of Erceldoune. In C. Saunders (ed.), Cultural encounters in the romance of medieval England. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 171–87.
Crane, S. (1986). Insular romance. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Hardman, P. (2004). Malory and Middle English verse romance: The case of Sir Tristrem. In B. Wheeler (ed.), Arthurian studies in honour of P. J. C. Field. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 217–22.
Hardman, P. (2005). The true romance of Tristrem and Ysoude. In C. Saunders (ed.), Cultural encounters in the romance of medieval England. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 85–99.
Hardman, P., Le Saux, F., Noble, P. S., & Thomas, N. (eds) (2003). The growth of the Tristan and Iseut legend in Wales, England, France and Germany. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.
Mahoney, D. B. (2002). Malory’s “Tale of Sir Tristram”: Source and setting reconsidered. In J. T. Grimbert (ed.), Tristan and Isolde: A casebook. New York: Routledge, pp. 223–53. (Original work published in Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 9 [1979], 175–98.)
McCarthy, T. (1988). An introduction to Malory. Cambridge: Brewer.
Saunders, C. (ed.) (2005). Cultural encounters in the romance of medieval England. Cambridge: Brewer.
Sweeney, M. (2000). Magic in medieval romance. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Taylor, B. & Brewer, E. (1983). The return of King Arthur: British and American Arthurian literature since 1800. Cambridge: Brewer.
Wimsatt, J. I. (1997). Segwarydes’ wife and competing perspectives within Malory’s Tale of Sir Tristram. In T. Hahn & A. Lupack (eds), Retelling tales: Essays in honor of Russell Peck. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 321–40.