Getting it wrong in "The Lady of Shalott"

Victorian Poetry, Spring, 2009 by Erik Gray

     Merlin locked his hand in hers and said:
   'O did ye never lie upon the shore,
   And watch the curled white of the coming wave
   Glassed in the slippery sand before it breaks?
   Even such a wave, but not so pleasurable,
   Dark in the glass of some presageful mood,
   Had I for three days seen, ready to fall.' (ll. 288-294)

Merlin's flight away from Camelot reverses the direction of the Lady's, but his language in this passage, the imagery of waves and shadowy reflections, distinctly recalls the earlier poem. Even more strikingly, Merlin's response to his sense of impending doom, like the Lady's, is to climb into a vessel--Merlin "found a little boat, and stept into it" (l. 196)--and to give himself up to the will of the elements.

The wave that Merlin describes in his speech is merely metaphorical. Nevertheless, the perfect illogic that the imagery suggests--Merlin foresees a storm and therefore puts out to sea in an undersized boat--typifies his behavior. Even more explicitly than the Lady, Merlin determines what the worst possible course of action would be, then performs it. The choice that faces him in Merlin and Vivien concerns whether or not to entrust Vivien with a powerful "charm," a spell performed "With woven paces and with waving arms" that leaves its victim apparently "Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower" (ll. 205, 207). The language in which the charm is described once again deliberately recalls "The Lady of Shalott"--not only the "tower" with its "four walls," but the weaving, the pacing, and even the waving ("who has seen her wave her hand?"). The spell is obviously dangerous--Merlin, in another reminiscence of the Lady, calls it a "cursed charm" (l. 433)--and Merlin therefore refuses at first to reveal it. For several hundred lines Vivien plies him with flattery and sexual temptations, and he seems at times to soften, but still keeps silent. Frustrated, she grows spiteful, and Merlin then clearly sees through all her earlier blandishments, muttering, "I will not let her know" (l. 821). And yet despite this resolution, which is followed by no less than a thunderbolt from heaven as a sign of Vivien's intent to betray him, Merlin acts in total defiance of his better knowledge and betrays himself.

"Merlin and Vivien" thus greatly expands the paradox of conscious error found in "The Lady of Shalott." The paradox seems to pertain more to love than to poetic composition in this case, although there are hints of the latter as well. Merlin the wizard "Was also Bard," we are told, and Vivien confirms the title, calling him "Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve" (ll. 167, 952). is error, moreover, involves a "charm"--etymologically a carmen, or song. (22) The association grows stronger, however, in the next episode in Idylls of the King, "Lancelot and Elaine." This episode is self-evidently another version of "The Lady of Shalott": both works draw upon the same traditional Arthurian material, although Tennyson claimed to have been unaware of the full version of the Elaine legend when he composed the earlier poem. In any case, Lancelot and Elaine makes no attempt to hide its filiations with "The Lady of Shalott," which are obvious from the opening lines: