Guinevere Author:Alfred Tennyson Tennyson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES. 1. Queen Guinevere had fled the court, etc. This manner of beginning, by which there is presented to us at once a picture, aa it were, of the persons c... more »oncerned or of the situation, and then there follows an explanation, is very usual with Tennyson, and it may probably have seemed to him the most suitable arrangement for an ' idyl1.' We find it also in The Marriage of Qeraint, Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and Elaine, Pelleas and Ettarre, and The Last Tournament. Here the picture is contained in the first eight lines, the explanation in ll. 9-180, and then the story is resumed at the point from which the poem began. At the same time, now that the idyll of Guinevere no longer stands alone, but is linked with the rest of the series, we must not forget the connexion of these opening words with the conclusion of The Last Tournament: " That night came Arthur home, and while he climb'd, All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom, The stairway to the hall, and look'd and saw The great Queen's bower was dark,—about his feet A voice clung sobbing till he question'd it, ' What art thou ?' and the voice about his feet Sent up an answer, sobbing, ' I am thy fool, And I shall never make thee smile again.'" 2. the holy house at Almesbury. Almesbury or Amesbnry is in Wiltshire, about seven miles from Salisbury. It had once a house of Benedictine nuns, and it was supposed that there had been a more ancient British monastery at the same place, called, as some said, after King Ambrosius ('Ambrosebury') who was there buried. The later Benedictine foundation became at one time a favourite place of retreat for ladies of high rank. Mary, daughter of King Edward I. took the veil there in 1285, and two years afterwards Eleanor, the mother of the same king, herself retired to the same house (...« less