Mercifully Tennyson
never actually allegorised Arthur in that fashion. Later he thought
of a musical masque of Arthur, and sketched a scenario. Finally
Tennyson dropped both the allegory of Liberal principles and the
musical masque in favour of the series of heroic idylls. There was
only a "parabolic drift" in the intention. "There is no single fact
or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which cannot
be explained without any mystery or allegory whatever. The Idylls
ought to be read (and the right readers never dream of doing anything
else) as romantic poems, just like Browning's Childe Roland, in which
the wrong readers (the members of the Browning Society) sought for
mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his own
interpretation, "a dream of man coming into practical life and ruined
by one sin." That was his "interpretation," or "allegory in the
distance."
People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any spiritual
interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the existence of
elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and ladies. There
seems to be a notion that "bold bawdry and open manslaughter," as
Roger Ascham said, are the staple of Tennyson's sources, whether in
the mediaeval French, the Welsh, or in Malory's compilation, chiefly
from French sources. Tennyson is accused of "Bowdlerising" these,
and of introducing gentleness, courtesy, and conscience into a
literature where such qualities were unknown.
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