Idylls of the King Love Quotes

Despite all of the male-female love in the Idylls, the first mention of love pops up here, as Arthur and Lancelot pledge their devotion to one another. Arthur has just told our girl Gwen that the service Lancelot has given him in battle proves that he respects his authority. (Sure, whatever you say, dude.) Lancelot confirms his acknowledgment of Arthur as king, at which point they pledge their “deathless love.” Just like the other relationships in the poem, though, this love is tainted by the hint of betrayal. Tennyson’s audience would have come to the poem knowing the story of Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair, so they would know that Lancelot would betray Arthur.

The “eyes of love” Uther casts upon Bellicent are actually more like “eyes of lust.” The dishonor of this love is “bright” to her because it exposes her to the world, like a spotlight. Once the king has decided he’s in love with her, she can’t hide from his gaze. That Arthur’s story should begin with adultery is fitting, since it also ends that way, with the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere.

The language of “deathless love” reminds us of the love pledged between Lancelot and Arthur earlier on the “field of death,” rather than the “shrine of Christ.” The love between two men is sealed with battle, whereas the love between a man and a woman is sealed by God. Arthur’s reference to sharing in Guinevere’s “doom” foreshadows the terrible events that will occur because of her adultery.

Edyrn, the knight whose defeat by Geraint has changed his life for the better, compares Geraint to God here. Edyrn says he loves Geraint just as he loves the chastening God, since both have forced him to amend his ways. Edyrn’s implication that we should love the people who try to make us better provides another reason Arthur’s knights should love him. So what gives? Why do they keep betraying their vows?

Vivien’s implication that Merlin is undeserving of her love because he doesn’t return it makes her a foil to Elaine, who loves Lancelot unconditionally despite his inability to return her love. Vivien’s wonderment that she “love[s] at all” mirrors ours, since we know that she is motivated by hate rather than love.

This passage presents the conflict within Lancelot as a battle between two loves: his love for Guinevere and his love for Arthur. It has marred not just his soul, but his face. This physical effect of his guilt mirrors the physical nature of the sin itself. There's a nifty literary trick for you.

Elaine’s answer to Gawain’s question of whether she loves Lancelot is a little roundabout and cryptic if you ask Shmoop. First she doubts whether her family has given her a real understanding of the nature of love. Despite her doubts, she nevertheless (sort of) declares her love for Lancelot. Elaine is one of the characters who most purely demonstrates unconditional love, but she declares herself the most ignorant of it.

Lancelot expresses his dilemma to Arthur as the inability of Elaine’s love alone to “bind” him. Lancelot’s language makes it sound like he thinks of love as a constraining, imprisoning force, which makes sense, given his experience with Guinevere. By contrast, Arthur believes in the paradox that the bonds of love are freeing. In fact, they are the best thing humans have going on for them “on our dull side of death.” His understanding of the love-bond as liberating explains the philosophy behind his system of fellowship with his knights.

This poignant self-analysis from the otherwise unsympathetic Ettarre echoes Guinevere’s reasons for being unable to love Arthur. In Ettarre’s case, Pelleas’s nobility only makes her more aware of her own less than noble actions. Ettarre also shares with Lancelot and Guinevere an inability to love those who are most deserving of it.

Tristram echoes Lancelot’s argument from the end of “Lancelot and Elaine” that “free love will not be bound.” He argues that his love for Isolt is a cut above the rest since it is not bound by a marriage vow. In saying that, Tristram calls into question the very institution of marriage with his speech. His conviction that “we love but while we may” speaks of his view of love as a fleeting feeling. By contrast, Arthur views love as an enduring bond—and one that's rooted in marriage and faithfulness.

He may be horrified by what she's done, but still, our Artie loves his Gwen. The association of Guinevere with “flesh” begins at the very beginning of the poem when she is called “the fairest of all flesh on earth” (3). She may represent “sense” in the battle the poem explores between “sense with soul,” while Arthur represents the “soul.” Yet Arthur’s experience with Guinevere, in which love and flesh, or sense and soul, are intertwined, speaks to humans’ inability to separate the two. This is what causes Arthur’s fellowship to fail, as his knights’ uneasy balance between bodily desires and instincts (sense and flesh) and Arthur’s civilizing law (soul and love) collapses.

Guinevere now realizes that she should have loved the person worthiest of her love, Arthur, because he was God’s “highest creature.” Well, hindsight's 20-20, darlin'. Still, our heart's go out to Guinevere here. Like Ettarre, Guinevere worried that she could not equal the perfection of the person who loved her and was unwilling or unable to try. Her situation might symbolize the situation of the Christian soul before God, in which the Christian loses hope because of his perceived inadequacy before God’s perfection.