My Guinevere made prisoner, Merlin too!
Both I've to rue, if 'tis indeed ter-rue.
To cope with all these horrors can I hope?
What evil stars affect my horrors-cope!
No one can I, the slightest aid to lend, see;
I'm in a frenzy since I can no friend see.
My wits, unstrung, hang loose my head inside,
What should be Christmas feels like wits-untied.
Guinevere, on her part, is equally afflicted with the punning mania. While immured in Cheldric's castle, she soliloquises:—
Shall I endure this state of things unjust?
I, Arthur's destined spouse? I spouse I must.
How sad a loss is mine! regrets are idle!
A saddle 'oss, including reign and bridal.
My star uprising side by side with his'n,
No more uprising now, my fate's a-prison.
This roomy kingdom, mine in expectation—
Now I have nought but my own room-i-nation.
Kept by the Saxon in this den of his,
I'm numbed with cold—no doubt the room-it-is.
In Australia, twenty-three years ago, there was produced a burlesque called "King Arthur, or Launcelot the Loose, Gin-ever the Square, and the Knights of the Round Table, and other Furniture"; the perpetrator's name was W. M. Akhurst. Of recent years, the only prominent travestie of the subject has been that produced in 1889, by Messrs. Richard Butler and Henry Chance Newton ("Richard-Henry"), who entitled their work "Launcelot the Lovely, or the Idol of the King." Here, again, Tennyson and Malory were both very loyally and lightly treated, and, though Mr. Arthur Roberts as Launcelot was eminently funny, the prepossessions of the audience were in no way shocked.
The romantic tale of the loves of Fair Rosamond and His Majesty Henry II. has naturally attracted the notice of the travestie writers. In one instance, I regret to record, it fared very ill at the hands of the "dramatist." One T. P. Taylor brought out at Sadler's Wells in the 'thirties a one-act piece which he called "Fair Rosamond according to the History of England," in which the story was at once modernised and degraded. Henry became a Mr. Henry King—"a ruler, having been a stationer"; the Queen necessarily figured as "Mrs. Ellinor King." Rosamond herself was transmogrified into "a black girl, fair yet faulty," talking in "darkey" patois, and furnished with a father, black like herself, who combined the profession of fiddler and boot-black. The piece appears to have been successful in its day, but, to read, it is both vulgar and without a spark of wit.
Happily, the subject was taken up in our own time by Mr. Burnand, whose "Fair Rosamond, or the Maze, the Maid, and the Monarch," seen at the Olympic in 1862, is among the most vivacious of his productions.[34] Here the writer boldly breaks away from historical tradition. He makes Henry in love with Rosamond, it is true; but Rosamond (Miss Hughes), on her side, has given her heart to Sir Pierre de Bonbon (Horace Wigan)—a Frenchman, as his name betokens. As Rosamond sings in the finale:—
Hist'ry says that Rosamond
Of King Hen-e-ry was fond;
Thus my character was wronged,
By a base aspersion;
To old stories don't you trust,
Covered up with ages' dust.
For the truth henceforth you must
Take our Wych Street version.
Rosamond, therefore, being innocent, it stands to reason that it would not be fair to poison her, as in the story; and so the Queen (played originally by Robson) is made to excuse her clemency in not forcing the girl to accept the "cup" she offers her:—
Why's Rosamond not killed at all? You see,
She isn't poisoned as she ought to be!
Because, in deference to modern ways,
No poisoned heroines can end our plays;
Besides, the brimming cup she held this minute,
Like the objection, friends, has nothing in it.
You'll say, with history we freedom use;
Well, don't historians write to suit their views?
We answer to the critical consistory,
That we have made our views to suit our history.