The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan's Madness (Classics) (2 page)

A brief example will illustrate this point: at the court of King Mark there are three barons, almost always described as ‘the three villains’, who are both cowardly and jealous of Tristan’s prowess. When they are introduced at the beginning of the episode in which they try to trap Tristan the narrator says (p. 60): ‘You never saw more wicked men!’ The narrator goes on not, as we might have expected, to speak of the fearful crimes these men had committed, but to say that they were resolved to ask King Mark to banish Tristan. Their reason for this was that they had seen Tristan with Yseut in situations that were evidently compromising (p. 60), and specifically lying together naked in the king’s bed several times. Now, nothing could be more reasonable or loyal than the barons’ resolve, without taking their motives into account: the fidelity of the king’s wife was essential
both for the king’s honour and to ensure the unquestioned succession of his heirs to his lands and titles; and Mark had taken a wife for the explicit purpose of begetting heirs. The barons’ behaviour in this respect does not seem to be objectionable and it hardly justifies the poet’s opinion. The barons suggest to Mark a stratagem by which he can find out for himself the truth of their accusations, and they take into their counsel a dwarf who is a magician. This action is somewhat underhand out of necessity, although it is excusable in terms of protecting the king’s honour. But when the dwarf comes on the scene (p. 61), what a flood of invective the poet hurls at him! Dwarfs in medieval romance are traditionally evil creatures, and Frocin was no exception. Even so, the poet’s strong language is hardly borne out by what follows, for the dwarf merely suggests an ingenious means of proving to the king that Tristan and Yseut are in fact lovers – a means, moreover, which is very nearly successful. To counterbalance the poet’s attitude, it should be stressed that it was imperative for the king to know if his wife was unfaithful, hence that even clandestine attempts to prove this were justifiable, not to say laudable. Nonetheless, the poet persists in heaping abuse on the dwarf and on the three barons until each of them meets his death. I hold no brief for the three barons, but the issue of their villainy is certainly less clear-cut than the poet’s attitude suggests; at the same time, the themes of their cowardice and their jealousy of Tristan are sufficiently prominent for us not to be shocked by the arbitrariness of the poet’s hostility. But the poet’s attitude to these men who were acting in the
king’s interest bespeaks a strong prejudice: what are we to make of this prejudice?

One answer that can readily be given is that the poet has great sympathy for Tristan and Yseut whatever happens, hence a corresponding dislike of their enemies regardless of the grounds of their antagonism. In this way the barons’ villainy is a function of their hostility to Tristan. The three barons are not villains so much because of what they do as because the poet says they are; for whatever action they take is presented as a piece of villainy. At this point we begin to glimpse a surprising and significant aspect of Beroul’s aesthetic, which depends on nothing less than an unquestioning acceptance of the narrator’s attitudes. We shall return to this point later. Meanwhile, let us consider for a moment the other side of the narrator’s hostility to the three barons, to see whether the lovers really merit the sympathy he has for them.

We are told countless times that Yseut is noble, wise and fair and that Tristan is noble, brave and strong; but a certain amount of explanation is needed, for it must be admitted that they do not always act in a way that is noticeably noble or wise. As a pair of lovers indulging in an adulterous passion, their conduct is apparently
de facto
reprehensible without further discussion. On the other hand, if the love potion is considered to be at once the cause and the justification of their passion, it relieves them of responsibility for their crime (see below pp. 20–24). Even if the potion does excuse their passion, however, it is still difficult at times to see how it can excuse what seem to be the lovers’ attitudes to their illicit love. The scene
at which the Beroul manuscript begins offers a case in point, for Yseut is seen less as the archetype of a noble suffering lover than as one of those cunning and deceitful wives familiar in the pages of the
Decameron
. When she declares (p. 48) that she has never loved anyone except the man to whom she came as a maiden, she knows that Mark will take this to mean that she has always been faithful to him. It might perhaps be argued at this point that Yseut makes her declaration with the best intentions, that she is seeking to avoid hurting Mark by revealing the truth about her love for Tristan. But such an interpretation would hardly be consistent with the account which Yseut gives later to Brangain pp. 54–5), for Yseut sees it only as a piece of deception successfully carried out, which is going to make things easier for herself and Tristan. Equally, her words to Mark (pp. 55–8) bear out the conclusion that her only object was to deceive the king. If the love potion did compel Yseut to follow a course of action which she did not choose, it is at least plain that she managed to keep all her wits about her.

There is a further factor which needs to be taken into account in considering the lovers’ behaviour, for our attitude to Tristan and Yseut is closely bound up with the role which God plays in the story. In discussing this role, which is no less active than it is ambiguous, we should perhaps not take too literally the exclamations uttered by Brangain and Governal at moments after a crisis has passed, when they thank God for performing a miracle on behalf of the lovers. But there are other cases which cannot be glossed over so easily: for example, when Tristan is taken captive by the three barons (p. 65)
he is careful to behave correctly and submit to this indignity, for the poet tells us that his trust in God is so great that he knows he will be successful in a judicial combat. The combat Tristan is thinking of would presumably have been on the issue of whether or not he had an illicit love for the queen. Now, Tristan’s skill as a warrior is well known, and it is likely that he would not find an opponent; but on what does he base his trust in God?.

Before trying to answer that question two further examples should be considered. In the scene of ‘The Tryst under the Tree’ Yseut swears ‘before God’ that she has never loved anyone except the man to whom she came as a maiden. Her words are literally true but, as we have seen, they are spoken in order to deceive the king. A similar and even more blatant piece of deception is the declaration made by Yseut in the presence of King Arthur (p. 142). With her hand stretched over the holy relics she solemnly swears that she has never held any man between her legs except King Mark her husband and the leper ‘as everyone who was watching could see’. Once again her words are literally true and at the same time misleading, for once again King Mark is deceived as to her real meaning. The dramatic irony of these two situations is apparent: the first time what Mark takes to be a protestation of her innocence is in reality a re-affirmation of her love for Tristan; and the second time she simply states a fact which has implications that the king is unaware of. Both these statements, however, are made with God as witness. In both cases Mark, not God, is deceived. Are we therefore to conclude, as Gottfried von Strassburg did, that
‘Christ in His great virtue is pliant as a windblown sleeve…. He is at the beck of every heart for honest deeds or fraud.’
*
For it is clear that God either connived at the lovers’ illicit passion or in some sense considered them innocent. Even if we assume that God’s attitude to the lovers is an extension of the narrator’s sympathies and that He takes advantage, so to speak, of the literal truth of Yseut’s words to let her go unpunished, some sort of justification is still called for.

In 1835 the distinguished French medieval scholar, Paulin Paris, pronounced that the adulterous love of Tristan and Yseut was morally superior to the adulterous love of Lancelot and Guinevere on the grounds that the love potion relieved the former pair of moral responsibility. If this view is accepted, no further explanation of God’s mercy is needed. And this is indeed the view that Beroul seems to point to when the lovers tell Friar Ogrin that their love is caused by a magic potion when they meet him accidentally in the forest. This reference to the potion is made during their period of exile in the forest, which is perhaps where they undergo their deepest suffering. A reward has been offered for their capture by Mark, which forces them to be constantly on the move, and they have no food apart from the game killed by Tristan. In the course of their meeting with the hermit Ogrin it is the sinful aspect of their love which is stressed for the first time. Although they can now safely indulge their passion it is only at the expense of every material and spiritual comfort; while they are in the forest they
live in a state of guilt-edged security. But the poet tells us several times that because of their great love neither felt any hardship.

When the lovers tell Ogrin of the potion, there is of course no reasoned argument; they do not present it as their excuse. Nor do Tristan or Yseut or even Ogrin pause to examine the implications; for this is not the way of the poet. Ogrin simply exhorts them further to repent. But when the lovers come to him later, after the potion’s effect has worn off, to seek his advice about returning to Mark, his sympathy for them and his joy are evident, and he does his casuistical best to help them, although Yseut makes it clear that she does not repent and still loves Tristan honourably. Ogrin strengthens the help he is able to give them by making use of Mark’s legal error in condemning the lovers wrongly.
*
But before we can consider the love potion as absolving the lovers from moral responsibility for their passion we shall have to give some consideration to what is perhaps the potion’s most surprising attribute, namely that it wears off after three years.

First of all, there is something intrinsically odd about limiting the duration of the love potion’s efficacy. Without doubt, Yseut’s mother acted wisely and thoughtfully in trying by magical means to ensure affection between her
daughter and the husband she had never seen. But it is difficult to imagine that this thoughtfulness extended to giving back to Yseut the freedom of her affections after three years. However, the potion’s limitation is very precisely marked: three years to the day after it was drunk Tristan is out hunting a stag; the exact hour comes back and Tristan immediately stops, apparently caught in mid-stride, and begins to think of the harm he has done to Mark and of the wretchedness of the life in the forest.

The limitation of the potion’s efficacy is first mentioned a few lines earlier in the poem without any warning. Although our present-day literary aesthetic discourages this sort of unexpected turn in the narrative, the reason for Beroul’s sudden revelation of the potion’s limitation is not far to seek. It is of great importance to bear in mind the strikingly episodic structure of the romance, for we have to deal here with two distinct episodes. When the potion is drunk, the important detail is that it has the power to make Tristan and Yseut fall irresistibly in love; at that point it is not a narrative requirement to know that that power is of limited duration. When the potion’s efficacy ends, however, the situation in the narrative is more complex, and the story indeed appears to be heading for an abrupt and highly unsatisfactory end. Tristan made a mistake in analysing Mark’s motives in leaving recognition tokens behind when he found the lovers asleep in their bower, for he thought Mark had done this only to deceive them and had in fact gone for more men (p. 95). As a consequence, the lovers have taken flight and are crossing the forest of Morrois apparently well on their way to Wales. The
story could not continue with Tristan and Yseut safe in Wales while Mark remains in Cornwall. Mark’s presence is indispensable for the story and some way has to be found to bring him once more into the same setting as the lovers. While the lovers are under the potion’s influence, however, it is unthinkable that they could ever seek a reconciliation with Mark, for that would be hardly compatible with the basic theme of their love.
*
It is at this point in the narrative that the potion’s efficacy comes to an end and the lovers immediately think about returning to Mark. Clearly, the limitation of the potion’s efficacy fulfils an urgent requirement in the story. Has it at the same time a deeper significance than that of a narrative device?

The obvious answer is that the love of Tristan and Yseut continues to the end of the romance and does not end when the potion’s efficacy ends; without their love there would be no story. The fragment of Beroul’s poem opens with Tristan paying a clandestine visit to Yseut in the orchard of Mark’s castle; at this time they are under the influence of the potion. Then the potion’s efficacy ends, and Yseut announces proudly to Friar Ogrin that she no longer sleeps with Tristan; but the friendship she bears him remains evidently very close, for the fragment stops when Tristan is paying another clandestine visit to Yseut, this time in her bedroom in Mark’s castle, while the three barons arrange to spy on ‘the sport that Tristan was enjoying’. Furthermore, we
may remember the affection in their parting words to each other, indicating that the bonds between them are still strong – an impression borne out by the fact that they do not actually part until after the Beroul fragment ends. There seems to be no doubt that the end of the love potion’s efficacy does not correspond to the end of love, illogical as this may be. It follows from this that the limitation is precisely a narrative device which gives a superficial plausibility to the lovers’ seeking to end their life in the forest and so return to Mark.

The suggestion that the potion is the lovers’ justification can now be seen in a wider perspective. If we accept the truth of Yseut’s affirmation to the hermit after the potion wears off, then the nature of her love for Tristan has changed. We learn nothing from the poet which explicitly contradicts the idea that their love has now become blameless, provided only that we discount the suspicions of the three barons. Since a magic potion as the cause of love evidently does absolve the lovers from moral guilt, there is equally no reason that we should not accept Paulin Paris’s confident assertion.