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At first thought the association of the words “Holy Graal” with scenes of evil life may seem startling to the reader. But the dramatic achievement of the knights of the Graal required the whole picture. The plotting of the sisters and the seduction scenes furnish dramatic motive and prepare us for the story of those knights who abandoned the quest. It must show the temptation resisted by Galahad, temptation that to a high nature was not temptation, as in the scene in the brothel, where the pure knight, born out of the sacramental love of Launcelot and Guenevere, saw but the lily beds.

It will be readily understood by all who knew Richard Hovey that he could not have intended to show that Galahad, the typical knight of purity, should have attained his height through any ascetic or otherwise morbid ideal of life. Not by living less than the best but by living all things better than the best is the whiteness of the soul attained. Speaking about Galahad in Taliesin he says:

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The temptations of physical life, which mostly to the knights of legendary days meant the life of the flesh minus the soul, would not tempt Galahad more than they would many Galahads of later civilizations, —all those men by whom the sacramental nature of love has been really perceived.

That Galahad was to be shown in relation to women is apparent. We have the names of women introduced in the list of persons of the Holy Graal who are shown by the notes to be in Galahad's story. It is plain that if Galahad had “died a maid,” as we are told in a very early fragment of “Avalon,” it must have been from the absence from his life of a love as pure as that of which he was born, and because by his very nature nothing less than the spirituality of passion could to him have the name of love.

However portentous is the subject of sexual purity in woman, it is still partly a question of legal legitimacy, of social respectability, and of economic convenience.

The Galahad, or masculine idea of purity, “The Pure Knight,” one who stood above a knighthood in which loyalty to his lady in all her interests was the very basis of every knight's oath of arms, would be one in whom the renunciation was not a sacrifice of the passional but of the merely sensual. He would be one whom the consciousness of the sacramental love lifted to a plain quite beyond renunciation, —to inspiration. And such a one,— elected to the redemption of lost womanhood by restoring woman's faith in herself and love, through her faith in the untempting and untemptable man,—

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The Holy Graal brings into direct contrast the characters of two illegally born sons, Mordred and Galahad. One is of superhuman goodness and power, the other of diabolical selfishness. Modred, tool of fate, gives opportunity to draw a character bruised and marred by his untoward relation to his environment; one, having not only a soul born to discords, but a life full of deprivations in the direction of family life and love and social opportunity, by lack of legal inheritance; all this with that virility in brain and body so often found outside of birth from the easy debauchery of married-life-propinquity.

Galahad one day finds himself called bastard. But he is one of those who many wear the word as a star on his brow, a consecration on his life, an invisible angel thought—such as some souls feel floating over them,—and in the great moments of life touching upon consciousness.

There are parents wickedly below the law of what makes a wholesome order for all. There are also those so subject to psychological law that they live above the order of the many. Mordred's ill-starred life arose among the former, Galahad's immaculate conception gave him being among the latter.

One might almost say that the whiteness of Galahad was like the whiteness of light, made up of all colors, out of which, as in diamond brilliance, all

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It was in the Holy Graal that Launcelot and Guenevere were to renounce their personal good in the service of society, Launcelot to go on the quest of the Graal and Guenevere to take up her cross by returning to Arthur and her rôle as mother of the realm. How inadequate a solution this action proved may be suggested by the one page of this play in which Guenevere meets Arthur. The situation is once more truly tragic, there being no solution. Turn which way she would she saw sin and suffering, the sacrifice of inner purity if she returned and the sacrifice of the peace of the realm if she did not.

The dignified ending of Tennyson's Guenevere in a convent, full of gentle deeds and repentance for her great sin in not having “loved the highest,” stands in marked contrast to her rôle in Richard Hovey's poem. Launcelot's confession to Dubric and his soliloquy before Rome bring to view, however, the pain he suffered at this point of his experience and show once more that the central character in the whole series of dramas is one not placed

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After the departure of the knights on the quest of the Graal, the court at Camelot would have resumed its ordinary routine of life.

All through Southern and Northern Europe during the few hundred years in which we place the story of the Round Table, Courts of Love were of frequent occurrence. We find that a Court of Love was planned for one of the acts of “The Holy Graal.”

The falcon carrying the scroll with the laws which were to govern in these courts was said to come from Broceliande, a sometime location in the Arthur myths. So, doubtless, this naïve and interesting code, administered by a concourse of the great ladies of each locality, seems to have had great influence in the formation of the standards and customs regarding the behavior of both ladies and lovers through all Europe. These Courts of Love are credited by high authority as having created manners. This could not be without there being underneath a marked influence upon morals.

In fact, the early history of woman, first in an accidental relationship to man, then as something owned, and later as party to a marriage bargain without any pretense to what has lately been called romantic love, culminated in a condition of society in which spiritual and mystical personal attractions were recognized—and lived, with loyalty according to the ordinances of these “Courts” by persons not married to one another and also when either party might be stably married to some other.

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Better a world with the love of the heart in it, even outside of marriage, than not at all. Naturally jealousies and dissensions arose, and by degrees husbands and wives began to see as the ideal, and to expect in marriage, friendship, and those mystic relations of affectionate loyalty which have now so completely become the ideal, that we must read history to remind us that our present expectation, even if it is not our constant attainment, is a wide advance upon martial conditions in earlier days. Having found the relations between love and the doctrine of the trinity in human kind, we now see that the greatest happiness and the best birth have their origin in an inextricable combination of physical, mental, and emotional attraction.

Our present ideal of love has come to include— on the physical plane—sensation, sympathy, instinct; then sentiment, adoration, intuition in the emotions; and judgment and conscience as the results of reason.

Such an ideal of love had the author of Launcelot and Guenevere.

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The play opens at the Castle of Morgause, Queen of Orkney, with a scene of evil counsel between Morgause and Morgana, her sister.

Then Lamoracke, the lover of Morgause, comes to bid her good-by, saying that he has sworn a vow since he left her three days before; that a great wonder has happened at the Court of King Arthur, for Galahad, son of Launcelot, has taken the seat at the Round Table which Merlin, the Magician, had called the Siege Perilous, in which no man might sit and live until one came for whom it waited; that a vision of the Holy Graal had appeared to them assembled; and that Gawaine swore an oath, which they had all sworn after him, that for a twelvemonth and a day they would seek the Graal.

Morgause lures Lamoracke away from the idea of the quest and wins him to herself again, he thus being the first knight to fail in the performance of the vow.

Launcelot, before going on the quest confesses to Dubric, Archbishop of Canterbury, who gives him his blessing.

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Arthur does not wish his knights to leave the Court and go on the quest of the Graal; but on seeing that Launcelot is determined to go, he bids him God speed.

Galahad then enters the hall and is by Launcelot presented to the king; then Arthur and Galahad are left alone together.

In the garden of Camelot we are introduced to Madelon, the saintly sister of Sir Percival, and Sendal, the temptress. The influence of these two women follows Galahad throughout the play; and from the notes we believe that Madalon dies, as in Malory's story, and that Sendal repents on realizing the purity and strength of Galahad, who releases her from her own evil nature as he did the prisoners in the “Castle of the Maidens” in the early legend.

Before leaving the Court, Launcelot and Galahad bid Guenevere good-by, and a scene between these three is the end of the first act.

After the departure of the Graal knights a “Court of Love” is held in the garden at Camelot, at which Arthur the King, Taliesin the poet, Dagonet the jester, Kaye the Lord Seneschal, the sad Galahault, Mordred, Agravaine, Guenevere, Fata Morgana and the women of the Court are present. Mordred and Agravaine, who have lingered after the departure of the other knights, say that they never really intended to seek the Graal.

At Tintagel, Morgause, Lamoracke and Agravaine plot together to send Sendal and Guimere, disguised in men's clothes, to meet the Graal knights on the road pretending to be desirous of joining the

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Galahad and Percival on their journey arrive at a beautiful garden which turns out to be the courtyard of a brothel, and there they meet Sendal and Guimere.

In the next act we have the attempt to carry out this plan. “The fickle Gawaine,” who has already fallen in love again, has resisted that new love and continued the quest.

Riding through the mountains, the Graal knights meet the women in their masculine disguise. The women, being attacked in revenge for their treachery, are saved by Galahad. Then Sendal confesses the plot, which implicates Morgause and Lamoracke. Gawaine, Morgause's son, furious at his mother and at Lamoracke, her lover, turns back for vengeance.

Meanwhile at Camelot Guenevere attempts to harmonize the tragic situation by turning to Arthur. Renunciation fails.

Gawaine goes to Tintagel and kills his mother and Lamoracke; then utterly disheartened, turns to his new love and gives up the quest of the Graal.

In another scene we are at Camelot again with King Arthur and Guenevere.

A note for the last scene of the fourth act shows it to have been between Galahad and Launcelot at Glastonbury, outside the Abbey, whither Launcelot comes on the miraculous ship which brings also the body of Madelon after her vicarious death. Here Galahad attains the Graal. From here Launcelot, broken in spirit, wanders away and is in the next

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The last act is at Camelot. The Court is assembled in the garden when Bors and Launcelot return.

The play closes with a scene between Launcelot and Guenevere.

The story in this play was to be the reunion of the lovers after the experiment of renunciation of self had failed, also the reunion after the discord of the Elaine episode. As “The Marriage of Guenevere” embodies his thought about the influence of parents over the marriage of their children, and “The Birth of Galahad” shows the deeper experiences of mother and wife in what he calls “The True Family”; as Taliesin deals with art and the Graal with the problem of renunciation and chivalry, so “Astolat” was to show forth the intricacy of personal experience. It was a late addition to the series and was planned for the purpose of touching the psychology of the discords in a love.

The greater the love the better the environment required to keep it in that growth which is its only life. The great difficulty of adjusting love to its environment, however, must not hide the possibility of destruction from within, the danger treated in “Astolat.” Until two lovers are perfect humans every love has dangers from within. For love is harmony, and love is at every point dependent upon every point of the lover's love and every quality of the lover's character.

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Love is at once the ultimate desire and ultimate gift of the lover. Doubt of the entire gift or the entire desire is the foundation of jealousy, and this does not of necessity need a third person to be the object of envy or hatred. But the third party externalizes the situation and is dramatically valuable, especially in a poem intended for the theater, as was “Astolat.”

To a women like Guenevere, to whom love represented the inevitableness of the nature of things, a real jealousy would have meant destruction of all she had experienced of the harmonies of life, and have brought about, not temper like the jewel scene of Tennyson's Guenevere, for example, but tragic deeds. Destruction doubtless, perhaps of Launcelot, perhaps of the network of relations between them; possibly of the small and helpless Elaine, who would have had to be put out of the possibility of harming a great love like theirs, as one might dismiss any intrusive, unrelated thing from a great presence. Guenevere was too sure of Launcelot's love to envy any tenderness he seemed to give Elaine or any other, but her anger, that, in the face of feelings of such mystic might, there should be any moment of a lesser emotion, any cause for fear of a discord in the harmony, was natural; and such a nature as Launcelot's would in all loyalty have been beautifully tender and sympathetic to the lovelorn Elaine, giving thus more than provocation to any half understanding of his character in Guenevere.

An inherent element of jealousy comes from the wound to personal dignity, a thing it is one of the

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The greater, or rather the more complex and mystic and miraculous, the nature of a love, the greater is its value. Thus is it worthy of a greater care. But of more importance still is the seldom considered truth that the greater is its need of protection. In another play, “The Lady of the Sonnets,” the author had planned to show what happened in a Shakespeare's heart when faith died. “Astolat” was to show what was requisite to obliterate jealousy from the life of a Launcelot and Guenevere.

Up to a certain point the elaboration of a structure, be it man, animal, or the intricately knit up relations of two souls, strengthens the unit. But there is, still beyond, a degree of harmony, which becomes a kind of specialization of function and ministers to life in its highest phases, yet is less self-preservative than forms in the earlier stages of evolution, and thus it is with great loves. The long continuance of a love then is not, as popularly considered, the test of the greatness of the love. The character of a love, the joy it gives, the inspiration it is to either lover, the beautiful births it leads to, in offspring or in the two personalities, measure its worth. These things show its quality. Time can only increase its number of opportunities.

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The common use of the word jealousy covers many shades of meaning. Confusion sometimes arises as to the dividing line between envy and jealousy. One is jealous of a thing he considers his own and wishes to keep. One is envious of that which he wishes to have for his own, although he admits it to be another's. One who is envious is a would-be thief, one who is jealous is only selfish. The selfishness may even degenerate into greed. So far as the one he loves is concerned it is pure selfishness unrelieved by those magnanimous, generous and loving attitudes in which he would be willing to let the loved one have the small liberties of kindness and sympathy toward others, or to receive the gift of the love of others. These are the exacting ones about the payment of that which was originally a free gift. It would seem that the sense of ownership should be held loose enough to give personal liberty, and the possibility of continual giving without demand. Jealousy becomes more ignoble in proportion as it contains envy. The ignoble elements in jealousy are suspicion, selfishness, the meagre faith, all implying doubt of the loyalty of the loved one, also doubt of self-worth, the last degradation possible, and the last insult to one who has loved us. A lesser love is proven and a greater insulted by jealousy.

There is but one cure for jealousy—love. Love for the intruder, or such love of the loved one as gives gladness of his delight even at personal loss.

How a wise and generous person's ability to conquer the passion by rousing through great love some

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Psychological jealousy demands mental perception of value and enthusiasm or emotional force in enjoying the perception. A character is also capable of guarding jealously a loved thing in proportion to its capacity for appreciation. All human passions admit of evolution into more and more exalted phases, according to the great admixture of qualities in the persons or the complexity of environing events, and jealousy is not an exception. In considering jealousy as a lower passion, it might be suggested that even love would seem so if only its commonest phases were considered. All the poets have written of love at its loveliest development. But jealousy has been thus far chiefly described in its

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The passions may be considered as destructive or productive. Jealousy, if mainly destructive, is also preservative of that exclusive unity of relation which is doubtless beneficial to the magnetic conditions, in the exclusion of inharmonious magnetisms so important to the sensitive states of motherhood.

The reason then why we require all the attentions of a lover is an instinct resulting from racial experience and through social necessity.

No passion wholly painful, and so largely destructive, could have reached the present development of jealousy as a human attribute had it not some inherent necessity for being.

As with other bad passions, is not jealousy the excessive development of a good one?

This purity of relationship, mystic and magnetic as well as emotional, seems to have lain in the author's mind as an ultimate attainment for which no sacrifice was too great a price to pay;—the empire, the church, friendship, and loyalty to a royal

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Since the marriage of Guenevere made the attainment of this condition more difficult than in the usual family, jealousy adds another element to the tragedy.

Here in the merest sketch of the theme are a few of the many facets Richard Hovey would have reflected the light from in “Astolat.”

Of “Fata Morgana” he says in the Schema: “It suggests the ethical drift of the series.”

The foregoing early study indicates that in “Fata Morgana”—sometimes called “The Masque of Ethics”—he would have embodied his views regarding the Trinity.

The three masques would have involved his philosophy. The Morgana was to have treated ethics somewhat as the masque of Taliesin treats æsthetics.

It is easy to see that from the unity, which means unrelatedness through the duality, which means contention by opposition, to the trinity, which means inter-action, personality is a psychological evolution which he had outlined for this masque. The word Hellenic used here instead of Hegelian, modern, or Christian, probably indicates that he would have used the Trinity in physical beauty as his symbol in the masque.

As Taliesin presented the education, consecration, and function of the artist, so the “Masque of Evil” must have finally embodied the rôle of religion, or the philosophy of religions, in the evolution of evil or discord into good or harmony.

He found himself facing the Hindoo unity, then

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“The Masque of Evil,” a study of the problem of good and evil, was a natural product from the author of the essay “The Duece, or Goethe's and Marlow's Faust.” This essay, read at the School of Philosophy at Farmington when he was twenty-five, was doubtless to this poem what a sketch is to a painting: hardly a cartoon, but the preliminary thought digested somewhat in mind but without the sacramental form which at once discovers and manifests. But the deeper development of his conception of the rôle of evil in the cosmos, which in those last ten years would have been prepared to be blazened by his genius in “Fata Morgana, The Masque of Ethics,” can only be guessed by those who know the trend and deepening of his thoughts in that time.

As to the choice of the heir, there is no authoritative note, but I have a vague memory that Borre, the child of Lionors, who had been educated by the good and wise Taliesin, was to be named heir. Borre appears as a charming child in the first play, the “Marriage of Guenevere,” and without appearing, he became a strong dramatic figure in the lost manuscript, where his mother, the lady Lionors, is being wrought upon by Morgause in the depth of her wicked revel on the occasion of the temptation of Lamoracke. Here most dramatic words pass between the mother and Morgause, the insolent temptress of the youth. Borre's name is first introduced by Morgause when, before the marriage, she eases her hatred of Arthur by hinting to Guenevere that he is not all she might have pictured in her ideal, referring to the lady Lionors and her child, and linking her name by innuendo with that of Arthur.

The play of King Arthur was to contain a final conflict in the mind of the honor-tortured Launcelot, between his love and his friendship. He had lost no time in rescuing Guenevere after Arthur had executed the law of the land by condemning her to be burnt—that being the punishment for high treason

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Arthur besieged Joyous Gard to recapture Guenevere. Launcelot unhesitatingly defended the place against Arthur. When, however, he knew that Mordred had seized the throne and that Arthur must turn back to defend himself again Mordred, he went forth to Arthur's assistance, but not without a great conflict between his desire to loyally see justice done to Arthur against Mordred, and his anger, probably the greatest anger of his knightly life, against the man who had condemned Guenevere to torturing death by fire.

To Launcelot right was above the law. To Arthur the law was above any view of right or wrong. To Dubric, the priest, we remember, the Church was above either. And these three classes continue to this day, the Arthurs, the Launcelots, the Dubrics. A great jurist has said: “He who taketh the law of the land for his sole guide is neither a good neighbor nor an honest man.” In this discussion Guenevere joins. Guenevere could see Launcelot defend her but not revenge her. She urges him to do the generous deed. Bors also belongs to this scene;

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To Launcelot there was but one crime to be done in the name of love, and that was love itself. Love must inspire to all good deeds, to sacrifice, to generosity, to forgiveness. So he goes to Arthur's rescue.

The plot of King Arthur is indicated in the scenario. The first scene is written. Of the second scene, being the love scene upon which Mordred breaks, we have but a few lines. It was planned to show the development and beauty of love after the passage of all those years, after the experiences of absence, sorrow, remorse, the attempt at renunciation, after the wounding and healing of the discord of jealousy. We do not know how the author would in this scene have shown a greater love than that pictured in the temptation of Launcelot in “The Birth of Galahad,” but we know that was what he was to do. From this time on Launcelot's love would be expressed by deeds, the rescue and so forth, and Guenevere's by her defense of herself in court and her general nobility of attitude in all matters, showing that her love being good had made her good—more, noble. A noble love develops itself and its lovers, ever to higher possibilities; or, if it be destroyed, to ever higher loves. This theory of the ever-growing beauty of love was a central theme in the “Poem in Dramas.”

The trial scene would have been Guenevere's greatest scene in the series. Here her greatness and goodness must all have been shown to stand in contrast with the power of the law over her. It was long discussed whether the rescue should be from the

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The death of Arthur in personal conflict with Mordred, each at the end of the battle killing the other, and Launcelot's too late arrival occupies the foreground when Guenevere, in the falling darkness enters with the monks, who, carrying torches, go about to shrive the dying and bury the dead.

So the tragedy remains. Arthur is dead, and sorrow has fallen upon all the land. Only in Avalon “the place of peace,” can we look for those resolutions of discord which the spirit of man still awaits.

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Rocky gorge. Mountains. The Hunt. Mordred and Gawaine. Morgana and Mordred. Witchcraft. (Scene written.)

Interior of tower. Launcelot and Guenevere. Love scene. The interruption. Escape of Launcelot. Mordred's love for Guenevere. Entrance of conspirators. Return and capture of Guenevere.

Great hall. Trial scene. The stake. The rescue.

Mordred and Morgana. The council. The war against Launcelot. The naming of the heir. “No son? I am your son.” Mordred's resentment. Mordred determines revenge. The Saxon.

The battlements. Launcelot and Guenevere. Their justification. The approach of Arthur's army.

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A room. Carouse of Kaye and Dagonet. Treachery of Mordred, who remains with Kaye and betrays him to the Saxon. Mordred is proclaimed King. Capture of Kaye. Escape of Dagonet.

Arthur's tent. Gawaine's death. Dagonet. Arthur learns from Dagonet of Mordred's revolt and raises siege.

Witchcraft.

The battlements. The ghost of Gawaine. Launcelot to the rescue. Launcelot furious at Arthur's treatment of Guenevere. Guenevere persuades him to go. Bors.

The last battle, etc. Death of Mordred and Arthur. When Launcelot arrives, Mordred is dead and Arthur dying. Entrance of Guenevere. “The three queens.”

Trying to fancy how he thought of “Avalon” let us find a little the grace of his soul by reminding ourselves of the speech of Uriel to Percival in “Taliesin,”—Percival, the good knight, the practical man, when in contrast with Taliesin, the man of prayer, vision, and song.

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With such moral height in the masque of æsthetics what would not have been the mystic whiteness of the peaks of song whence he would have had us worship in his masque of ethics.

His nature was most deeply religious. He forgot dogmas in insights, and life in the pure visions born of the impulses of a high and illumined heart.

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So “Avalon” would not have been merely religious in the conventional sense, but might have soared to those mystic heights where love alone is motive, and act, and reward.

As was well said by one of his earliest reviewers:

“While the development of the succeeding dramas is dimly outlined and darkly foreshadowed in the enigmatic replies of the awe-inspiring Norns to Merlin's questionings, there is still a deeper intent, revealing in part the poet's philosophy of being; indicating, by means of ideal characters, who, in turn, personify the classical, medieval, and Christian myths, the growth of the religious instinct in man, through varied phases of terror or of beauty, to culminate, at last, in the Christian ideal.”

Let it, however, be remembered that “Merlin” was but a partial view of the subject which was to have been supplemented by “Taliesin” and “Morgana”; and finally to reach some state of solution of the whole tangle in a complexity of interaction without tangle, which in the case of the masque “Avalon,” he named Harmonody.

The scene of the “Quest of Merlin” being chiefly laid in Avalon, where Merlin and allegorical folk of all degree, from the dryads to the angels, are assembled, indicates that his Avalon is the place of eternity, the place of the beginning and the end. Merlin deals with very primitive seekings for this land and the experience of its infinities. Prophecy is an easy thing in a place where past, present and future are visible; and what matter if they are called

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For the Harmonody “Avalon,” which was to end the “Poem in Dramas,” we have in the notes but few characters named: Arthur, Guenevere, Launcelot and Galahad. But the evolution of mythologies running through the masques makes it seem likely that all the people of his earth-world and his unreal world as well should have assembled, each making some essential part of the completed harmony.

An evolution of societies, governments, religions, an evolution of material conditions, mental conditions, spiritual conditions, was the great groundwork of the “Poem in Dramas.” That work itself was suggested as evolving from simple to complex, from discord to harmony. The masque of Merlin begins with the Norns and ends with the angels and final star prophesies. Taliesin again begins with the magic of the wood, of physical nature and our own nature, and ends with Taliesin's human song going on even terms with the angelic choirs. As Carman said: “Richard never for a moment doubted the ultimate benignity of nature.”

Whether this progression from primitive chaos to the holiest flights of human inspiration was to be repeated in “Morgana,” we do not find indicated in the

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A harmony is greater as its components are the more unlike, if they still are in each part helpful to every part. Even so the study in ethics, called a “Masque of Evil,” was needed, so that the basic contrast should produce a greater harmony as the discords were resolved in “Avalon.”

Somewhere in eternity, not regarding place, all stages of the human race must coexist, regardless of their place in time, and their relation or absence of relation or their experiences. This condition he uses as a place, and calls Avalon.