Plays

A scene from the 2013 Glimmerglass Festival production of Camelot.

Dramatic performances offer another kind of visual representation of the Arthurian legends. While there was no medieval drama based on the legends, plays from the sixteenth century onwards brought Arthurian themes to the stage. Among the best of those early plays, all which were rooted in the chronicle tradition, were the revenge tragedy The Misfortunes of Arthur (1588) by Thomas Hughes; William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin (c. 1620), a history play with a comic subplot; John Dryden’s “dramatic opera” King Arthur (1691), with music by Henry Purcell; and Henry Fielding’s satirical Tom Thumb (1730).

Following Malory’s rediscovery and Tennyson’s popularization and moralization of the legends in the nineteenth century, drama drawn from the romance tradition became a primary genre for treating the major Arthurian characters and events. Especially influential was J. Comyns Carr’s 1895 King Arthur, which spurred interest in Arthurian drama through the first half of the twentieth century. The Camelot of its day, Carr’s play was a spectacular production (with Excalibur rising from the lake, an appearance of the Holy Grail, and the death of Elaine of Astolat) with famous actors (Ellen Terry as Guinevere and Henry Irving as Arthur) and with contributions by major artists (sets by Edward Burne-Jones and music by Arthur Sullivan).

While numerous other plays were written and performed in the following decades, by the latter half of the twentieth century, film supplanted drama as the primary means of enacting Arthurian stories. Yet there were and continue to be plays based on the legends, none more popular than the perennial favorite Camelot (1960) by Alan Jay Lerner, with music by Frederick Loewe. Based on T. H. White’s novel The Once and Future King, Camelot emphasizes the glorious ideal that Camelot represents and that survives human tragedy. It is this ideal that resonated with John F. Kennedy, who reportedly played the musical score of Camelot every night when he was in the White House, and with innumerable others who saw the play enacted on stage. The enduring popularity of Camelot likely paved the way for other Arthurian-themed plays, produced by both major theater companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company and smaller companies such as Double Edge.