The Frame

This paper discusses the film Excalibur and its relationship to Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, and contains spoilers for both works.

John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur retells the Arthurian legend, purportedly from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, the only source which is named in the film’s credits. However, Boorman freely borrows from several other sources, both literary and critical. Le Morte Darthur is a loose amalgam of tales, highly structured only at the beginning and the end. In contrast, Boorman tightens and focuses the narrative, emphasizing the inherent mysticism, the importance of the sword Excalibur, and the unifying villainy of Morgan Le Fay, in order to support his theme of the necessary unity between the king and the land.

Boorman highlights the mystical element, envisioning Merlin as a representative of the old nature religions, able to summon “the breath of the dragon” (mist from the Earth) in his service or that of the king. The idea that the Arthurian legends are steeped in pre-Christian nature and fertility religions was popularized by Jessie Weston’s book From Ritual to Romance, and would become the basis of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s revisionist The Mists of Avalon. In Excalibur, Morgan Le Fay (here Morgana, the daughter of Igrayne and the Duke of Cornwall, who was very aware of Uther’s violation of her mother) becomes the villain, seeking to learn Merlin’s magic to control the earth and revenge herself on Uther’s son, Arthur. Merlin knows that the time of magic is passing into the time of men (a concept as reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings as of Le Morte Darthur), and it is partially Morgana’s refusal to let go of sorcery that leads to the downfall of Camelot, and eventually, herself.

But the passing of magic does not mean that the power of the Earth has gone; rather, there is now a different means of communicating with it. The king derives his power and his connection to the Earth through the sword Excalibur; to this end, both Uther’s sword and the sword in the stone become Excalibur. Hence, Excalibur appears throughout the film, uniting Uther as the failed would-be unifier of England with the successful overlord Arthur, as well as with the kings of the future that Arthur suggests will need the sword and be given it by the Lady of the Lake when the time is right.

The film itself is structured in three sections, intended to symbolize the past, present, and future of mankind. The first section deals with the Uther-Igrayne story, and shows a mankind not quite ready for primetime—Uther is driven by base lust, the castles are ramshackle affairs, the settings are almost universally woods and virgin wilderness, and Merlin’s mysticism is at its height (note the abundance of standing stones, always identified with Merlin’s pre-Christian religion). The central section, after King Arthur and his knights have subdued all enemies, is civilization—Camelot is built and order reigns. The final section occurs after Arthur has lost Excalibur in anger over Lancelot and Guinevere’s betrayal—he discovers them together sleeping in the wood, and drives the sword into the earth between them, thus breaking his kingly duties both by thrusting the sword into “the dragon’s spine” and by leaving behind the sword, his connection to the Earth. After this, his kingdom becomes a Waste Land and can only be cured by finding the Holy Grail, which here has no Christian overtones at all, but holds a restorative to heal both Arthur (now conflated with Malory’s King Pellam, the Fisher King of the Grail Quest) and his Land.

Perhaps the biggest change from Malory is the use of Morgana as essentially the sole villain of the story. In Malory, Morgan LeFay is a sorceress and enemy of Arthur and his knights, but she does not have the power or the centrality that she does in Excalibur. Here, she connives with Gawain to reveal Lancelot and Guinevere’s love and begin the rift in the Round Table, seduces Merlin to gain his magical knowledge, seals Merlin in his cave, and uses the dragon’s breath spell to cloak herself as Guinevere and sleep with Arthur in order to bear Mordred (intertextual note: Bradley also makes Mordred Morgan’s son by Arthur, when both were in disguise). Clearly, the role of Margawse and partially that of Nimue have been collapsed into Morgana, and poor Gawain has had to become both Aggravayne (for purposes of reducing lesser-known characters) and Mordred (because he was not yet born in Excalibur’s version)—these changes make sense when moving from Malory’s long chronicle account of Arthurian legend into a film, which is both much shorter and expected to cohere more strongly.

Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair and ejection from Camelot happen much sooner than in Malory, as well. The trajectory of their affair owes a lot to the Tristan legend—they first meet when Lancelot goes to fetch Guinevere to marry Arthur, and though there is no love potion, the seeds of their love are planted during the journey back to Camelot. Lancelot’s attempts to stay away from Guinevere, much to her distaste, are found in Malory; however, Lancelot’s internal struggle, Gawain’s challenge to Guinevere’s honor and Arthur’s blindness to her and Lancelot’s love until he can no longer deny it (i.e., when he sees them together and drives Excalibur between them, much as King Mark leaves his sword to make Tristan and Isolde aware that he knows about their affair) all find closer analogues in Gottfried von Eschenbach’s Tristan than in Malory. Excalibur does retain from Malory a sense that Lancelot and Guinevere are not really to be blamed for the downfall of Camelot. When they come together in the wood, their scene of union evokes impressions not of sin and lust, but of the innocence of Adam and Eve. When they awake and discover Arthur’s sword, Lancelot’s reaction is not the expected “Oh, no, Arthur knows about us,” but “The king no longer has his sword,” bringing the story back around to Boorman’s main point—Arthur without Excalibur leads to a ruined land. For Malory, the adultery becomes the catalyst for Aggravayne and Mordred’s rebellion; for Boorman, the problem with the affair is that it causes Arthur to abandon his duty, and paves the way for Morgana to carry out her evil plot.

Boorman also collapses several knights into the character of Perceval, who becomes the main Round Table knight after Lancelot’s departure. He leads the Grail Quest, as he does in Malory, but he is the only one to see the Grail—Galahad and Bors are nowhere, and Lancelot has already left the fellowship. However, Perceval does not die in the Quest, but brings the Grail back to Arthur to restore him and the land, and remains Arthur’s right-hand man for the rest of the story, even returning Excalibur to the Lady in the Lake. Again, this reduces the number of individual knights Boorman has to deal with in the film, and makes Perceval an acceptable substitute for a Lancelot who leaves the stage much earlier than he does in Malory.

In a way, Boorman’s mix-and-match strategy mirrors Malory’s own creation of Le Morte Darthur—Malory claims to be pulling his story directly from “the French book,” but he actually uses a number of sources both French and English, and through his process of selection, modification, and addition, creates a work wholly his own. Many of the things he claims to have taken straight from his source are, in fact, his own invention. Boorman does much the same thing, crediting only Malory as his source, but finding inspiration in many other places, as well as adding some things himself, ultimately creating a film which is cinematic, meaningful, and evocative in its own right.

This paper originated in November 2006 for British Literature Through 1600 at Baylor University.