The Lady of Shalott

The Lady of Shalott is cursed to stay in her tower, weaving the sights she sees in her mirror. The appearance of Lancelot prompts her to turn and look directly upon the world. She leaves the tower and, as she floats down to Camelot in a boat, dies.

What does Tennyson make you feel about the Lady in his poem The Lady of Shalott? Support your ideas with details from the poem.
What does Tennyson make you feel about Lancelot in The Lady of Shalott ? Refer to details in the poem in your answer.
How far does Tennyson make you feel sympathy for the lady in The Lady of Shalott ? Support your answer with details from the poem.
In what ways does Tennyson capture your interest in his poem, The Lady of Shalott? Support your answer with details from the poem.
How does Tennyson make The Lady of Shalott such a memorable poem for you? Support your answer with details from the poem.
How does Tennyson’s writing make the story so intriguing for you in either The Lady of Shalott or Mariana? Support your ideas with details from your chosen poem.
How does Tennyson make the setting so vivid in The Lady of Shalott ? Support your answer with details from Tennyson’s writing.

PART I

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by To many-tower’d Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below, The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro’ the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil’d,
Slide the heavy barges trail’d
By slow horses; and unhail’d
The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly, Down to tower’d Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “ ’Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.”
Part 1 introduces the lady who is confined to her tower on the island of Shalott; she is never seen, but sometimes heard by the reapers in the fields. It also establishes the setting and the context; in this description of the lady’s world, is the overall effect negative or positive?
She lives in a castle, synecdochally describes as ‘Four gray walls, and four gray towers’. This might suggest protection, but perhaps more clearly, imprisonment.
These walls overlook ‘a space of flowers’, which indicates that she is in a secure, comfortable retreat.
The island itself ‘imbowers’, like a shelter.
The rhyme scheme of aaaabcccb, and repetition of the words ‘Camelot’ and ‘Shalott’ contribute to a feeling of sameness and stasis, as each is day is the same for the lady. On the other hand, the constant rhyming of these words might create a sense of inevitable progression, a sense that the Lady is going to be driven onwards towards her unavoidable fate.
Tennyson contrasts the stasis and confinement of the ‘silent isle’ with the outside movement and freedom. He describes the busyness of people going down to Camelot; ‘heavy barges; ‘slow horses’; ‘shallop’; ‘And up and down the people go’.
Alliteration of the ‘willows whiten’ and imagery of wind as ‘little breezes’ enforce the image of movement down to Camelot, a busy city. The river also symbolizes movement, the flow of the outside world.
The enjambement; ‘Little breezes dusk and shiver / Thro’ the wave that runs for ever / By the island in the river / Flowing down to Camelot’ creates a sense of fluidity; as everything flows down to Camelot, so do the lines flow into the last word, ‘Camelot’.
The poem emphasizes the visual: ‘Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the world and meet the sky’; ‘Gazing where the lilies blow’. Yet the Lady of Shalott is unseen; the shallop floats by ‘unhail’d’; she is never seen waving or even standing at her casement; ‘But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand?’. She is known only as a voice. The opening, then, sets up an opposition between an isolated and secure world of withdrawal, associated with Shalott, and the social active world which will be embodied primarily by Camelot.
Encapsulated by the Lady’s song ‘that echoes cheerly / From the river winding clearly, / Down to tower’d Camelot’. Even her song his drawn, like the river, towards Camelot. The effect of the echo links to the Lady’s seclusion and the fact that she cannot directly see the word. Interestingly, the only people who know that she exists are those whose occupations are most diametrically opposite her own: the reapers who toil in physical labor rather than by sitting and crafting works of beauty.
PART II

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls, Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower’d Camelot;
And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
“I am half sick of shadows,” said The Lady of Shalott.
Part 2 takes us inside the castle and describes her activities. Weaving a magic web in which she reproduces what she sees through a mirror, she is prevented by some unspecified curse from directly viewing the world outside. It offers an explanation of what the lady does and why she is confined to the tower.
The curse is described, albeit ambiguously. Partly because of the various meanings which may be attached to ‘stay’, that is, to stop, or to remain in the same place, the nature of the curse can be seen as quite ambiguous; the lady has heard ‘A curse is on her if she stay / To look down to Camelot’. This could suggest that the curse will be on her if she stops her weaving and looks down, the most common reading of the lines. However, it might also suggest that if she stays, remains, in the tower, she will be cursed to look down on Camelot. The lack of clarity is emphasized by the atmospheric word, ‘whisper’ and ‘She knows not what the curse may be’.
The word ‘web’, itself, is ironic: although she is the one weaving it, she seems to be caught in somebody else’s web. The cloth is described as ‘magical’ and with ‘colours gay’, which implies that perhaps the Lady does see the beauty outside - yet tragically, she may never experience it. It seems everyone is enjoying life more than her. The lady ‘in her web still delights’ - she is an artist by nature - but by the end of this section she is claiming ‘I am half sick of shadows’.
Tennyson uses bright colours; ‘crimson clad’; ‘blue’ mirror. An accentuation of the vibrancy of the world that she tragically cannot experience.
The ‘magic’ mirror is a paradox; it is described as ‘clear’ but also a place where ‘shadows of the world’ appear. It seems strange that Tennyson describes the reflections of the colorful outside world as ‘shadows’. While the Lady may see the the bright and colorful passers-by, she may make no contact and they become mere shadows. Thus, the mirror poses a metaphor for life as an artist - she can represent life but not be a part of it.
Tennyson synecdochally describes the ‘red cloaks of market girls’, another reminder of the Lady’s impaired vision.
The lady is truly lonely (‘She hath no loyal knight and true’). Tennyson pairs off the knights as ‘two and two’, as he does to the ‘two’ lovers, highlighting the Lady’s lack of companionship. The juxtaposition of the funeral and the young lovers forces her to recognize the sterility of her life: ‘I am half sick of shadows’. By staying in her tower, she remains distanced from human relationships, from life itself.
The lighting of the funeral with ‘plumes and lights’ and of the young lovers with ‘the moon overhead’ emphasizes the link between love and death, thus foreshadowing events to come. The Lady craves love and will put up with death in order to pursue it.
PART III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon’d baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn’d like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash’d into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried The Lady of Shalott.

In Part 3 the dazzling image of Sir Lancelot appears in the mirror, singing as he rides to Camelot; she springs up and moves to the window to look. The web flies out, the mirror cracks, and the lady cries ‘The curse is come upon me’. It introduces the Lady’s downfall.
The descriptions of Lancelot contrast with the descriptions of the lady. We are presented with a number of similes. He is presented in terms of dazzling images of vitality, bright lights, clanging sounds; ‘flamed’; ‘brazen greaves’; ‘shield / That sparkled’; ‘gemmy bridle glitter’d free’; ‘armor rung’; ‘jewell’d shone’, ‘bearded meteor’, ‘trailing light’. The sun blazes upon him, his bridle glitters, his brow glows. Lancelot is closely associated with images of the sun, whilst The Lady os Shalott is related to the moon. The moon is a symbol of chastity which ends as Lancelot rides in as the sun rises.
Lancelot is described in an array of colors: he is a ‘red-cross knight’; his shield ‘sparkled on the yellow field’; he wears a ‘silver bugle’; he passes through ‘blue unclouded weather’; and the ‘purple night’, and he has ‘coal-black curls.’ He is also adorned in a ‘gemmy bridle’ and other bejeweled garments, which sparkle in the light. Yet in spite of the rich visual details that Tennyson provides, it is the sound and not the sight of Lancelot that causes the Lady of Shalott to transgress her set boundaries: only when she hears him sing “Tirra lirra” does she leave her web and seal her doom. The intensification of the Lady’s experiences in this part of the poem is marked by the shift from the static, descriptive present tense of Parts I and II to the dynamic, active past of Parts III and IV.
Lancelot flashes into the Lady’s mirror ‘From the bank and from the river’; he is reflected directly but there is also the reflection of his image on the wayer. For the first and only time in the poem, a word rhymes with itself ‘river’/‘river’, emphasizing the idea of reflection. This raises the question, just how real is the image of Lancelot that the Lady receives? If the Lady is attracted to him, then, perhaps she is attracted by something that is illusory.
In the fourth stanza of Part 3, there is a significant change in the refrain. Before this, the middle line of each stanza focuses upon either Camelot or Lancelot, while the last line of each stanza focuses upon Shalott and the Lady. This serves both to link and to separate Camelot and Shalott. At this crucial point in the poem, however, immediately before the Lady leaves the web to look out upon Camelot, Lancelot intrudes upon her space not only by becoming part of her world but also formally by taking over her place in the refrain, and the stanza ends with ‘“Tirra lirra, by the river / Sang Sir Lancelot’.
At this moment of crisis, the predominantly trochaic rhythms are replaced by resounding iambs, suggestive of the intensity of the Lady’s desire to look: ‘She hath left the web, she left the loom’, / She made three paces thro’ the room’. The anaphoric repetition of ‘she’ along with the consistently repeated grammatical structure of the lines, gives further weight to the climatic moment. The sense of driving movement onwards is heavily emphasized now.

PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining, 
The pale yellow woods were waning, 
The broad stream in his banks complaining, 
Heavily the low sky raining
 Over towered Camelot; 
Down she came and found a boat 
Beneath a willow left afloat, 
And round about the prow she wrote 
 The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance — 
With a glassy countenance
 Did she look to Camelot. 
And at the closing of the day 
She loosed the chain, and down she lay; 
The broad stream bore her far away,
 The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right — 
The leaves upon her falling light — 
Through the noises of the night
 She floated down to Camelot: 
And as the boat-head wound along 
The willowy hills and fields among, 
They heard her singing her last song,
 The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
 Turned to towered Camelot. 
For ere she reached upon the tide 
The first house by the water-side, 
Singing in her song she died,
 The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
 Silent into Camelot. 
Out upon the wharfs they came, 
Knight and burgher, lord and dame, 
And round the prow they read her name,
 The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
 All the knights at Camelot: 
But Lancelot mused a little space; 
He said, "She has a lovely face; 
God in his mercy lend her grace,
 The Lady of Shalott."

Part 4 shows the lady coming out of her tower, finding a boat, and writing her name on the prow. She lies down in the boat and the stream takes her, singing her last song, down to Camelot; before she arrives and dies. The people of Camelot come down to see her ad fearfully wonder who she is and what has happened. Sir Lancelot muses upon her, observes the loveliness of her face, and asks for God to ‘lend her grace’.
Tennyson uses pathetic fallacy. As the lady comes down from her tower and finds a boat, there is a sudden shift in the seasons; the ‘blue unclouded weather’ of summer gives way to the ‘stormy east wind straining’, a ‘low sky raining’ and the dying of the ‘pale yellow woods’. All these points stress the natural cycle in which the Lady has now become involved and anticipate her consequently inevitable death.
The moment the Lady sets her art aside to look upon Lancelot, she is seized with death, as shown by the sudden loss of color. The end of her artistic isolation thus leads to the end of creativity: ‘Out flew her web and floated wide’. She also loses her mirror, which had been her only access to the outside world: ‘The mirror cracked from side to side’. Her turn to the outside world thus leaves her bereft both of her art object and of the instrument of her craft - and of her very life.
As she has previously turned the world into an aesthetic image, now she does much the same for herself; ‘robed in snowy white’ she takes a small boat and names her last production: ‘The Lady of Shalott’.
Like the proverbial swan that sings before it dies, the Lady is heard ‘singing her last song’: ‘mournful’ ‘holy’ ‘loudly’ ‘lowly’. Her song is pure and beautiful and is heard by the ‘willowy hills and fields’; her final work of art is appreciated.
Her blood freezes slowly as she flows down to Camelot.
Perhaps the greatest curse of all is that although she surrenders herself to the sight of Lancelot, she dies completely unappreciated by him. The poem ends with the tragic triviality of Lancelot’s response to her tremendous passion: all he has to say about her is that ‘she has a lovely face’; he has no idea of the role he has played.
Having abandoned her artistry, the Lady of Shalott becomes herself an art object; no longer can she offer her creativity, but merely a ‘dead-pale’ beauty.