The Lady of Shalott

Plato, a great Greek philosopher, came up with a very interesting theory: he said that the physical world is second to reality, being thoughts the only real entity.  Based on this, he concluded that art is an image of that once-removed reality, thus making it twice-removed from reality.  Art, he said, is a reflection of something that isn’t real to begin with… Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) followed this idea—in his own way—with his poem The Lady of Shalott (1831?).

Divided in three parts, The Lady of Shalott describes a day in the life of the Lady of Shalott, a woman who sits in a tower in the city of Shalott and sings while she weaves, all day long.  She looks at the world through her weaving mirror, otherwise she would be cursed.  At the end, regretting her life, she dies.

The first part of the poem (lines 1-9) describes the setting and places context:

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

The reader is introduced to the physical setting, the island of Shalott, close to the busy city of Camelot; this helps create a sense of consciousness, movement, and life. The second stanza describes Shalott in more detail, describing the sensory expression of the wind upon the landscape, detailing a lot of movement.  Lines 15-18 describe the four towers of Shalott, where the Lady of Shalott resides.  So far, descriptions have been mostly about nature.

The following stanzas describe the perception of the Lady of Shalott: third stanza gives the Lady of Shalott a mysterious aura, since she is “known in all the land,” (line 26) yet nobody has “seen her wave her hand? / Or at the casement seen her stand?” (lines 24-25).  But there are people who have seen her, answers the next stanza, those who wake up early.  This may have religious connotation: there is a phrase in Spanish that says “Al que madruga, Dios le ayuda,” (He who waketh early, God lends a hand to).  The religious connotation may be in that those who wake early get to experience and enjoy the most wonderful of the Lord’s creations—and the Lady of Shalott may just be one of them.  She sings a song that “echoes cheerly” (line 30) and is heard all the way to towered Camelot.  Reapers, the only ones who have seen her, call her “the fairy / Lady of Shalott,” (lines 35-36), attributing to her mystical characteristics, placing her above normal people, and considering her an awe-inspiring person.

The second part of the poem deals with a mysterious curse: the Lady of Shalott weaves all day in her tower, and a curse will fall upon her is she looks towards Camelot.  “She knows not what the curse may be,” (line 42) so she limits herself to weaving, and never looking straight at Camelot.  But she has found a loop-hole in the curse: she can look at the world outside her tower by looking through her weaving mirror.  Here is where Tennyson adopted Plato’s theory on reality: she looks at what she calls shadows through her mirror, which are nothing more than the reflection of people in the world.  According to Plato the physical reality is not real, thus she is looking at the image of an image, the imitation of an imitation, the idea of a reality that is not real to begin with…

The sixth and seventh stanzas (second and third stanzas in Part 2) describe a very vivid world, with people waking to and fro, people living, dying, getting married, having children, working, frolicking… All to create a heavy contrast on her duties: weaving and singing: “But in her web she still delights / To weave the mirror’s magic sights,” (lines 64-65).  But, does she really? Tennyson almost makes the reader believe that she is content with her lifestyle, with her curse, with her “reality.” But hidden within the lines of the poem we see a woman aching to live and to die, to love and to hate, to feel all that a person should feel.  She is tired of living vicariously through the tapestry and what she sees in her mirror; “‘I am half sick of the shadows,’ said / The Lady of Shalott,” (lines 71-72).

The eighth stanza, fourth one in part 2, Tennyson depicts both life and death.  This juxtaposition allows the reader to get a better understanding of the pain the Lady of Shalott is feeling, not knowing if she is really alive or dead.

The third part of the poem introduces Lancelot, “a red-crossed knight,” (line 78), the knight in shinning armor, so to speak.  Lancelot, described by Tennyson as a handsome, valiant, strong man, goes to Shalott from Camelot, and as soon as the Lady of Shalott knows that he is there, she drops everything to run to the window to see him—ignoring her curse:

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
          She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
“The curse has come upon me,” cried
          The Lady of Shalott.
(lines 109-117)

In part four, the mood of the poem changes completely, not being anymore the “romantic” story about a Lady in a tower who sings and weaves all day long, but turning into the melancholic story of a woman who commits suicide because she had no one to love, nor to love her in return.  The images that Tennyson describes are gloomier now: “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,” (stanza 14, first stanza in part four).

The Lady of Shalott came down from her tower, found a boat, “And round about the prow she wrote / ‘The Lady of Shalott,’” (lines 125-6) to assert her identity.  Going down the river on the boat, she looked at Camelot and let river take her away.

Tennyson describes her “robed in snowy white,”  (line 136), which may imply angelic characteristics.  As the boat took her away down the river, she remembered her life and regretted it; she sang her last song:

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 waterside,
Singing in her song she died,
          The Lady of Shalott.
(lines 145-153)

Camelot grew silent as they saw the body of the Lady of Shalott, knowing it was her only because they read the name she had written on the boat.  People of all social classes (“Knight and bugher, lord and dame,” line 160) gathered round wondering who she was and why she was there; all were silent, astounded, surprised, and confused; as Camelot grew quiet, Lancelot uttered the last words of the poem: “She has a lovely face; / God in his mercy lend her grace, / The Lady of Shalott,” (lines 169-171).

In 19 stanzas divided into four parts, Tennyson manages to make the reader empathize with the Lady of Shalott, to feel her pain, to feel her sorrow, and to be entrapped in the unknown curse.

Each stanza has 9 iambic lines: the first 6 have eight syllables; the next two have 7; the last one—always rhyming with the word “Shalott,” has 6.  This presents a decreasing syllabic pattern throughout the whole poem, much alike in the way the poem itself decreases: starting with large and general descriptions of nature, then describing a specific group of people with specific characteristics, and then focusing on only one person, the Lady of Shalott, who ends up dying.

The fact that every fifth and ninth line rhyme with the word “Shalott” allow for only so many combination of words to be used—Camelot, Lancelot, and Shalott.  The predictability in rhyming scheme in this case does not signify a lack of imagination on behalf of the poet; on the contrary: this was done on purpose to provide a continuous, repetitious beat—much like the beating of a heart.  In addition to this, the decreasing syllabic pattern helps create the illusion of a heart that is ready to stop beating.