What We’ve Forgotten About “Camelot” - Part 1

(Photo: Joan Marcus)

by Ashley Griffin, Stage Directions

Recently, while chatting with a friend, the new Lincoln Center revival of “Camelot” came up in our discussion. This friend is a member of the Broadway community, and yet didn’t really know the musical or the story behind it. Not that they necessarily wanted to…what they did know was that “Camelot” has a reputation for being too long and too dull and, though it has some beautiful music, isn’t really super meaningful or inspiring.

Based on the majority of the reviews that just came out for the Lincoln Center revival, my friend was correct. But I believe the essential story of “Camelot” is one of the most meaningful and inspiring in human memory.

Does the musical live up to the tale it’s telling? Not necessarily. Despite the stunning Lerner and Loewe score and beautiful moments within the show, not to mention the memory of the original performances (now primarily only experienced through the original cast album and snippets on YouTube from the Ed Sullivan Show), the musical leaves much to be desired (exasperated by the frustrating film adaptation) in 1967. But the heart of the story is still in there though it has become increasingly diluted with each passing decade.

The original tale is one that, when the musical first opened on Broadway in 1960, was commonly known and, just as we walk into “& Juliet” today, understanding the source material the show uses as a jumping-off point, so audiences in 1960 did (if to, perhaps, a lesser degree) with “Camelot.”

The classic novel “The Once and Future King” (a retelling of the Arthurian legend) had just been published in 1958 and was a hit (the novel is a collection of shorter novels which were originally published from 1938 to 1940 and is loosely based on the 1485 work “Le Morte d’Arthur.”) Fantasy historian Lin Carter called it “the single finest fantasy novel written in our time, or for that matter, ever written” and it’s no coincidence that Disney produced an adaptation of “The Sword in the Stone” (an adaptation of the first section of the novel) in 1963. “Camelot” (both the musical and “idea” of Camelot) were also closely associated with the JFK white house (both during his presidency and, tragically, even more so after his death.) In the early ’60s, the Camelot story was very much in the zeitgeist in a way that it isn’t today.

But a deep love of the story goes back much further than the 1960s. King Arthur and Camelot are unique in storytelling in that they sit in a grey area between historical and mythological tales. There is a historical base for King Arthur (who is believed to have lived around the 5th - 6th century A.D.) and, potentially, the utopian kingdom of Camelot. It has, however, largely faded into myth, and, not only do historians disagree regarding Arthur and the events of his life, but myths about him vary remarkably from version to version.

But because of this unique blend of mythology and history, the tale of Camelot can affect us in a very special way. Camelot is the story in the general public consciousness that comes closest to describing a real-life utopia on earth - examining both how it was created and made to flourish because of what is best in humanity, and how it collapsed because of what is most tragic in human nature. Few stories get so close to the heart of the human condition.

Here's a little context and backstory:

As I said, there are hundreds of different accounts of Camelot, but these are the broad strokes about what is generally agreed upon:

During the time that Arthur allegedly reigned, England and its surrounding countries functioned much more as tribes than as the kind of unified country we think of today. The word England comes from “Angle-Land” and, indeed, the Angles and Saxons (not to mention the Britons, where we get the word Britain) were just two of the groups (or tribes) at war with each other. On top of that, Christianity was making its way into the Celtic world and there was a serious religious and cultural clash going on at the same time. It seemed all but impossible to unify all the people, but if they didn’t unify, the different tribes would just keep battling each other until one group wiped all the others out.

Into this situation comes Arthur. Arthur was not raised as a prince, and it was not a foregone conclusion that he would take the throne. There are differing accounts of his upbringing (the two most popular, though wildly divergent (with the exception of the inclusion of Merlin the wizard (or Celtic priest depending on your slant) as his childhood mentor), being Disney’s “The Sword and the Stone” and the novel/mini-series “The Mists of Avalon.” 

But the important thing historically and religiously is that because of Arthur’s parentage, he was a connection between the Christians and the Celts. He was basically raised by a Celtic mage but understood and respected Christianity (again, there are variances to this story.) Arthur is a good, kind person, and most of Merlin’s teachings involve things like Merlin turning Arthur into a bird, allowing him to understand that borders are a man-made invention, etc.

England at the time had a lot of disagreements about who should be king – especially given the fact that various tribes were constantly warring with each other. But at some point the great (enchanted) sword Excalibur was magically plunged into a stone and a prophecy was declared that whosoever pulled the sword from the stone should be England’s next king (at the time, Camelot was basically the capital of England). Years went by, and no one could pull it out.

Then, one day, little Arthur, working as a squire, had to find a replacement sword for the knight he was serving. He saw a sword stuck in a stone and, not realizing what it was, quickly pulled it out and gave it to the knight. When it was discovered what had happened, he was instantly declared king (side note, there is a legend that someday Arthur will return, and there is a lot of hilarious fan fiction about Arthur walking into modern-day parliament and, legally, they have to turn over all power to him…I believe there is even an ancient clause for it in the British constitution (and if there isn’t, I want to imagine that there is).

More time goes by, and two things happen. The first is that Arthur comes of age to marry, and the other is that he gets absolutely fed up with the way the knights (the police of their day) were operating. The mantra of the time was: “Might Is Right” – meaning that whoever had the most power always got what they wanted. Some of this was dressed up in religious justification… for example, if there was a disagreement between two people, the rule was that they would have a trial by combat – meaning the two disagreeing parties would fight to the death, and whoever lived was declared to be in the right – ‘cause, after all, why would God allow an innocent person to die? You saw your neighbor steal your horse but there are no other witnesses, and your neighbor is no longer in possession of said horse? Trial by combat. You die? Well, you must have been a liar; otherwise, why would God have let that happen?

But, Arthur noticed, it was no coincidence that the folks with the most expensive armor and weapons always came out on top. That meant that, really, whoever had more money and power won. And that led to a lot of knights acting pretty horrifically towards the common man. After all, if a knight had an awesome sword and armor, and you were a poor peasant with nothing but a pitchfork, why wouldn’t he steal your horse? You definitely wouldn’t stand a chance against him in combat.

And against this backdrop is where the musical “Camelot” begins.

Let’s use the musical as the basis on which to discuss the central ideas of the King Arthur story. The musical sits pretty squarely in the middle of the hundreds of versions of the tale and is probably how most people today were introduced to the legend. The musical focuses on the fall of the utopian Camelot and the three characters at its center: Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, whom the musical presents as complex and fully formed – especially for the era in which the musical was written.

Arthur (our protagonist)’s principal life objective is to sincerely be a good person and to do good in the world. And he accomplishes this goal without being saccharine and for completely altruistic reasons. Successfully writing a character like that is no mean feat. But what Arthur must come to learn (and indeed one of the themes of “Camelot” – the theme that creates such a moving, somehow hopeful tragedy), is that goodness is not a guaranteed fortification against the darkness of the world.

The musical opens at the end of his story – with King Arthur on the eve of a battle which, he knows, will cause Camelot to fall. He calls out for his mentor, Merlin, though he knows it’s hopeless. He will never see Merlin again.

One of the elements of the Arthurian legend, which, it could be argued, the musical spends too much time on, is that the great wizard Merlin lives backward – meaning he gets younger as time goes by, and he remembers both the future and the past. One of the reasons Merlin was so passionate about completing Arthur’s education as quickly as possible is that Merlin knows that, at some point, he will be enchanted by, well, she has different names in different versions, but let’s call her The Lady of The Lake, and trapped in a tree for a very long time. There’s a very poignant moment in the musical where Merlin becomes trapped – the last words he speaks are panic about whether he’s warned Arthur about Guinevere and Lancelot.

Already getting a lot of divergent side plots that are confusing? Don’t worry; we’ll address that in Part 2.