When his closest friend Arthur Hallam died, the Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson suffered a deep depression and loss of faith. In response to this, he did what he had always done — he continued working. One of the first poems he wrote after the event was Morte d'Arthur, an account of King Arthur's last moments before his passing to the Isle of Avalon, in which the promise of the legendary king's return was set up as a sort of substitute to the Christian promise of Christ's return. Tennyson had for a long time wanted to write a "whole great poem" on the Arthurian saga, ever since "the vision of Arthur...came upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory", and had already touched on the subject in the short but perfect Lady of Shalott. The composition of the poems that make up The Idylls of the King was spread out over most of the rest of his life. Morte d'Arthur was published in 1842; the final Idyll, Balin and Balan was published in 1885.

Tennyson used the word "idyll" to indicate that his treatment of the "Matter of Britain" (as the Arthurian tales were known to their medieval tellers) would be on a personal rather than epic level. Each of the twelve poems, which range from 500 to 1400 lines long, tells one story through the eyes of one or two characters. Most of their titles reflect this: Gareth and Lynette, Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and Elaine, and so on.

The Idylls are written in blank verse, the form Shakespeare used — unrhymed five-beat lines in archaic language. Apart from the occasional piece of convoluted grammar, they are not too difficult to read, and the elevated language adds to the mythic, dramatic quality. A good example is from Gareth and Lynette:

Tennyson excels at bringing a story to life through its details. For me, the best example is the description of a book of magic in Merlin's possession:

The trouble with Tennyson's approach is that the story of King Arthur is both one of individuals, and an epic. The Idylls work when their subject matter deals with individuals — a knight on a quest for example, or Merlin's temptation by the wily Vivien — but in two aspects they fail.

The first is in the quest for the holy grail, a subject which stumped Tennyson for a while as he worked out how to handle it. Despite declaring that his readers should not "press too hardly on details whether for history or for allegory," Tennyson's The Holy Grail slips uncomfortably into allegory, and his language becomes confusing as he explains his own take on the story (which is that most of the knights who went on the quest should not have gone, but should have left such spiritual endeavours to those who were better suited for them).

The second area of fault is more pervasive. Tennyson was acquainted with Queen Victoria, who had been comforted by his In Memorium after the death of her husband. Tennyson dedicated his Idylls of the King to Victoria, and included a poem declaring that her late husband, Albert, was a sort of second Arthur. This meant that he could not really give Arthur any faults or it might reflect badly on Prince Albert. So Modred cannot be Arthur's bastard by his sister, but is just his twisted nephew, and when it comes to the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, Arthur is not even allowed to suspect it. Thus the faults that lead to the downfall of his kingdom are no longer his own. In addition, Lancelot is set up as such a paragon of virtue that none of the fault is laid on his shoulders either, and poor Guinevere comes out as a bit of a jealous bitch, which does not do the potentially tragic situation any justice — for tragedy to work, it needs no solutions; here, getting rid of Guinevere is the obvious solution.

In fact, Tennyson's treatment of women is questionable throughout the Idylls. They are either the reward to a knight's quest (and, once married, are expected to obey their husband without question — a point taken to ridiculous lengths in Geraint and Enid) or are evil temptresses — Vivien and Ettarre, for example — whose evil springs from either jealousy or sheer nastiness. Perhaps the only woman to escape with dignity is Lynette, who has character enough to be outraged when, in answer to her request for help from Arthur's knights, she ends up with what she thinks is the scullery boy.

Perhaps, however, an equal case could be made for the men. Modred and Gawain are evil just because they are; Pelleas falls in love and is too stupid to realise that Ettarre can't stand the sight of him. But after all, the characters of the Arthurian saga, as with most fantasy, serve their stories, not the other way round.

Probably, The Idylls of the King is better read not as a single treatment of the Arthurian saga, but as a series of finely-wrought, delightfully detailed excerpts. The good poems outweigh the bad, and the price of the book (published by Penguin at the moment, though selections from the Idylls appear in other Tennyson collections) is worth it just for Merlin and Vivien and Gareth and Lynette — the two best, in my opinion.