Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/23

Rh is quite enough to account for the Green Knight’s quest. We may imagine that she could do no more than put Arthur’s knights to the test, in spite of all her magic, the powers of evil being unable to harm them while they remained virtuous. The beheading game was a way of drawing a knight to her castle and disposing of him if he failed in the test of loyalty and chastity; she hoped also that the sight of the beheading would frighten Guinevere. There was a more vital reason for it in other stories of beheading—it was usually a means of disenchantment—but the reasons for its presence in this story are good enough.

The story is an excellent one for the purposes of the romancer. It has all the traditional elements which medieval authors had learned to excel in treating—marvellous adventure, courtly life, knightly love-making. It was, moreover, a story to call forth all that humanity which was the greatest virtue of the medieval romancer—a virtue which is usually overlooked. Sir Gawain is as human as Chaucer or Shakespeare or any modern romance. In spite of this humanity, it must not be forgotten that magic is a fundamental element in the plot. The same power protects the Green Knight in Arthur’s hall and his lady in the castle.

The story of Sir Gawain consists of two main adventures, the first (occupying the first and fourth divisions of the poem) of the Green Knight’s challenge and the ensuing beheading match, the second (in the