𝔊rowing up, I was surrounded by musicians. My great uncle had been a touring performer in decades past and was still playing local gigs while I was in elementary school. When I was in middle school and had signed up for band, myself, he and my father both played in a local big band--and this in the mid- to late-1990s, when swing music was experiencing a resurgence in popularity. My dad had himself been in marching bands in his younger years, and I remember him telling stories of taking part in drum-and-bugle corps contests in the American Midwest--as well as taking me to similar contests when they would come through central Texas. Band was a large part of my growing up, and it remained so after I moved back to the Texas Hill Country from years living elsewhere.
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| The show banner Image from the Carolina Crown website, used for commentary |
When, then, I saw that DCI's Carolina Crown would be marching a show titled "The Round Table: Echoes of Camelot," I was very interested (even if circumstances conspired to keep me from attending performances or addressing the show until now). I'm a medievalist (specifically a Malorian, per my dissertation) and an old band-nerd; how could I not be interested? After watching a recording of the show (by ObiWannaBrick31), I note that, although the show is excellent (and it is excellent; not for nothing did it take second place at the 2023 World Championship), it falls into common traps of medievalist based-ons and modern retellings.
There are a couple of caveats to note, of course. For one, the performance is only some thirteen and a half minutes, and it is put on by (talented, skilled, and dedicated) children and young adults (DCI performers range in age from 13 to 22). There's only so much that can be fit into so short a time, so some things will necessarily be left out. Too, there's only so much time to learn things that someone no older than 22 can have, and most of what the performers have clearly learned pertains to the show--how to play their instruments (again, exceptionally well; I do not want to be misconstrued as denigrating the performers' efforts) and to move their bodies in singularly demanding ways, and in concert with one another. The people putting on the show are not experts in late medieval literature, and certainly not in Malory's work upon which the show is avowedly based; they are doing the best they can (which, again, is quite good work as a musical performance).
It is the case that there are things the show gets right. Given the age-range of the performers, the featured King Arthur--clearly delineated by the royal purple--is necessarily young and presumably impetuous. In the show, the colorguardsman who performs the character shows enthusiasm that bespeaks vital adolescence, very much the kind of thing to be associated with the sometimes rash king. (Let us not forget that Malory's Arthur orders mass infanticide, surely an ill-considered act, and is rebuked by Merlin for not thinking through things presented to him.) The Round Table featured prominently in the show--center-field at the 50-yard line--borrows with only little amendment from the Round Table in Winchester's Great Hall. Further, the instrumentalists adopt a pose at several points in the performance that brings to mind the exaggerated postures associated with instrumental musicians in medieval illuminations such as that at the foot of fol. 97v of Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264. Finally, as I watched the show again, I saw in its ending at least echoes of the hic jacet Arturus, rex quondam rexque futurus with which Arthur's part in Malory ends. There are several other such touches to be found in the show, and it is consequently clear that those who worked to put it together did so with at least some idea of their source materials--which is better than many other medievalist works that might be found.
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| The show's King Arthur and his Round Table Image taken from ObiWannaBrick31's recording, posted to YouTube and used here for commentary |
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| A stricken pose Image taken from ObiWannaBrick31's recording, posted to YouTube and used here for commentary |
So much said, however, and as aforementioned, "The Round Table: Echoes of Camelot" suffers the same kinds of problems many medievalist works do. Among them is the intense compression of time imposed upon the premodern, something I've discussed before. Examples begin with the opening of the program and the performers' uniforms. Those of the drum majors and instrumentalists are shaped and textured to evoke chain mail supplemented by selected inclusions of plate, somewhat bringing to mind the 1995 First Knight--a distinctly medievalist move to make. But the tabard- or surcoat-like portions of those uniforms feature artwork reflecting distinctly post-medieval techniques and sensibilities on the front and what very much appears to be Old English writing on the back--medieval, yes, but centuries earlier than Malory. This is not helped by the selection of music for the show, as advertised, which includes no medieval music; the earliest composer represented is Mozart, while several contemporary composers are on display.
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| Drum major, obverse Image taken from ObiWannaBrick31's recording, posted to YouTube and used here for commentary |
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| Drum major, reverse Image taken from ObiWannaBrick31's recording, posted to YouTube and used here for commentary |
The selectiveness of the presentation, although both understandable and necessary given the constraints on available performance time, also strikes me as somewhat...strange. Yes, the Lancelot / Guinevere relationship factors heavily into Le Morte d'Arthur, and, yes, it is as a result of that that Arthur's Logres is undone. But it is not the only narrative thread to be found in the work, and it can be argued that it is not the most important of them. (The Grail narrative is one contender, as is the Roman Imperial narrative. Readerly perspective will do much to determine what counts as "most important.") For one thing, in Malory, the attraction between Lancelot and Guinevere is not a one-sided thing; for the show, "A flawed hero, the gallant Sir Lancelot, surrenders to the beauty of Queen Guinevere." The implication is one of seduction, seeming to lay the fault at the feet of Guinevere, and, while Malory does not hold her blameless (remember that she enters a convent after Arthur's death, penitent), he certainly does not ascribe to her such wiles, nor yet does he excuse Lancelot.
The show does highlight the strife between Arthur and Lancelot after the revelation of the former's cuckoldry by the latter, but it conflates that strife--which, remember, would have been pacified by Papal decree in Malory but for the insistence by Gawain (notably absent from the show) on his right of vengeance for his slain brothers, Arthur's nephews--with that of the Dolorous Day, in which Arthur's own nephew-son, Mordred, kills Arthur. Notably, it does not do much, if anything, to reinforce the idea that Lancelot was "the man of moost worship in the world"--that is, the greatest in martial might. Notably, too, the show ends with Arthur rather than with how Malory's work ends--with Lancelot pining to death for Guinevere, who had herself died while in a convent repenting of her deed, Constantyn son of Cador assuming rule, and several of the elder Knights of the Round Table establishing realms in the Middle East. (Admittedly, it would be hard to represent as much in a marching show.)
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| If that's Mordred, it's not been emphasized previously. It doesn't look like the show's Lancelot, either. Image taken from ObiWannaBrick31's recording, posted to YouTube and used here for commentary |
At root, then, for all that the music is excellent and the marching and choreography equally so (and, again, they are), "The Round Table: Echoes of Camelot" works from what seems a relatively shallow understanding of its ostensible source materials. That it gets right what it does get right suggests that the people who composed the show--who selected the music, who scripted the choreography, who built and purchased the props--had solid access to the best scholarly understandings of those materials. (I doubt it's hard to access, truly; my experience with scholars is that they are eager to share what they know, even if often only because they want to feel intelligent, and being solicited for their understandings does much to make such a feeling. Nor do I exempt myself from it, though whether I still count as a scholar--or ever did--can certainly be argued.)
Some of it, as noted above, is an artifact of the time available in a marching show; there is, again, only so much that thirteen and a half minutes can show. Some of it, though, speaks to prevailing popular unconcern for more than the basics of such stories. The details of Arthurian myths, whether in Malory's pivotal-in-English collection of them or in other sources, are not important to most. The specific story presented, focusing on the tension between love and marriage (maugre Sinatra) among Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, could just as easily take other names; there is hardly a shortage of love triangles to be found. (Indeed, one is alluded to in the selection of songs for the show: Tristan and Isolde [and Mark].)
What effect, then, has reliance upon Arthurian myth if many of its details are elided?
Perhaps it is that the commonality of Arthurian myth makes the show more accessible to more audiences and offers a ready-made set of associations around which to build a show. Most of the audience of a DCI show can be assumed to be broadly familiar with such figures as Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, as well as with the broad strokes of the legend and major figures and events in it: the swords (in the stone and Excalibur, often conflated), the Round Table, the Day of Destiny. Most of the audience of a DCI show can be assumed to have ideas about what knights look like, about what the world in which knights are commonly believed to live look like. And much of the audience of a DCI show in 2023 could be expected to have grown up with or be familiar with any number of medievalist productions, whether television series showing on major networks and streaming services, books by a variety of authors, video games, or other media.
It certainly didn't hurt the Carolina Crown to make such use of the materials, and that corps is to be commended for its performance. I have to wonder, though, if it could have done as well on the field and done better on its homework--just as I wonder if I could do better on my own.
