The poet of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Malory seem to have assumed that their readers were familiar with the love story of Lancelot and Guinevere. This essay considers the available evidence for knowledge of the affair.

Much attention has been paid to Malory's French sources and his use of them, not least by Peter Field in a series of meticulous essays. Less attention has been paid to what Malory's readers, and readers of earlier English Arthurian texts, may have known of such sources, and what they may or may not have expected in an Arthurian romance. For readers today, mention of Lancelot immediately brings to mind his doomed love affair with Guenevere, but this does not always seem to have been the case in late medieval England. The first extended treatment of the affair in Middle English, as far as we know, is the stanzaic Morte Arthur (probably written in the second half of the fourteenth century), a rather ballad-like version of the last part of their story largely derived from the Vulgate Mort Artu. In the opening episode of the Stanzaic Morte, Lancelot stays with the queen instead of going to the Winchester tournament, and is reproached by her, since she is afraid that they will be caught by Agravain: