When Gawain finally sets out for the Green Chapel in the fourth Fitt of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, he is shown the way to his long-desired destination by an otherwise unnamed guide. The words spoken by this man as he tries to dissuade our hero from going on to meet the Green Knight appear in the fifth stanza of this Fitt, lines 2091–117:

The age of Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) is celebrated for its confrontations on, and explorations at, sea. Nautical figures such as Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540–1596) and Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) have helped to personify the age of Gloriana for posterity as one of romance and adventure. This essay investigates the role played by the Arthurian legend in forging these chivalric fictions. Scholarship on Elizabethan Arthurianism tends to focus on the work of diligent propagandists, ardent antiquarians, and/or elaborate Spenserian allegory, but two Accession Day tilt shows performed by the ‘Privateering Earl’ of Cumberland, George Clifford (1558–1605), evidence a more playful appropriation of the legend and a more accessible form of tournament than has previously been appreciated. I contend that these Arthurian adaptations were popular entertainments and that they shaped conceptions of the early modern sailor.

The shadowy Celtic figure, King Arthur, was first given a biography that created a legendary imperial past for Britain in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae ( c. 1136). This fantastic account gathered as many sceptics as acolytes in subsequent centuries, and in the sixteenth century the question of Arthur's historicity became especially charged. That Arthur might not really have been an ideal warrior King leading Britain to victory against the Saxons and the Romans, that he might not have been at all, was initially a sensitive topic because of Henry Tudor's Welsh ancestry. Arthur subsequently became embroiled in the need for historical narratives of English exceptionalism created by Henry VIII's break from Rome. For the first half of the century, then, questions of Arthur's historicity politicise the legend. By the 1590s, however, such questions had lost their sting. Arthur was becoming a source of comedy rather than contention.

This was the decade in which King Arthur took to the commercial stage. The diary of the theatre impresario, Philip Henslowe (c. 1550–1616), records five play titles with clear Arthurian associations, among them: Vortiger (1596), Uther Pendragon (1597), and The Lyfe and Death of Arthur, King of England (1598). While only their titles survive, it has been suggested that these three plays formed a chronicle trilogy that may have been intended to rival Shakespeare's Henriad, which was playing down the road from The Rose at The Globe.

In the National Museum of Scotland is a sculptured stone which once belonged to an Edinburgh baxter at the Netherbow (Figure 1). The stone, with its gothic script and male and female figures in classical dress, is quite striking, not least because of the messages it conveys. The figures are of Adam and Eve, and the message carved on the stone is a reminder of a curse. After the Fall, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, and one consequence of their sin was that, from that point forward, mankind would have to work for their living. The stone from the Netherbow therefore achieved several things at one time. It was a marker, telling passers-by where to get their bread; it was a status symbol, illustrating the cultural pretensions of the tradesman; and – most importantly – it was a pious aide-mémoire. ‘With sweat on your brow shall you eat your bread’ was the Genesis curse. In this one carving customers were reminded not only of their own sinfulness and need for Christ, but also of the hard work which had gone into baking their bread. While customers might not have to sweat in front of the oven, it was certainly in the baxters’ interest to remind them of those who did.

That said, the baxters did not actually want anyone else to sweat in the baking of bread. They sought to exclude all others from this work, as there were supposedly two kinds of people in the early modern corporate system: free and unfree. To be a baxter meant joining the privileged and chartered Incorporation of Baxters. In this context of ‘corporatism’, there were the privileged few and the excluded majority. There were those inside, and the rest who must remain outside. While this meant different things in different contexts, as with political estates, houses of the great families, or religious confessions, in the world of work it meant actively defending one's right to work by denying those outside the corporate body. Of course, the ideal and the reality were not necessarily the same thing, and despite expensive court cases and appeals to councils to enforce charters, many unfreemen continued to work free trades. Monopoly may have been the goal, but it was not always achievable.

Still, the system was intended to maintain privilege. Towns, full of people, had few citizens.

‘Law’ is a word that does not occur often in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur. Perhaps for this reason, Arthur's sorrowful and reluctant response to the accusations against Guinevere in the final book resonates so powerfully: ‘she shall have the law’ (883.10; 456v). At this fateful moment, Arthur is revealed as the ultimate arbiter of justice, as king, which of course he has always been, behind the chivalric dream of a non-hierarchical joint project as represented by the Round Table. He may lament that ‘the Rounde Table ys brokyn for ever’ but he must now be the impartial judge: ‘I may nat with my worshyp but my quene muste suffir dethe’ (882.8–11; 456r). This is the damage done by the accusers Agravaine and Mordred, who are sheltering their jealous feud behind the mask of the laws. That the accusation and punishment are quite precisely legal in nature has been well established for the Morte, and indeed for the main source text for this section, the Vulgate Mort Artu. The accusation and trial of Guinevere (or accusations, for her legal troubles began in the previous Tale in relation to the poisoned apples and to Meleagant's charges) are successful here and mark the beginning of the end; they signal the descent into civil war, revenge feud, and betrayal – pretty much the situation that prevailed before Arthur ever established himself. Recourse to law is, I will argue, a debasement, a descent from the principles inherent in Round Table chivalry, which has been governed (ideologically if not in practice) by an aspirational code of chivalric behaviour, often held to be represented by the Round Table Oath. The chief difference between law and the code of the order of chivalry is that the former is sovereign, external, and imposed by force, while the latter is a commitment to an internal and subjective disposition, to a supererogatory ethics, and a self-imposed code of action. It will soon appear that this primary distinction is more than a little murky, though in its large lineaments it is supported by a common critical understanding best expressed in Elizabeth Archibald's seminal work on fellowship in the Morte, in which she foregrounds the senses ‘of loyal friendship and of an organized and permanent knightly order’.

Transformations abound in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, yet the more closely transformation is scrutinized the more it seems to prove elusive. It appears in the opening lines with Uther shifting into the likeness of Igrayne's husband and as such transformation claims a significant foothold in the Morte's progression.1 Merlin is often altered in appearance, but it is difficult to distinguish his shape-shifting from disguise, and Merlin's presence in the Morte is largely limited to its beginning. In other Arthurian texts Morgan le Fay is known to be a mistress of shape-shifting, but in the Morte her most notable achievement is to transform into a rock (120.12). Demons appear in the Grail Quest in the likeness of fair damsels (712.30; 740.17–35), Bors’ brother (742.13–17), and even a priest (742.12), ‘illusions’ commonly found in hagiography. Perhaps one of the difficulties in examining transformation in the Morte is the word choice. Malory frequently uses the word ‘lykenes’ to describe moments of potential transformation, but it is unclear whether lykeness means illusion, corporeal shape-shifting, or disguise. Malory's descriptions of transformation are enigmatic: Elayne appears ‘lyke’ Guenevere, but is this shapeshifting or merely Lancelot's perception (630.17)? And is it transformation or a costume when Lyonesse appears to Gareth ‘lyke a prynces’ (259.10)? Yet by scrutinizing episodes of Malory's transformation, the catch-phrase ‘oute of mesure’ arises. A rough pattern begins to emerge: that at many episodes of transformation – frequently of ‘lyknes’ – emotions ‘oute of mesure’ are also present. The terms ‘lykenes’ and ‘oute of mesure’ are used together in moments of transformation, and characters ‘oute of mesure’ often find themselves open to manipulation by practitioners who can shape ‘lykenes’.

Transformation and ‘Lykenes’ in Malory and Beyond

Malory's transformations are dominated by the description of ‘lykenes’. The Middle English Dictionary defines ‘lykenes’ as ‘appearance, guise, shape,’ focusing on semblance. For Malory, ‘lykenes’ hints at shapeshifting and transformation but also encodes enchantment, disguise and natural affect. The concept of natural affect is particularly important in relationship to Malory's physical depictions of ‘lykenes’ because a person's physical appearance could be affected by the body's humours and emotions. Indeed, emotions, such as lovesickness, might be evidenced in a person's physique.

On 25 January 1759, Margaret Malcolm, the daughter of a shoemaker in Elgin, was admonished before the magistrates of Edinburgh after being found in a bawdy house owned by Janet Dryburgh. The magistrates acknowledged Malcolm's plea that she had no other ‘honest and virtuous way of making her bread’, and so, to avoid trial and punishment, they instead banished her from the city. The ‘bawdy house’ from which Malcom was removed was situated in South Gray's Close, also known as Mint Close – part of a narrow street that extended south from the High Street to the Cowgate. The establishment was one of at least four similar premises in Edinburgh operated by Dryburgh from 1756 to 1759, and Margaret Malcolm was her employee. For the most part, when the city constables detected and raided an establishment, both employer and employee relocated, usually within the same area, and continued their trade. Dryburgh and Malcolm were just two of the hundreds of sex workers in early modern Edinburgh, women who, despite facing banishment, imprisonment, public humiliation, and corporal punishment, continued to ‘make their bread’ through the sale of sex.

In early modern Scotland, social order and moral rectitude were considered essential requisites for any civil society. Accordingly, those who deviated from accepted standards of behaviour were subject to punitive measures and social censure, and this was particularly prevalent after 1700 when moral reformers and clergy railed against the immorality of the people. It is therefore unsurprising that the historical analysis of sex and sexuality has hitherto been considered through an important, yet narrow, framework of deviance and criminality. Only recently have historians moved beyond the moral and judicial approach to sex and begun to consider sex work in its broader socio-economic context. Susan McDonough, for example, has demonstrated the essential role of sex workers as ‘knowledge brokers’ in late-medieval Mediterranean port towns. While, she argues, sex workers in city brothels came in contact with a diverse segment of the population, and it was through this broad engagement with travellers, civic officials, and the like, rather than their sexual activities, that sex workers ‘accrued, shared and disseminated knowledge about how port cities worked’.

Inside the front cover of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 346, a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie, an eighteenth- century owner notes that he has seen the translation of the work by Aaron Thompson, ‘with a large preface wherein he endeavours to prove the author to be a more faithfull Historian, than he is generally esteemd to be’. The reference is to the first English translation of the Historia, which appeared in 1718 with, as the note says, an extensive preface championing Geoffrey's veracity, in particular with reference to the Brutus foundation story. This was, as I have written elsewhere, quite an extraordinary claim to make by this point in Geoffrey's reception history. Thompson was fighting a battle that had been largely settled, and not in Geoffrey's favour, some centuries earlier. There is nothing in the Fitzwilliam annotator's comment to indicate whether he endorsed Thompson's view or not, though the manuscript itself has added chapter divisions based on the divisions in Thompson's translation, suggesting at least some communication between the two books. What is clear is that a reader of the Historia who had also read Thompson would have a very particular sense of what Geoffrey's text is about. Thompson's preface takes Geoffrey's claim to be translating an ancient British book at face value and sees that book as important because of what it has to say about Britain's origins. Thompson goes to great lengths to take issue with early modern antiquarians who queried the Historia's foundation story, remarking, for example, that William Camden was wrong to argue in his Britannia (1586) that Geoffrey was the first to tell the story of Brutus, saying instead, ‘That there had been frequent Mention made of Brutus the Founder of the British Race, by Authors extant long before Jeffrey's Time; and that there had been a constant Tradition either oral or written concerning him, especially among the Britains, even from the first Beginning of the British Nation’. Thompson does concede that ‘it is very well known that … fabulous and legendary Stories, were very well receiv’d in those credulous Times, and that the gravest Writers are not exempt from them’, specifically mentioning ‘several of the most Romantick and incredible Exploits of King Arthur’, and suggesting that the currency of such tales among the Welsh might explain their appearance in Geoffrey's text.

These words were part of a letter sent in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the gallows and the ‘Ignominious death’ he so feared by the infamous eighteenthcentury Edinburgh housebreaker and thief, William Brodie. Brodie wrote two such letters from the confines of Edinburgh's tolbooth prison, where he was kept ‘in the Iron Room and in Chains’, with both letters aiming to use his social connections and former standing in Edinburgh's burgess community to have his sentence commuted to life transportation to Botany Bay. Born the son of the well-connected burgess Francis Brodie, young William benefited from an enviable start in life. He would go on to be elected deacon of the wrights’ guild in Edinburgh, a prestigious position affording him status, connections, respectability, and the ability to afford commodious accommodation in a ‘tenement in Horse Wynd … a substantial building, well furnished’. Brodie, it would seem, had almost everything one would need to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in eighteenth-century Edinburgh, but, driven by the excesses of his own behaviour, he suffered the miserable end of a common thief. Brodie's duality in being a respectable burgess by day and common thief by night so shocked society that the proceedings of his trial were in print even before he went to the gallows.

As Deacon Brodie, William was a powerful and influential figure, the head of an incorporated guild, benefiting from economic, social, and political privileges afforded him by his title. Prior to his discovery, the then unknown night-time housebreaker and thief was the scourge of Edinburgh's society. Brodie, then, was operating on two levels, making him simultaneously both central and peripheral to society. Some authors have argued that Brodie's story was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, although that case cannot be proven. His story continues to fascinate to this day, and the modern-day tavern on Edinburgh's Lawnmarket which bears his name is a regular stopping point for many tour guides and visitors.

Brodie of course is an example of extremities, an individual at the top of his profession yet given over to a secret criminality to support his excessive lifestyle.