SOURCE: “The Faery World of Sir Orfeo,” Neophilologus Vol. 48, 1964, pp. 155-59.

In the following excerpt, Mitchell argues that the sinister elements of Sir Orfeo constitute an inappropriate addition made to the original work.

Writing of Sir Orfeo, Kane observes that

no other romance conveys so strong an impression of contact with another existence older, colder and less happy than our own, sinister in the chill of its beauty. … The mortal characters in the romance are made good and loyal while a boundless suggestion of unexplored evil is ascribed to the other world and its inhabitants.¹

He then traces the growth of ‘imminent evil’ in the poem until

the sense of danger … is confirmed, and the mask of beauty is stripped from faery when in the courtyard of the palace Orfeo sees a horror, the figures of the taken mortals in the attitudes of their moments of capture. Now...