From the recital of combats we turn to tales of love.  The most interesting of these relate to Launcelot and Guenever, and to Tristram and Isould.  They differ in many respects, and yet share the noteworthy feature that both the women are already married, and their lovers are connected by ties of relationship or of great intimacy with the husbands whom they wrong.  Arthur, however, is made to preserve, throughout the story of his deception, the same dignity and the same respect which he had always possessed, and in the loyalty of his character never admits a doubt of his wife’s virtue; while King Mark, the husband of Isould, loses the sympathy of the reader by his treachery and cowardice, and is always conscious of Isould’s infidelity.  Guenever and Launcelot feel the deeper and the nobler passion, as theirs is inspired solely by each other’s merit, while that of Isould and Tristram is inflamed by an amorous potion.  The immorality of these love stories was not in the Middle Ages the same immorality which it would be considered at present.  The conditions of life were all opposed to self restraint.  The standard of morals was set by the church, and according to her interpretation of Christianity, continence was so subsidiary to orthodoxy, that what would now be considered a crime, was in the Middle Ages an irregularity which need not weigh on the conscience.  Evidence of this is amply supplied by the social history of the time, and the fact is fully illustrated by the romances.  The authors of these compositions, from their tendency to idealization, held up to their readers a higher view of virtue in every respect than was practised in actual life, and in their writings, conjugal infidelity is of constant occurrence.  The fictitious personages who indulge in licence are but dimly conscious of wrong-doing, and almost the only evidence of a realization of their fault is in the Quest of the Saint Greal, when Launcelot and other noble knights acknowledge that the attainment of the sacred prize is not for them as being “sinful men,” and the quest is achieved by the spotless Sir Galahad, who, impersonating the purifying influence of Christianity, forms the most striking character conceived by the fertile imagination of the Middle Ages.  The virtue of constancy was far more admired than that of chastity, and it is said of Guenever, whose sin had brought such calamity upon the Round Table, that “as she was a true lover, so she had a good end.”

Launcelot and Tristram vie with one another in the deeds of chivalry which they accomplish in honor of their ladies, and the intimacy which exists between the two knights and their mistresses adds much to the interest of the story.  A fine touch in the loves of Tristram and Isould is the introduction of Sir Palomides, a valiant knight, almost the equal of Tristram in prowess, who loves Isould as passionately as his successful rival, but finds no favor to reward a long career of devotion.  The passions of jealousy and hatred on the one hand, and knightly courtesy and honor on the other, which alternately sway the two warriors, and struggle for the mastery in their relations with each other, form a touching picture, and show that the romancers could occasionally rise above the description of conflicts to a study of the heart and character of men.