ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the tragedy of the situation of Lancelot and Guinevere, meeting by the wronged king's tomb, is not merely conveyed to us by its reflection in mournful eyes, by the suggestion of the words that would come from lips that have tasted forbidden fruit and learned to loathe its sweetness. That it is so small is triumphant proof of Rossetti's genius. Into those few inches, with an art for once not inferior to that which went to the making of the moment's monument of a sonnet, and with far more vehemence than people find in any of sonnets, Rossetti has forced the crouching and menacing figure of Lancelot, the uncloistered, drawn and recoiling figure of Guinevere, the horizontal sculptured figure of Arthur, making the tacit commentary which the dead make on acts of the living; and then, with a magnificent stroke of designer's genius, he has crushed them down with the stiff, incumbent, stark bough of the tree.
