Word: aelfrida
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...history, with heroic ideals looming in twilit feudal minds. Aethelwold, the king's foster-brother, prepares to ride into the dawn for the king's bride-a flax-haired Lancelot for a bucolic Arthur. They pledge their fraternity over staked swords. . . . Later, in a druidic Devon wood, Aelfrida's beauty twists this pledge. It is too early in history for a Lancelot to live with his own deceit. He buries his dagger in his own chest for brother-love, which is yet held above love for woman. Hasty critics have objected that such a tragedy belies human...
...parallels Wagner's Tristan and Isolde?a king, a vassal sent a-wooing. The first scene disclosed King Eadgar's (Lawrence Tibbett's) banquet hall, its rough-hewn table boards, trophies of woodland kills, crude spears, armor: discloses also the royal widower's conceit to take a second wife. Aelfrida, daughter of the Thane of Devon, famed for beauty, is in his mind. With Saxon stolidity, however, he withholds decision until assured that the lady, whom he has never personally inspected, merits her reputation. On the errand of verification and summons (if justified), he despatches his loyal foster-brother, Aethelwold...
Unexpectedly Eadgar comes to visit their worried household, where Aelfrida yearns for glamorous court life and Aethelwold's treachery burns constantly in his heart. Mr. Taylor's cellos breathe chromatic sights. The henchman is driven to reveal to his wife his perfidy: how he deprived the King of her beauty, her of a queen's throne. If she loves him, let her hurry to make herself appear ugly, bent, broken, scarred, withered, that the King may find his brother innocent of treason...
Here, Miss Millay strikes a tone of modern cynicism. Aelfrida appears before the royal guest in all her glory, wearing a golden robe, splendid in her favorite gems. The betrayer is betrayed. He plunges his dagger into his heart. He commits suicide in a "nice" way, explains Miss Millay. No fuss, tenor solo, orchestral pomposity; no sentimental worblings of lost love and noble remorse. Like a true Saxon, he quietly takes his life, "for himself," not glory or revenge. Aelfrida weeps but Eadgar says to her: "Thou hast not tears enough in thy narrow
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