May

May is both a season of renewal and a structural turning point in the Arthurian narrative discussed by the editor. Its blossoming imagery gives shape to ideals of enduring love and remembered service, but the same month frames the secret hostility that sets the fellowship on a course toward destruction. The contrast makes spring’s promise inseparable from the fragility of the bonds it appears to renew.

Renewal and the Ideal of Love

The editor describes the passage from Candlemas through Easter to May as a movement into a season when hearts, like herbs and trees, blossom and bear fruit. For lovers, that renewal calls back “old gentleness and old service” and kind deeds neglected over time. May thus signifies more than present desire: it represents an opportunity to remember promises and restore the practice of care.

That ideal is measured against the instability of love. Winter’s erasure of green summer becomes an image for how a brief chill can cause people to set aside a love that cost much to establish. The editor condemns this changeability as weakness and dishonor, contrasting quick passion that soon cools with a former model in which men and women could love for seven years without wanton desire. In this account, constancy—not the season’s intensity—is the test of virtuous love.

The standard also places devotion within a hierarchy of obligations. A person of honor should direct the heart first to God and next to the joy of the person to whom faith has been promised; martial honor, too, must be reserved first for God, with a lady’s cause providing the knight’s quarrel. The editor calls this disciplined, faithful attachment virtuous love and presents May as the season that should revive it.

A Seasonal Pattern of Instability and Conflict

The contrast between May’s flourishing and love’s volatility is stated as a recurring pattern: present-day love is “soon hot, soon cold,” like summer and winter. The image carries a moral argument. A relationship’s quick warmth is not proof of its strength; without patience and faithfulness, the warmth gives way just as rapidly to coldness. The season therefore serves as a measure by which conduct can be judged, not as a guarantee that lovers will remain true.

The account of Queen Guenever’s May ride gives the seasonal ideal a courtly setting. She summons knights of the Round Table for an early ride through the woods and fields near Westminster, requiring them to be well mounted and dressed in green. Ten ladies are to accompany the party, with a lady behind each knight, and the queen intends to return to King Arthur by ten o’clock. The carefully ordered outing presents May as a time of shared pleasure and fellowship, but the detail that the knights are Queen’s Knights also identifies the courtly company through which later tensions will unfold.

May’s festive appearance is shadowed by Meliagrance’s long-standing love for Guenever. He has repeatedly watched for an opportunity to carry her off, holding back when Sir Launcelot was with her or nearby. That disclosure makes the outing more than a seasonal pageant: the queen’s public ride takes place against a threat already held in check by Launcelot’s presence. The contrast between the green-clad company and the danger surrounding it turns May’s beauty into a fragile form of security.

The Month of the Fellowship’s Ruin

When Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred press Sir Gawaine to expose the love between Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenever, May’s familiar language of growth becomes ominous. The narration again describes the season as one when every heart flourishes, but says that an anger arising in this very season did not cease until the flower of chivalry was destroyed and slain. Seasonal renewal and political catastrophe occupy the same frame: the month associated with the return of love also opens the conflict that devastates Arthur’s fellowship.

The immediate cause named in the account is the hostility of Agravaine and Mordred toward the queen and Launcelot, whom they watch day and night. Agravaine speaks openly in Arthur’s chamber, condemning the knights for allowing the king to be shamed. Gawaine refuses to join the disclosure, while Gaheris and Gareth also reject their brothers’ plan. He warns that a conflict with Launcelot could draw many kings and great lords to Launcelot’s side, and recalls how often Launcelot has rescued Arthur, the queen, and the other knights. May’s promise of shared life is thus set against a division among brothers and companions.

The editor’s account calls Guenever a true lover and connects that faithfulness with her good end, while the narrative’s May imagery places the unraveling of the court in the same season of blossoming. These are not identical claims: the seasonal moral ideal praises steadfast love, whereas the plot shows how the concealed attachment becomes a source of accusation and faction. May’s significance lies in holding both together—the hope that old service can be renewed and the warning that fragile loyalties can turn a season of flourishing into the beginning of ruin.