50 Fun Facts About Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Which James Bond star played the Green Knight in the 1984 film Sword of the Valiant?

Sean Connery took the part opposite Miles O'Keeffe's Gawain, in director Stephen Weeks's second attempt at filming the poem after a 1973 version.

Which fantasy novelist co-edited a 1925 scholarly edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

J.R.R. Tolkien prepared the medieval text with E. V. Gordon, and his own verse translation followed in 1975, after his death.

Which British actor plays Gawain opposite Ralph Ineson in the 2021 film The Green Knight?

Dev Patel plays Gawain as a young man setting out to test his courage, in a film that David Lowery wrote, directed, produced and edited.

In the Green Knight's bargain with Gawain, the return blow falls due after which stretch of time?

A year and a day carries the tale round to the next New Year's Day, so the whole story opens and closes in the dead of winter.

Which sorceress, seen as an aged lady at the castle, devised the Green Knight's test of Gawain?

Morgan le Fay learned her arts from Merlin, the Green Knight says, and she enchanted the lord of the castle to test the pride of the Round Table.

What does Sir Gawain hand the lord of the castle each evening in exchange for the day's kill?

Kisses are what Gawain wins indoors from the lord's wife, and he pays them over faithfully each night without ever saying who gave them.

What power does the lady of the castle claim for the green girdle that Sir Gawain agrees to keep?

Its wearer cannot be killed, she promises, and with the axe awaiting him next morning Gawain takes the silk belt after refusing a costlier gift.

What does Sir Gawain do at the Green Knight's first swing of the axe at the Green Chapel?

He flinches, shrinking his shoulders from the blade, and the Green Knight jeers that the real Gawain never feared any army.

Which Anglo-Saxon poem, like Sir Gawain's later tale, survives in one Cotton library manuscript?

Beowulf was charred at the margins when fire swept the collection in 1731, a blaze the Gawain manuscript came through as well.

Which evergreen does the Green Knight carry in one hand, opposite his axe, as he rides into Camelot?

A holly branch shows that he comes in peace, the Green Knight tells Arthur, though the giant axe in his other hand suggests otherwise.

What is Sir Gawain to King Arthur, a tie he cites when asking for the Green Knight's challenge?

His nephew: Gawain calls Arthur his uncle before the whole court and argues that so foolish a contest does not befit a king.

At the Green Chapel, the Green Knight reveals that he is which lord, Sir Gawain's recent host?

Bertilak de Hautdesert had been changed in shape by magic, which is how the same genial host could pick up his own severed head at Camelot.

Which keepsake does Sir Gawain refuse from the lady of the castle before she offers the girdle?

A gold ring set with a blazing stone is her opening offer; Gawain says he has nothing to give in return, then accepts the plainer-looking belt.

Which animal does the lord of the castle bring home from his third hunt in Sir Gawain's tale?

A fox is the day's only catch, and critics pair its twisting attempts to escape with Gawain's own bid to cheat death that same morning.

On which November feast does King Arthur hold a farewell banquet for Sir Gawain before his quest?

All Saints' Day, the first of November, is when Arthur feasts him; Gawain arms and rides out the next morning with two months of winter ahead.

What is the name of the warhorse Sir Gawain rides from Camelot in search of the Green Chapel?

Gringolet carries Gawain through several medieval romances, and here the poet lingers on a harness studded with gold that glitters like the sun.

Whose image is painted on the inside of Sir Gawain's shield to keep his courage from failing?

The Virgin Mary looks back at him from inside the shield, and it is to her that Gawain prays when lost and freezing, just before a castle appears.

The Gawain poet says the pentangle on the hero's shield was first devised by which biblical king?

Solomon set it as a token of truth, the poet says, in a passage that holds the first recorded use of the word pentangle in English.

What name for the pentangle on Gawain's shield does the poet say the English use everywhere?

The endless knot can be drawn in one unbroken stroke, a fitting badge for a knight the poet calls faithful in five ways, five times over.

At the feast that opens Sir Gawain's tale, what will King Arthur not do until he hears of a marvel?

He will not begin eating on a high feast day until he has been told some strange tale, and the Green Knight's arrival more than satisfies him.

How do Arthur's knights respond when Sir Gawain comes home wearing the girdle as a mark of shame?

They wear one too: the court laughs kindly at his confession, and every knight of the Round Table adopts a bright green band in his honour.

According to the Green Knight, which fault earns Sir Gawain the small cut from the third stroke?

He hid a gift, the girdle, from his host on the last evening; the Green Knight calls it a small lapse made for love of life, and forgives it.

What does the Green Knight call the exchange of blows he proposes to Arthur's court in Camelot?

A Christmas game is all he asks, since it is Yule and New Year; he says he left his armour at home because he wants no fight.

Which queen did the Green Knight's enchantress hope to scare to death with his talking severed head?

Guinevere was the target of the whole spectacle, and once the horseman has gone Arthur makes light of it for her sake as a festive interlude.

What happens to the Green Knight's axe in Camelot after he gallops out holding his head?

It hangs above the dais on a tapestry as a wonder for all to see, after Arthur tells Gawain that the blade has hewn enough.

Near the Green Chapel, what does the guide provided by Sir Gawain's host urge the knight to do?

Ride away, the servant begs, swearing never to tell a soul that Gawain fled; the knight thanks him and goes on down to the chapel alone.

What does the Green Chapel turn out to be when Sir Gawain finally reaches it on New Year's morning?

A hollow grassy mound with holes in its sides is all he finds, and Gawain mutters that the devil himself might say prayers there at midnight.

Asking to face the Green Knight, how does Sir Gawain rank himself among Arthur's knights?

The weakest, he says, and the feeblest of wit, whose life would be the smallest loss; such polished modesty is part of his fame for courtesy.

Through which region does Sir Gawain ride on his way to the wilderness of the Wirral?

North Wales is one of the few real places the poet names, and scholars have used it to map the hero's road from Camelot to the Green Chapel.

On Sir Gawain's shield, the gold pentangle is painted against a field of which colour?

Red, called gules in heraldry, sets off a star of pure gold, and the poet spends dozens of lines explaining what the device means.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in which stage of the language, also used by Chaucer?

Middle English, though the poet's regional dialect differs considerably from Chaucer's, and the two men are unlikely ever to have met.

Rather than end rhyme, which sound device binds the long lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

Alliteration, the echo of opening sounds on stressed words, links each line, part of a 14th-century revival of an older native verse tradition.

What are the short rhyming lines closing each stanza of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight called?

Bob and wheel pairs a very short line, the bob, sometimes just two syllables long, with four longer rhyming lines known as the wheel.

The first line of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight recalls the siege and fall of which ancient city?

Troy opens the poem because Britain's legendary founder Brutus was counted a Trojan exile, and almost the same line returns to close the last stanza.

Which dream-vision poem about a grieving father shares a manuscript with Sir Gawain's tale?

Pearl gives the unknown author a second nickname, the Pearl Poet, and its dreamer wakes the moment he tries to cross a stream to the maiden he mourns.

Which London institution holds the only surviving manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

The British Library received it with the Cotton collection and still catalogues it under the shelfmark from Sir Robert Cotton's own bookcases.

By what old word for a section of verse are the parts of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight known?

Fitts mark the big breaks in the story, though some scholars now think the copyist, not the poet, decided where each one falls.

The dialect of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight places its unknown poet in which part of England?

The North West Midlands, around the Cheshire and Staffordshire border, also has the crags and moors that scholars match to the poem's landscape.

Which Roman emperor's bust gave the Gawain manuscript its shelfmark in the Cotton library?

Nero stood over the bookcase that held it, so the volume is still called Cotton Nero A.x: under that bust, top shelf, tenth book along.

Which order of chivalry has its French motto added in a later hand to the Gawain manuscript?

The Garter was founded by Edward III in the same century, and its motto, shame on whoever thinks evil of it, suits a tale that ends with a girdle worn as a badge.

Which future Poet Laureate from Yorkshire published a translation of Sir Gawain's tale in 2007?

Simon Armitage grew up near the country the poem describes, and he later explored its language and landscape on screen for a BBC documentary.

Which actress plays two roles, including the lady of the castle, in the 2021 film The Green Knight?

Alicia Vikander plays both Essel, the lover Gawain leaves behind at Camelot, and the lord's wife, who in the film looks exactly like her.

Which animated series borrowed Sir Gawain's beheading game for an episode called "Seventeen"?

Adventure Time follows the poem until its hero Finn lops off the Green Knight's head, then abandons the medieval plot for a story of its own.

Which Irish hero faces a beheading challenge in Bricriu's Feast, centuries before Sir Gawain?

Cú Chulainn meets it in the earliest known beheading-game story, where his challenger also feints three blows before letting him go unhurt.

Which British composer's opera Gawain had its premiere at the Royal Opera House in 1991?

Harrison Birtwistle set a libretto by the poet David Harsent, and the opera's three hunts and three seductions return to the same music each time.

What sound from the Green Chapel tells Sir Gawain that the Green Knight is waiting for him?

A grindstone whirring, loud as a mill race, echoes off the crag, and Gawain grimly guesses that the edge is being readied in his honour.

When the lady first slips into his bedchamber, what does Sir Gawain do before he greets her?

He pretends to sleep while he puzzles out why she has come, then makes a show of waking in surprise and crosses himself.

Learning how he was tested, which two faults does Sir Gawain curse in himself at the Green Chapel?

Cowardice and covetousness are his first words once he can speak, and he tears off the girdle and thrusts it back at the Green Knight.

Like Sir Gawain, which Round Table knight faces a beheading bargain in the romance Perlesvaus?

Lancelot beheads a knight who begs him to, comes back as promised to offer his own head, and is hailed by the townsfolk as a true knight at last.

Which independent studio released David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight in American cinemas?

A24 released it in the United States on 30 July 2021, more than a year after the pandemic closed cinemas and scrapped its planned May 2020 opening.