40 Fun Facts About The Lady of Shalott

Which Victorian writer, later made a baron, wrote the Arthurian poem The Lady of Shalott?

Alfred Tennyson published it at 23, then rewrote it so heavily for his 1842 collection that the later text became the standard one.

Which knight of the Round Table rides past the tower and draws the Lady of Shalott to her window?

Sir Lancelot flashes into her mirror in full sunlight, and in the last stanza he is the one figure who pauses over her body to offer a prayer.

Which crime writer titled a 1962 village mystery after a line from The Lady of Shalott?

Agatha Christie has a character quote the poem to describe a film star's frozen look moments before a party guest dies.

What happens to the Lady of Shalott's mirror at the moment she looks out of her tower window?

It cracks side to side, and she cries out that the curse has come upon her: the turning point of the poem, closing the third of its four parts.

What does the cursed Lady of Shalott do night and day while watching the world in her mirror?

Weaves a magic web is the poem's own phrase: she works the mirror's sights into her cloth without ever learning what the curse on her is.

Who painted the famous 1888 canvas showing the Lady of Shalott setting out in her boat?

John William Waterhouse returned to the poem in 1894 and 1915, so his three canvases show three different moments of her story.

In which 1985 television film does the heroine's boat sink while she acts out The Lady of Shalott?

Anne of Green Gables leaves Anne clinging to a bridge until Gilbert rows past to rescue her, and she still refuses to forgive him.

Toward which legendary city does the river flow past the island in The Lady of Shalott?

Camelot ends the fifth line of almost every stanza, a steady reminder of the world the Lady is forbidden to look at.

Which country act's If I Die Young video shows a woman adrift holding The Lady of Shalott?

The Band Perry had Kimberly Perry pushed off in a canoe holding a book of verse, which lies open at the poem in the video's final shot.

Whose death in 1850 opened the post of Poet Laureate for the author of The Lady of Shalott?

William Wordsworth died in April 1850 and Samuel Rogers turned the post down, so it passed to a man who then held it for 42 years, longer than anyone else.

What does the Lady of Shalott write around the prow of her boat before floating away?

Her own name is how the court learns who she is: knights, burghers, lords and dames come out onto the wharfs and read it off the prow.

Who are the only people said to hear the Lady of Shalott's voice echoing from her island?

Reapers cutting grain at dawn hear her song drifting down the river, though the poem asks whether anyone has ever actually seen her.

After seeing two newlyweds in her mirror, the Lady of Shalott says she is half-sick of what?

Shadows are all she ever sees, since the mirror shows only reflections of real life, and a 1915 painting takes this very line as its title.

Which refrain is the knight singing as he flashes into the Lady of Shalott's mirror?

Tirra lirra was sung twice over in the 1832 text and once in the revision, and it later gave the novelist Jessica Anderson a book title.

In what conditions does the Lady of Shalott come down from her tower to find the boat?

An autumn storm sets the scene: an east wind strains, the pale yellow woods are fading and rain falls from a low sky, a sharp turn from the sunlit harvest of Part III.

What colour robes does the Lady of Shalott wear as she lies down in the boat?

White robes fly loosely left and right as she drifts, and the 1832 version added a crown of pearl that the revision cut.

What does the knight she glimpsed say of the dead Lady of Shalott in the poem's closing lines?

She has a lovely face is his whole verdict, followed by a brief prayer: he never learns that the sight of him brought on her curse.

Which solemn procession with plumes, lights and music does the Lady of Shalott watch pass at night?

A funeral passing in the mirror is followed at once by two newlyweds, the pairing of death and love that makes her tire of reflections.

Which two crops fill the long fields along the river at the opening of The Lady of Shalott?

Barley and rye clothe the wold up to the sky, and the harvest runs through the poem: the knight later rides between the sheaves.

Which flowers blow around the island in the first stanza of the poem The Lady of Shalott?

Lilies return at the climax, when a water-lily in bloom is among the last things she sees before the curse falls.

Which later Arthurian cycle by the author of The Lady of Shalott retells her legend at length?

Idylls of the King gives her a family, a tournament and a back story drawn from medieval romance, and there a servant rows her body to court.

Which maiden of Arthurian legend, who dies of unrequited love, is the Lady of Shalott based on?

Elaine of Astolat is not the Elaine who bears Sir Galahad, and Shalott is simply another form of Astolat, her home in the older romances.

The Lady of Shalott drew on a thirteenth-century novella written in which language?

Italian storytellers gave only the outline: her isolation in the tower and her decision to join the living world appear nowhere in that tale.

Who told the legend behind The Lady of Shalott centuries earlier in Le Morte d'Arthur?

Thomas Malory has the maiden nurse the wounded knight back to health, then die of heartbreak ten days after he rides away.

In the medieval legend behind The Lady of Shalott, what does the dead maiden hold as her boat reaches court?

A letter explains why she died, and after it is read out at court the knight she loved sees to her rich burial.

The Lady of Shalott, told in four parts with a recurring refrain, is usually classed as what?

A ballad tells a story in song-like stanzas, and all but one of this poem's 19 close on the word Shalott.

One influential reading treats The Lady of Shalott as a study of the isolation of which figure?

The artist is the reading of scholar David Staines, who saw the Arthurian setting as a frame for the dangers of personal isolation.

The author of The Lady of Shalott was born in 1809 at Somersby rectory in which English county?

Lincolnshire was his home when, the year the poem appeared, he broke into a local church to ring the bells for the Reform Act.

What do listeners who hear her by moonlight say that the Lady of Shalott must be?

A fairy is their guess because nobody has ever seen her wave a hand or stand at the casement: all the outside world knows is her song.

How do the knights at the palace react when the dead Lady of Shalott drifts into the city?

They cross themselves in fear and the sound of royal cheer dies away in the lighted palace, leaving one knight to speak.

Whose 1857 illustration of The Lady of Shalott annoyed its author by adding unwritten details?

Holman Hunt replied that a single image had to sum up the whole poem, and he kept reworking the design for the rest of his life.

Which London gallery holds the best-known painting of the Lady of Shalott, a gift of 1894?

Tate Britain has it because Sir Henry Tate donated the 1888 canvas himself; its swallows and river plants were painted as an English stream would show them.

In the 1888 painting of the Lady of Shalott afloat, which detail signals death is near?

Blown-out candles tell the story: of three standing by the crucifix at the bow, two are already dark, leaving a single flame for what remains of her life.

Which Jan van Eyck painting with a round mirror inspired a Victorian Lady of Shalott design?

The Arnolfini Portrait lent the idea of a mirror that shows what the main picture cannot, used here to reveal the knight riding past outside.

Which model for Millais's drowning Ophelia drew her own version of the Lady of Shalott in 1853?

Elizabeth Siddal signed the drawing with her initials and shortened surname, the first time she had put a signature on any of her own work.

A 1915 painting of the Lady of Shalott resting from work hangs in which Canadian city?

Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario received it in 1971 from the wife of a Canadian engineer, who had inherited it from her great-aunt and great-uncle.

Which Celtic-styled musician set The Lady of Shalott to music on the 1991 album The Visit?

Loreena McKennitt trimmed the text for her setting, leaving out the lines about the knight's jewelled bridle and the meteor over Shalott.

Which circle of young British painters, founded in 1848, kept returning to The Lady of Shalott?

The Pre-Raphaelites put the poem's author on their 1848 list of 'Immortals', the heroes they admired and mined for subjects.

How does the Lady of Shalott learn that a curse will fall if she looks toward the city?

A whisper is all she has to go on: no speaker, no reason and no detail of the punishment are ever given, so she simply keeps working.

At what time of day does the Lady of Shalott loose the chain and lie down in the boat?

At dusk she casts off, at the closing of the day, so her whole voyage happens in darkness and she reaches the city as a pale, gleaming shape.