Merlin

Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Narrated by Robert Bethune

"In ""Merlin,"" Edwin Arlington Robinson delves into the minds and hearts of a gallery of characters from the story Camelot: Gawaine, Bedivere, Lamorak; Arthur himself; his fool, Sir Dagonet, and most importantly, Merlin himself and the woman he loves, Vivian. He places the action at the moment when Guinevere and Lancelot have fled to Joyeux Gard, and Arthur, goaded on by Modred and Gawaine, is reluctantly preparing an army to make war on them.

It is at this time that he needs the advice and support of his old mentor, Merlin, more than ever before in his reign and his life, but it is at just this crucial time that Merlin has found that the love of Vivian is more important to him than kings, wars, knights, or Camelot itself. Age has finally caught up to Merlin, and he knows he cannot give what Arthur needs to save and restore Camelot.

Robinson's focus throughout is on character. He does not give us jousts and quests. Rather, he gives us the quiet thoughts and conversations that turn the kingdom toward the final war, as each character tries to balance old loyalties, old dreams, old hopes and fears against new realities and new imperatives. Against that background, the sadness that is Merlin plays against the quick playfulness and hope of Vivian, leaving us with a new and remarkably touching view of the last days of Camelot.


A Freshwater Seas production.
"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freshwater Seas
• Release date: Jun 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781933311296

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in 1869 in the Maine village of Head Tide and spent his school days in nearby Gardiner. Robinson developed a love of poetry in his youth, a love that endured until his death in New York in 1935. Robinson attended Harvard during 1891-1893 and published some of his early poetry in The Harvard Advocate. Although committed to becoming a writer, his path would not be an easy one. Income from Robinson's chosen pursuit was insufficient to maintain his modest lifestyle, much less meet his various responsibilities, and he worked at times as a secretary, a time-keeper, and a customs clerk, all the while continuing to write. After years of relative obscurity, he secured some incremental recognition with the publication of his poetry collections The Children of the Night, The Town Down the River, and The Man Against the Sky. During the First World War and in the decade that followed, Robinson composed a cycle of epic narrative poems, written in blank verse, that were modern in style but drew upon classic themes in substance. Against the unfolding tragedy of a world at war, Robinson composed a trilogy based on the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The trilogy included Merlin (1917), Lancelot (1920), and Tristram (1927). During the same period, Edwin Arlington Robinson would win the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry twice; first for his Collected Poems (published in 1921), and again for The Man Who Died Twice (published in 1924). With Tristram, he would at last reap hard-won financial rewards for his literary labors. Edwin Arlington Robinson's Arthurian cycle reflects the poet's most mature work.