4 - ‘aske bettyr, I counseyle the’: Requests, Conditions, and Consent in Malory’s ‘Sir Gareth of Orkney’

Summary

The opening of Sir Thomas Malory's tale of ‘Sir Gareth of Orkney’ immediately establishes an interest in requests and the conditions that are necessary for them to be granted. When Gareth, whose identity is unknown to the Arthurian court, arrives as they are about to hold their Pentecost feast, he tells Arthur he has come

to pray you and requyre you to gyff me thre gyftys. And they shall nat be unresonablé asked but that ye may worshypfully graunte hem me, and to you no grete hurte nother losse. And the fyrste done and gyffte I woll aske now, and the tothir too gyfftes I woll aske this day twelve-monthe.

By setting out his requests in such detail, Gareth draws attention to the complexities bound up in the act of asking. For the Arthurian court, requests should be ‘resonablé’ asked and able to be ‘worshypfully graunte[d]’, involving ‘no grete hurte nother losse’ to the granter. Gareth also uses two different terms for both the gift he requests and the manner in which he makes his request. While such doublings are often thought of as tautologies typical of – and deprecated within – late medieval prose romances, in this instance both doubled terms may indicate an awareness of the varied kinds of interaction a request can entail. ‘[D]one and gyffte’ may reflect the two very different types of gift Gareth asks for: firstly, a year's worth of food and drink, and subsequently the responsibility for a quest and the privilege of having Launcelot knight him – two kinds of gift that the court views very differently, as respectively unworthy or noble. ‘[P]ray’ and ‘requyre’ may further indicate different ways to make a request, as ‘pray’ suggests a more subservient ‘plea’, while ‘requyre’ can include its modern connotation of ‘demand’ or ‘require’ (though it can also be more neutral in Middle English). Requests, in ‘Sir Gareth’, come in varied forms; they are not as simple as Arthur suggests when responding to Gareth: ‘Now aske ye […] and ye shall have your askynge’ (224.12–13). Indeed, when Gareth does ask for his first gift of a year's food and drink, Arthur does not immediately grant his wish. Instead, he tells Gareth to ‘aske bettyr, I counseyle the, for this is but a symple askyng’ (224.17–18).