Status Updates From A Connecticut Yankee in Kin...

The people think his childish joke is marvelous. He bores everyone with how he came up with the idea. He launches into his comedy routine by telling old jokes that the narrator knew as a boy. Clarence sees the jokes and scoffs. Then Kay stands up and tells his yarn about how he captured the narrator. Kay says that his opponent is a giant when clearly he’s not. Kay gives him a death sentence. The narrator is sad.

Merlin is basically retelling the story of King Arthur’s early years and I wonder if it’s for the benefit of ignorant readers. Merlin’s role is to give Arthur advice and, of course, it’s good advice. The narrator has painted him to be a bore who tells the same story repeatedly.

Ch. 4 Everyone has fallen asleep under Merlin’s spellbinding tale (ha, ha). Dinidan ties mugs to a dog’s tale to wake everyone up.

Clarence looks miserable when an old geezer in a black robe with a long beard stands up. He believes that Merlin is a liar who excels at taking one story and exaggerating in new ways every time he tells it. To appear modest, he tells it in the third person (like a politician). Everyone, including the page and dogs, fell asleep as his voice droned. Rats snuck out and grabbed morsels.

The queen looks sadly at Kay and admonishes him for being a liar. Kay then says that Lance dressed up in Kay’s armor and did fantastical deeds to capture the prisoners. Lancelot made them swear that Kay really did it. Guenever blushes with joy and the narrator said Lance would be shot in 19th century Arkansas for that. Everybody smiled and Lance’s magnamity but the narrator thought it was total bunk.

Ch. 3 Most accounts are about duels between strangers as an excuse to strip armor. It’s like when two boys on the playground say, “I can lick you.” He sees most of the people in the hall as brainless, childish, and amusing. Brains are not needed in a society made of brawn. He does see majesty, purity, and greatness in the knights of higher rank. Some prisoners get on their knees and beg to speak to the queen.

The table is as large as a circus tent. The scene is full of colors and the action is exactly what you would expect from a medieval dining and drinking scene. The courtiers are gracious and courteous. They listen carefully and they believe everything they are told. Somehow they ignore the intervals of dog-fighting. He is with twenty prisoners who are maimed and bloodied and they expect the worst (might is right).

Clarence is the page of Kay, foster-brother of Arthur. The narrator is Kay’s prisoner. Right now the knights are dining and drinking. Kay would exhibit him and brag about his exploits. To the dungeon he would go until his friends pay his ransom--but he has no friends. The narrator is called in and he describes a typical medieval dining hall and court. In the middle is a round oaken table.

I’m not sure how he happens to know the exact time of a solar eclipse in 528 . He knows none is scheduled for 1879. He only had to wait for 48 hours and he would know for sure. Being a practical Yankee, he decided he had a choice: boss around 19th century lunatics for two days or boss around a 6th century kingdom because he was the best-educated man in the land. Then he told Clarence the page to tell him everything.

The boy is very chatty and asks all sorts of questions and shares things about himself, such as he was born in 513. WHAT??? Now he knows it is an insane asylum and he asks the name of the asylum. It’s called King Arthur’s Court. He asks the date and his heart sinks when he hears it. Being rational, he knows he can not trust the word of men. He does remember the date of a total eclipse in 528 and he will have to wait.

The narrator begins to pull people aside to find out if they are patients in the asylum. They all seem to be because of their archaic speech. An undercook has no time to talk but he wants to know where he found his clothes. A fancily dressed boy who looks like he just walked out of a painting tells him that he is a page and the narrator says he is nothing more than a paragraph. LOL

They have long, unkept hair. Some were iron collars--they are staring at him as if he is the weird one. They reach a town with unpaved crooked streets and windowless houses with thatched roofs. The roads are full of muck, mud, dogs, swine, and naked children. A parade of folks in military garb and banners and fancy clothing march through. The two men follow the parade. They walk under arches and arrive in a court.

Ch. 1 Somehow the narrator is walking with the guy in armor. They are in a very natural setting that looks like a dream and the wagon trail is very sparse. A girl with long blonde hair and a hoop of poppies on her head walks by. She doesn’t stare at the guy in armor, she stares at the narrator as if he is the freak. He walks as if in a dream. He sees the oddest people. (naked children and people in coarse clothes).