Legendary center of King Arthur's realm. Camelot is first mentioned in line 34 of Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot; and the name does not appear in all manuscripts of that poem. In the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle, Camelot becomes the principal city of Arthur's realm and remains so in many, though certainly not all, later texts. For the English-speaking world Camelot is Arthur's central city because of Malory, who identifies it with Winchester.

Most people will remember Camelot from the 1967 film starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, et. al. But fewer, will know of it's origins beyond the Broadway Musical. It opened on December 3, 1960 at the Majestic Theatre and ran for two years -- 873 performances -- and then went on to a two-year tour of the USA with Louis Hayward in the ead role. The libretto was based on T.H. White's The Once and Future King -- the first volume of which, The Sword in the Stone has been turned into a successful Disney cartoon-film.

The music was by Frederick Loewe, and the main songs, as I'm sure many will know are:

  1. I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight
  2. The Simple Joys of Maidenhood
  3. Camelot & the Wedding Ceremony
  4. C'est moi
  5. The Lusty Month of May
  6. Follow Me & Children's Chorus
  7. How To Handle a Woman
  8. Take Me to the Fair
  9. If Ever I would Leave You
  10. What Do the Simple Folk Do?
  11. I Love You Once in Silence and
  12. Guenevere(*)
(*) N.B. This is, astonishingly enough, the actual correct English spelling of the name!

Their own "definition" from Tower Power: Chaotic Acid Minds with Extremely Lousy and Overgeared Thoughts. (This is most likely an "unofficial" etymology. =) A Danish demo group that makes really cool demos for Commodore 64, the Once and Future Computer. One of the "great names" of the C64 demoscene.

Apparently the page that redirects from http://www.camelot.c64.org/ is dead. (They said they needed to test the infamous rm * command... =) The demos are available from your nearest scene FTP site (ftp.funet.fi is a good choice).

Camelot, a name applied in the medieval romances to the "City of Legions" which grew out of the permanent quarters of the Second Augusta Legion at Caerleon-upon-Usk, but was built earlier by the mythical Belinus.


Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.

Came"lot (?), n.

See Camlet.

[Obs.]

 

© Webster 1913

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