If this is Tennyson’s allegorical view of the artist’s position, it is a view far removed from the strong poetic faith of his Romantic predecessors such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. The great Romantic poets had believed in the transforming power of poetry. They believed that it was strong enough to act upon the real world and that the poet was a person of might—not so Tennyson, at least not in “The Lady of Shalott.” If the lady is Tennyson’s allegorized poet, then his poet is hiding out and is imperiled in a world of intractable fact. The lady is no match for the commercial power of Camelot; by comparison, her mirror is fragile and her web tenuous, and she turns from them only to be destroyed.