AndyG, in the version I know best, they don't go down the hall to fight, it seems that the fight happens right in the bedroom, as soon as MG has armed himself (with the lord's better sword). Then when wifey would rather have MG "than you and all your kin" he takes his lady by the hand and leads her down the hall, possibly only so that when he cut off her head and stove it against the wall, it would rhyme.

But as baddies go, what about the one man who blew the horn and warned the lovers? His heart was in the right place but he was disobeying a direct order from his liege... whereas the page, who tattled, can be assumed to be the HUSBAND's employee, and thus faithful, really, even if he was a tattletale. Oops -- the term for that is Whistleblower, right, if it was a good thing to tattle about?