The Black Knight is a
fictional character
In fiction, a character (or speaker, in poetry) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life perso ...
who appears in a scene of the feature film ''
Monty Python and the Holy Grail''. He is a
knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
dressed in black and is based on the
black knight
The black knight is a literary stock character who masks his identity and that of his liege by not displaying heraldry. Black knights are usually portrayed as villainous figures who use this anonymity for misdeeds. They are often contrasted with t ...
of Arthurian Legends. He guards a "bridge" over a small stream. Although supremely skilled in swordplay, the Black Knight suffers from unchecked overconfidence and a staunch refusal ever to give up.
Overview
In the film, King Arthur (
Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was one of the six members of the surreal comedy group Monty Python. He portrayed authority figures such as The Colonel and the lead role in two P ...
), accompanied by his squire
Patsy
Patsy is a given name often used as a diminutive of the feminine given name Patricia or sometimes the masculine name Patrick, or occasionally other names containing the syllable "Pat" (such as Cleopatra, Patience, Patrice, or Patricia). Among I ...
(
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including '' Time Bandits'' (1981), '' ...
), is travelling through a forest when he observes a fight taking place between the
Black Knight
The black knight is a literary stock character who masks his identity and that of his liege by not displaying heraldry. Black knights are usually portrayed as villainous figures who use this anonymity for misdeeds. They are often contrasted with t ...
(
John Cleese) and a
Green Knight
The Green Knight ( cy, Marchog Gwyrdd, kw, Marghek Gwyrdh, br, Marc'heg Gwer) is a character from the 14th-century Arthurian poem ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' and the related medieval work ''The Greene Knight''. His true name is revea ...
(also played by Gilliam) by a bridge over a small stream. The Black Knight defeats the Green one by throwing his sword straight through the eye slit of the Green Knight's great helm.
Arthur congratulates the Black Knight and offers him a place at his court at the
Round Table, but the Black Knight makes no response until Arthur moves to cross the bridge (in reality a small plank of wood). The Black Knight moves slightly to block Arthur and declares "None shall pass". King Arthur objects, and the Black Knight threatens Arthur with death.
Reluctantly, King Arthur fights the Black Knight and, after a short battle, the Knight's left arm is severed, and squirts out copious amounts of blood. The Knight refuses to stand aside, insisting "Tis but a scratch", and fights on. Next, his right arm is cut off, but the Knight still does not concede. As the Knight is disarmed, Arthur assumes the fight is over and kneels to pray. The Black Knight interrupts Arthur's prayer by kicking him in the side of the head and accusing him of cowardice. Arthur chops off the Black Knight's right leg. At this point, the Knight still will not admit defeat, and attempts to ram his body into Arthur's. Arthur is annoyed and sarcastically asks the Black Knight if he is going to bleed on him to win. With an air of resignation, Arthur finally cuts off the left leg as well. With the Black Knight now reduced to a simple torso with a head, he declares the fight a draw. Arthur then summons Patsy and "rides" away, leaving the Black Knight's limbless torso screaming threats at him.
Behind the scenes
According to the DVD audio commentary by
Cleese,
Michael Palin
Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, television presenter, and public speaker. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. Since 1980, he has made a number of travel documentaries.
Palin w ...
, and
Eric Idle, the sequence originated in a story told to Cleese when he was attending an English class during his school days. Two Roman wrestlers were engaged in a particularly intense match and had been fighting for so long that the two combatants were doing little more than leaning into one another. It was only when one wrestler finally tapped out and pulled away from his opponent that he and the crowd realised the other man was, in fact, dead and had effectively won the match posthumously. The moral of the tale, according to Cleese's teacher, was "if you never give up, you can't possibly lose" – a statement that, Cleese reflected, always struck him as being "philosophically unsound". The story would have been a deformed (or misremembered) description of the death of the Greek wrestler
Arrichion of Phigalia.
Cleese said that the scene would seem heartless and sadistic except for the fact that the Black Knight shows no pain and just keeps on fighting, or trying to, however badly he is wounded. Also, as the scene progresses and Arthur becomes increasingly annoyed, his dialogue lapses from medieval ("You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine.") to modern ("Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!"), and finally to just plain sarcastic ("What are you gonna do, bleed on me?"), while the Black Knight remains just as defiant ("I'm invincible!" he yells with only one leg left, to which Arthur simply replies "You're a loony.").
This scene is one of the best-known of the entire film. A famous line of the scene, "'Tis but a scratch", is similar to a line the character
Mercutio
Mercutio ( , ) is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's 1597 tragedy, ''Romeo and Juliet''. He is a close friend to Romeo and a blood relative to Prince Escalus and Count Paris. As such, Mercutio is one of the named characters in the ...
speaks in
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
's ''
Romeo and Juliet'', wherein he demurs, saying "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch," referring to his mortal wound, and the former has since become an expression used to comment on someone who ignores a fatal flaw or problem. The phrase "'Tis but a flesh wound", following a character entering "with coconut shells tied to his feet" notably appeared in an early episode of ''
The Goon Show
''The Goon Show'' is a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme. The first series, broadcast from 28 May to 20 September 19 ...
'' titled "The Giant Bombardon", broadcast in 1954; the
Monty Python group has acknowledged being influenced by the Goons. Humorous reference to a potentially mortal injury being a "flesh wound" also appeared in the 1940
screwball comedy
Screwball comedy is a subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary characteristi ...
His Girl Friday
''His Girl Friday'' is a 1940 American screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. It was released by Columbia Pictures. The plot centers on a newspaper edito ...
, in response to a maid being reported shot by a sheriff's deputy.
Performance difficulty
The Knight was, in fact, played by two actors: John Cleese is in the Knight's armour until he is down to one leg. The Knight is then played by a real one-legged man, a local by the name of Richard Burton, a blacksmith who lived near the film shoot (not to be confused with
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable pe ...
, the Welsh actor of the same name), because, according to the DVD commentary, Cleese could not balance well on one leg. After the Knight's remaining leg is cut off, the quadruple-amputee that remains is again Cleese.
In the musical ''
Spamalot
''Spamalot'' (also known as ''Monty Python's Spamalot'') is a musical comedy with music by John Du Prez and Eric Idle, and lyrics and book by Idle. It is adapted from the 1975 film ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail''.
Like the motion pictu ...
'', the scene with the Black Knight was the most difficult to play on stage, according to Eric Idle.
Penn & Teller
Penn & Teller, Penn Jillette and Teller, are American magicians, entertainers, and scientific skeptics who have performed together since the late 1970s. They are noted for their ongoing act that combines elements of comedy with magic.
The duo h ...
created the illusion for the musical.
[Interview with Eric Idle in ]HUMO
''HUMO'' is a popular Dutch-language Belgian weekly radio and television supermarket tabloid.
History and profile
''Humoradio'' (meaning a portmanteau of 'humor' and 'radio' in English) was first published in 1936 as a Dutch-language counterpa ...
3691, May 2011
See also
*
Pas d'armes
__NOTOC__
The () or passage of arms was a type of chivalric hastilude that evolved in the late 14th century and remained popular through the 15th century. It involved a knight or group of knights (' or "holders") who would stake out a traveled ...
Notes
External links
The original scene on YouTube, via the official Monty Python channel
{{Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Arthurian characters
Fictional amputees
Fictional swordfighters in films
Film characters introduced in 1975
Fictional knights
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python characters
Comedy film characters