Black Knight (Monty Python)

The Black Knight
Monty Python character
King Arthur (L) The Black Knight (R)
First appearance	Monty Python and the Holy Grail 3 April 1975
Portrayed by	John Cleese
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Guardian of the Bridge, Knight
Weapon	Swordplay

The Black Knight is a fictional character who appears in a scene of the feature film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He is a knight dressed in black and is based on the black knight 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), accompanied by his squire Patsy (Terry Gilliam), is travelling through a forest when he observes a fight taking place between the Black Knight (John Cleese) and a Green Knight (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, 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 speaks in Shakespeare'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 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 His Girl Friday, 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, 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, the scene with the Black Knight was the most difficult to play on stage, according to Eric Idle. Penn & Teller created the illusion for the musical.

External links

• The original scene on YouTube, via the official Monty Python channel