There are but three literary cycles that no man should be without: the matter of France, the matter of Britain, and the matter of great Rome.
Jean Bodel, La Chaison de Saisnes
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) consists of a series of comedic sketches based, loosely of course, on the Quest for the Holy Grail, one of the central and perhaps the best known and most popular elements of the Matter of Britain. Other significant elements of the Arthurian narrative – Arthur’s mysterious birth, pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone, the romantic triangle of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, the conflict between Arthur and Mordred – are ignored. What the film presents is the essential Quest – the call to action, testings and trials and, of course, the search for the Holy Grail. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a complex text, and the complexity begins prior to the narrative itself; it begins with the titles.
The main titles present viewers with an example of the cinematic deconstruction that will follow: they begin in a high epic mode, with neo-gothic script and faux-Wagnerian music describing the state of Britain in the Middle Ages. Suddenly the titles are interspersed with comments in Swedish extolling the virtues of the moose, among other Scandinavian wonders. An announcement follows, informing viewers that those responsible for the titles have been sacked and replaced. Stereotypical South American pan pipe music plays as the description of medieval Britain continues until the description is interspersed with comments on the wonders of the llama. The titles abruptly end. This is not the stuff of ordinary cinema, nor is it the usual treatment of Arthur and his Knights; something completely different is going on. This chapter argues that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is not only a successful film but also a satiric narrative that is part of and comments upon the Matter of Britain, or the story of King Arthur, his Knights and the Quest.
The twelfth-century poet Jean Bodels’ assertion that the complete literary education for any man (person) would be an understanding of, or at least the awareness of, the Matter of France – Charlemagne, his paladins and the wars against the Moors; the Matter of Britain – King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; and the Matter of Rome – the founding of Rome, Aeneas and the mythological legends of antiquity, as well as associated nobles, lovers, adversaries and battles – reads as a prime example of the sexist, Eurocentric, elitist and authoritarian assumptions that provide the foundation for the idea of the Western Literary Canon. However, Bodel may have written more wisely than he knew. While many of the narratives that were part of the standard curriculum are no longer taught in school, almost everyone it seems knows about King Arthur, Excalibur, Guinevere, Merlin, Lancelot and the Quest for the Holy Grail.
Despite the awareness of King Arthur and much of the Matter of Britain in the popular imagination, scholars continue to debate whether Arthur ever existed. During the last century critical opinion shifted. Earlier critics, influenced by the work of Carl Jung, Jessie Weston and Joseph Campbell, believed that Arthur was a mythic figure, perhaps a semi-divine figure, possibly created out of earlier Welsh and Celtic legends. Later scholars, drawing on recent archeological research in Britain, suggest that Arthur was an actual historical figure, possibly a post-colonial Roman war leader (dux romanum) who fought against the Saxon incursion into Britain. Contemporary critics have reached the consensus that we will never know if Arthur was a real person or not: so much for progress (see Charles-Edwards 1991).
Although there is no record of an actual Arthur, Camelot or the Round Table, there is a clear lineage of the sources for the Matter of Britain from early Celtic legends to contemporary films and novels that influence Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Although vague reference to Artorius or Arturus exist in Welsh and suggest a bear or bear-man – or perhaps a reference to the star Arcturus in the constellation Boötes, located near the Great Bear (Ursa Major) – the earliest written references to Arthur appear in Nennius’s ninth-century Historia Brittonium (History of the Britons) and the tenth century Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals). Both refer to Arthur as a noble warrior and leader who led the British against invaders. His status grew in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s influential Historia Regnum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), completed about 1138. In his history Geoffrey places Arthur as King of the Britains in a post-Roman world, but more importantly he creatively fills in the blanks of his life and reign. Appearing for the first time are the magician Merlin, the Knights Bedivere, Kay, Gawain, Queen Guinevere and the traitorous Mordred. The popularity of Geoffrey’s work is demonstrated by the numerous copies that still exist.
The next development in the story of Arthur occurred on the continent with the development of a series of Arthurian romances, five of which were written by Chretien de Troys. Chretien’s romances – Eric and Enide; Cliges; Yvain, the Knight of the Lion; Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart; and Perceval, The Story of the Grail – emphasise the courtly aspects of the Arthurian material, foregrounding the love triangle of Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur and the Quest for the Holy Grail. The final, and perhaps most influential, medieval compilation of Arthurian matter was Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century Le Morte D’Arthur (The Death of Arthur), an English prose retelling of the story of Arthur that was one of the first printed books in England, which served as the main source of characters and actions for later adapters, including the members of the Monty Python writing and directing teams, who make specific references to a number of elements foregrounded in Malory, such as Camelot and the Round Table and the Quest for the Holy Grail.1
After Malory, the popularity of the Arthurian legends faded, as Arthurian references became the substance of children’s stories rather than that of high literature. This all changed dramatically in 1859, when Alfred Lord Tennyson, reflecting the growing cultural influence of Romanticism, Medievalism and the Gothic Revival, began to publish the multi-volume The Idylls of the King, which became an immediate bestseller that established Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as models of noble human behaviour. Tennyson’s depiction of Arthur and his court, with its ordered rationality and elite culture as the epitome of human society, reflected Victorian cultural ideals and provided an image of a lost perfect time that would come again. ‘Camelot’ would be echoed in most of the adaptations of the Arthurian matter throughout most of the twentieth century and which the Pythons would undercut in much of their film. On the other hand, and on the other side of the Atlantic, Mark Twain adapted, or transformed, the Arthurian material in his A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), which satirises the high seriousness, decorum and reverence of Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King in a comic dream narrative in which a Connecticut machinist finds himself in a superstitious, violent and barbaric court of King Arthur, which is surprisingly much like the world created in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.2
In the twentieth century (and beyond) adaptations and interpretations of the Matter of Britain have appeared in a variety of media: books, operas, television, comic books and film. Arthur and his Knights are everywhere. Perhaps the most influential modern adaptation is T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958). White’s successful novel is a composite of three of his earlier works – The Sword in the Stone (1938), The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939) and The Ill-Made Knight (1940) – that rely primarily on Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur but also on Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King. White creates an Arthur and a Camelot modern in complexity and motivation. His novel and the Disney film adapted from it were very popular and introduced, or reintroduced, readers and viewers in the middle of the twentieth century to the Matter of Britain in familiar formats. Numerous other modern authors have re-imagined this; among the most interesting and influential re-imaginings are Marion Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1983), Bernard Cornwall’s The Warlord Chronicles and the Merlin novels of Mary Stewart. Arthurian matter has also appeared in a variety of theatrical formats, from opera – with Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin (1848), Tristan and Isolde (1865) and Parsifal (1882), being the most famous – to musical theatre, Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot (1960) being the most well known and influential. These linked music and the Matter of Britain, a combination essential to the success of both Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the play Spamalot (2005), and, throughout the twentieth century (and beyond) where drama and fiction lead, film follows.3
The Matter of Britain has prospered on the screen, appearing in a variety of forms: comedy, tragedy, musical and horror; all genres referenced in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which draws on this long tradition.4 The traditional adaptation of the material, heroic drama can be seen in Knights of the Round Table (1953) directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Robert Taylor as Lancelot, Mel Ferrer as Arthur and Ava Gardner as Guinevere. In this version, acclaimed for its elaborate sets and costumes (cinematic elements deliberately downplayed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail), Taylor plays a loyal Lancelot who does not betray his king, and virtue is ultimately rewarded in a classic Hollywood epilogue. A completely different take on the material is the 1963 Disney animated Sword in the Stone, based on T. H. White’s 1939 novel, which emphasises a youthful Arthur and a bumbling and befuddled Merlin. In its depiction of attractive and brave youth and incompetent adults, this film is like many other Disney projects and aimed at a youthful audience. An equally comic version is an adaptation of Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from 1949, starring Bing Crosby as the traveller and Cedric Hardwicke as Arthur. This adaptation, in which Crosby croons, does not have the bite of Twain’s novel, but is mildly amusing. These films establish a cinematic tradition of using the Matter of Britain for comedic purposes, something that the Pythons push to its illogical extremes.
The most ambitious film adaptation is John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) which, as Anna Froula notes in chapter one of this volume, was significantly influenced by Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (1977), and stars Helen Mirren as Morgan le Fay, Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Nigel Terry as Arthur. This version dramatises the mythic and tragic aspects of the Arthurian legends and is a visually stunning celebration of high seriousness that seems at times almost Wagnerian. Filmed on location in Ireland, the sets are lush, the costumes extravagant and the acting serious. Boorman’s Excalibur is part fantasy, part tragedy, but never dull. Unlike most films about the Matter of Britain, this adaptation demands to be taken seriously, and, for the most part, succeeds. The best-known and most popular Arthurian film, other than Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is, of course, Camelot (1967) adapted from the successful Broadway musical that was itself an adaption of White’s The Once and Future King. Directed by Joshua Logan and starring Richard Harris as Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guenevere and Franco Nero as Lancelot, the film follows the form of the classic Broadway musical. Camelot focuses on the love triangle of Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot. The plot is simple and the musical numbers express character and emotion, and advance the action. Camelot, on stage and screen, made the Matter of Britain musical. The Pythons would make it musically comedic.
‘Get on with it!’
In the early 1970s the Monty Python team was planning to make a movie. A British comedy troupe of five members – Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, John Cleese, and Graham Chapman – they had had considerable success on television in both Britain and the United States and had released a previous film, And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), a compilation of several of their television sketches, produced to introduce the troupe to a wider American audience. For their first original film they settled on an irreverent take on the Matter of Britain. The five members began writing scenes based on popular elements of the Arthurian material and began scouting locations in Scotland, settling on Doune Castle (where most of the film, including all the interior scenes was shot), Glen Coe (the location of the Bridge of Death and the Cave of Arrghhh) and Castle Stalker (the location of the Grail Castle and the final non-climactic battle).
Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a successful television series that violated the rules of the traditional comedy review, especially that of the integrity of the comic sketch, which demanded that each sketch have a discrete beginning, middle and end. The series attracted a large and enthusiastic audience in the United States, appearing first on PBS and then network television after attaining cult status in Britain. Each episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus consisted of a number of sketches, often with references to classical literature, medieval art and history, religion, and classical and modern philosophy. It was unlike anything else on television. For example, nowhere else would the Spanish Inquisition suddenly break into a contemporary narrative or Socrates, Plato and Aristotle appear as members of the Greek soccer team. The individual sketches seldom followed the standard narrative conventions of beginning, middle and end. At times characters from one sketch would suddenly appear in another, and the tone swung from satire to farce. Animation – created by Terry Gilliam – was used as commentary and transition. Monty Python’s Flying Circus worked at subverting and satirising its own form. The same structure, tone, and attitude permeate Monty Python and the Holy Grail.5
In his Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years (2006), Michael Palin recalls that in March 1973 the members of the group were writing sketches for an Arthurian film and were pleased with their progress. With a budget of under $500,000 and a shooting schedule of a few weeks, the Pythons set out to recreate, redefine and reconstruct (and perhaps deconstruct) the Matter of Britain. The result is, of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the small film went on to both financial and critical success. The scene titles themselves (not in the original release but available on the Special Edition DVD) suggest the approach co-directors Gilliam and Jones have taken to the Arthurian material. Scenes such as ‘Plague Village’, ‘Knights of the Round Table’, ‘The Tale of Sir Galahad’, ‘The Tale of Sir Lancelot’ and ‘The Holy Grail’ are easily recognised as part of the traditional Matter of Britain. However, such scenes as ‘Coconuts’, ‘Constitutional Peasants’, ‘The Trojan Rabbit’ and ‘The Holy Hand Grenade’ seem somewhat out of place, or rather they suggest a dialectical movement between the sublime and the ridiculous, the serious and the silly, that is the foundation of much Pythonic humor. Throughout the film the heroic Arthurian tradition is continually undercut, creating a deconstructive text that provides a parody of itself as the narrative moves forward. The individual scenes follow the same structural pattern. Each begins with a familiar, potential heroic situation, and then through the introduction of a variety of extraneous material – inappropriate language, puns, songs, dances, exaggeration, farce, nonsense, animation – that undercuts, parodies or comments upon the traditional narrative.
As mentioned above, the narrative disruptions begin with the ‘Titles’, but they continue with the first scene, ‘Coconuts’. The scene begins with two figures, dressed in medieval costumes, moving through a misty landscape, reminiscent of the opening of The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957). The soundtrack suggests the sound of galloping horses, but as the characters emerge they are banging coconuts together, providing their own special effects and establishing Gilliam and Jones’ lack of concern with verisimilitude. The next scene also references The Seventh Seal. The opening of ‘Plague Village’ could be inserted into Bergman’s famous flagellation sequence in which robed penitents whip themselves in an attempt to placate God and avoid the scourge of the plague. However, instead of depicting religious fervour as a response to the plague, Gilliam and Jones present an argument between an old man (John Young) who argues he is not quite dead yet and a collector of the dead (John Cleese) who is willing to help speed up the process at the behest of the old man’s son (Eric Idle). The scene ends with the old man on a cart of bodies with the collector crying ‘bring out your dead’ both undercutting the heroic aspect of the Arthurian legend and also signalling to the audience the filmmakers’ irreverence for tragic moments of history.
‘Constitutional Peasants’ opens with King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his faithful squire Patsy (Terry Gilliam) meeting a peasant (Michael Palin) working in a muddy field. Arthur announces, with full romantic music in the background, that he is ‘King of all the Britons’ because he has been given the sword Excalibur by the Lady of the Lake. The peasant responds that he is a member of an anarchist collective and has no need of a king who claims power because he has been given a sword from ‘some aquatic tart’. When Arthur grabs him on the shoulder the peasant announces loudly that he is being ‘oppressed by the system’: Arthur and Patsy ride (‘coconut’) off disgusted by the ‘silly democracy thing’. In this scene Gilliam and Jones introduce temporal discontinuity as a means of parody, and they will continue to employ it as they introduce scenes of a twentieth-century historian commenting in documentary fashion on the narrative taking place simultaneously, thus breaking the fourth wall of the cinema and calling attention to the lack of temporal, spatial and narrative unity.
Even the scenes that would appear to be part of the traditional Matter of Britain, ‘The Black Knight’, ‘Knights of the Round Table’ and ‘The Tale of Sir Galahad’, become vehicles for parody, farce and Pythonic self-referentiality. ‘The Black Knight’ scene opens with Arthur and Patsy riding (or ‘coconutting’) through a forest where they come across a Knight (John Cleese) dressed in black, guarding a bridge, and challenging anyone who would try to cross it. Impressed with the Black Knight’s prowess in dispatching potential bridge crossers, Arthur asks him to join the Quest. The Black Knight refuses and also refuses to let Arthur cross. Arthur then engages the Black Knight in combat, cutting off arms and legs, leaving a bloody head and torso stump claiming victory and calling Arthur a coward: so much for chivalry. ‘The Knights of the Round Table’ provides perhaps the simplest deconstruction of the heroic matter of Britain in the film. Arthur and his chosen Knights approach Camelot, which is very clearly a deliberately bad model of a castle, constructed for budgetary reasons but also working to undercut the awe associated with the traditional representation of Camelot. The deflation continues as the lines ‘it’s only a model’, are heard on the soundtrack. The film cuts to a table upon which are a chorus line of chainmailed Knights singing, ‘We’re the Knights of the Round Table / We dance whene’er we’re able / We do routines and chorus scenes / With foot work impeccable / We dine well here in Camelot / We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot’. ‘Spam a lot’ is a reference to the famous Monty Python ‘Spam skit’ and a promise of things to come. Arthur announces that ‘this is a silly place’, reinforcing with dialogue the visual image created by the model castle, before riding away with his Grail Knights.
‘The Tale of Sir Galahad’ opens with a questing Galahad (Michael Palin) struggling through the darkened wilderness and coming across a grail glowing in the sky over Castle Anthrax. Inside Anthrax, Galahad, in the traditional Matter of Britain the purest and most holy of the Knights, discovers the beautiful Zoot (Carol Cleveland), her twin sister Dingo (also Carol Cleveland), and a host of beautiful women who demand to be punished, for lighting the false grail spotlight, by being tied to their beds and spanked before having ‘the oral sex’. Galahad is intrigued by this challenge but is saved by Sir Lancelot (John Cleese), who tells Galahad that he is in peril. Galahad pleads ‘Oh, let me go and have a little peril’, but when Lancelot refuses, Galahad comments, ‘I bet you’re gay’, subverting both the traditional image of the Knight as hypermasculine and the legend of Lancelot as the lover of Guenevere, a central theme in the Matter of Britain.
After all of the Knights have been shown on their individual quests, Gilliam and Jones bring them together in the final quest for the Holy Grail. Arthur leads them to a confrontation with a Merlin-like figure, Tim the Enchanter (John Cleese), who directs them to the Cave of Caerbannog, which is protected by the terrible Killer Rabbit who must be dispatched by the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, and suitable prayer, before they can cross the Bridge of Death. Here Brave Sir Robin (Eric Idle) and Sir Galahad die by failing to answer three questions correctly, (one being ‘What is your favorite colour?’) and discover the Grail Castle, which unfortunately is occupied by the same French taunters who defended the castle from Arthur and his Knights and the Trojan Rabbit in chapters nine and ten. These discoveries bring the quest adventures of the narrative full circle, suggesting that a traditional resolution is about to occur. As Arthur and his remaining Knights, and a seeming horde of costumed extras (actually only about eighty, carefully arranged in the frame) prepare to storm the castle, a police car arrives, and a cop arrests Arthur, Sir Bedevere (Terry Jones) and Lancelot for the murder of the modern historian, again bridging the fourth cinematic wall. This non-conclusion defies all audience expectations: there is neither a conclusion to the quest nor a resolution to the film. The film abruptly ends, leaving everything unresolved, which is unlike the narrative structure of the Arthurian narratives but very much like the narrative structure of the Monty Python and the Flying Circus sketch. Here characters, setting and the structure of the traditional Matter of Britain can be recognised but it has been manically transformed and subverted.
Although the sketches for Monty Python and the Holy Grail were written by the five members of the group only Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones shared the direction and, as in many artistic collaborations, there were some problems and differences of opinion during the filming. Because of his art background, Gilliam took primary responsibility for the film’s mise-en-scène, while Jones focused more on the comic action and dialogue. In the DVD commentary, John Cleese notes that at times Gilliam appeared too concerned with the technical aspects of the film. In essence Jones was in charge of performance and Gilliam with the visual aspects. Thus the moody harsh landscape of the first three scenes, the bleak mountain settings in the later part of the film, as well as the exotic island Castle Arrghhh of the conclusion, are all Gilliam’s work. In Diaries 1969–1979 Palin writes that as early as 1972 Gilliam had begun to grow tired of his work solely as an animator and wanted to direct live-action films with Palin and Terry Jones. His dual responsibilities permitted him to engage in both crafts in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Much of the direction resembles Gilliam’s work as an animator, especially the use of juxtaposition and the introduction of the macabre and the satiric into the narrative. The result is both comedy and commentary.
As in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, animation is employed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail to advance the action, to provide punctuation (or commentary) on the action, to exaggerate or contrast the action, or to depict something beyond the limitations of the narrative. Gilliam was credited as Python’s animator before becoming a full member of the troupe, and his surreal animation in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is similar to that of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Three examples in the former illustrate Gilliam’s effective use of animation. The first is his depiction of God. In manifesting the ineffable Gilliam draws the stern patriarchal crowned face of famous nineteenth-century cricketer W. G. Grace speaking from the clouds, calling Arthur and his Knights to undertake the quest. Arthur, justly awed by the Lord’s presence, averts his eyes and falls to his knees, only to hear God tell him to ‘stop grovelling’. The animation here establishes authority and then immediately undercuts it. A second example is the animated story, actually an animated summary of the ‘Black Beast of Arrghhh’, in which Gilliam depicts the conflict between Arthur and the Grail Knights and a horrible monster in a few seconds. Perhaps the most interesting use of animation is ‘The Death of the Animator’, in which Gilliam is seen at a drawing board creating an animated bridge between sequences when he suddenly dies. This temporal and structural intrusion again violates standard cinematic conventions of unity but also continues to undercut the idea of death, which has been a source of comedy in a number of scenes throughout the film, the most obvious being ‘Plague Village’, ‘The Black Knight’ and ‘The Rescue of Prince Herbert’, all of which challenge the seriousness of death.
A final element of the film deserves mention, as it points the way for the further development of the Pythonic Matter of Britain: music. The film includes two and a half songs. The most famous is the aforementioned ‘Knights of the Round Table’. The second is the ‘Ballad of Brave Sir Robin’, song by a group of minstrels who follow Robin about as they chronicle his adventures, including how he soils himself and ‘bravely runs away’. This subverts both Knightly bravery and the idea of the minstrel, or poet, as recorder of heroic deeds. The partial, or attempted song is sung by Prince Herbert (Terry Jones), kept a prisoner in a tower by his father, who is forcing him to marry an unattractive princess against his will in order to gain her property. This is obviously a parody of the beautiful princess being held in the tower and forced to marry an evil brute, a popular motif in many fairy tales and Hollywood’s medieval films. Several times he attempts to break into song, as he would be allowed to do in the musical Camelot, only to be silenced by his father.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a financial and critical success. Made for the equivalent of $350,000, which explains the decision to use coconuts rather than real horses, the film has grossed well over $1.5 million. Three DVD versions have been released (1999, 2001 and 2006), all with commentary and additional material. The film has also received a good deal of critical and popular praise. For example, the film is rated number forty on Bravo’s ‘100 Funniest Movies’, and Total Film magazine voted Monty Python and the Holy Grail the fifth greatest comedy of all time.6 But what to make of the film: is it simply silly and pure fun? Perhaps not: Rebecca Housel writes that the film is indeed serious; she argues that in debunking the patriarchal and authoritarian attitudes imbedded in the Arthurian narratives, the film is ‘as much a document of the 1970s as a satire of medieval culture’ (2006: 92). There is much to be said for a serious reading of this ‘silly’ film. Humour in general, and satire in particular, has always tended to be subversive, mocking, sometimes gently and sometimes savagely, the pretensions of the powerful. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail Gilliam, Jones, and the rest of the troupe present and undercut religion, science, philosophy, nationalism, heroism and even conventional narrative structure. As in all narratives of the Matter of Britain, this film uses the story of Arthur and his companions to explore contemporary issues that call into question traditional attitudes towards politics, religion and sexuality. The Pythons do so by making us laugh at Arthur and ourselves. The Pythons would continue their subversive madness in their next film, The Life of Brian (1979), which would undercut the Matter of Christianity.
‘We Eat Ham and Jam and Spam a lot.’ Again.
Like King Arthur himself, who as ‘the once and future king’ never dies, the Pythonic take on the Matter of Britain did not end with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. During the 1990s the four surviving members of Monty Python (Graham Chapman having died in 1989) had a series of discussions about reforming the group and taking on some new projects. One idea was a sequel to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. All the members of the troupe had achieved post-Pythonic success, and there was little interest in the idea (see O’Connell 2006). Eventually, however, Eric Idle convinced his colleagues to give him permission to adapt Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the stage. The result was Spamalot, which opened on Broadway in 2005, thirty years after the premiere of the original film. Idle wrote the book and the lyrics and collaborated with John Du Prez on the music. In 2005 the musical was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards and won three: Best Musical, Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical and Best Direction in a Musical.
The storyline of Spamalot generally follows that of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and most of the characters from the film appear, somewhat altered for the stage, in the play as well. Referencing the Titles of the film, the play opens with a historian providing an overview of medieval England only to have the actors sing about Finland. Following processing penitential monks, King Arthur and Patsy enter and ride (‘coconut’) about the stage, gathering the Knights of the Round Table. Along the way they encounter Not Dead Fred, a constitutional peasant, the Lady of the Lake with Laker Girls, God and a Trojan Rabbit. After the Intermission Arthur and Patsy encounter the Knights who say ‘Ni’, who demand a shrubbery and that Arthur put on a Broadway play, the Black Knight, Prince Herbert, Tim the Enchanter, the Killer Rabbit and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. They eventually achieve the Grail, Arthur marries the Lady of the Lake (whose name happens to be Guinevere), Lancelot marries Herbert, and Robin decides to pursue a career in musical theatre. Idle’s play rewards audience members who are aware of the form of musical theatre and the work of Monty Python. Both the lyrics and the narrative satirise the idea of the heroic quest, as did Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the idea that the characters on stage will stop, sing and be conscious of the musical itself because the characters constantly remind each other and the audience that they are engaged in an act of musical theatre.
Musical theatre is not cinema, and in telling the Grail story on stage Idle and director Mike Nichols must rely on the musical numbers both to advance and subvert the action. Just as Monty Python and the Holy Grail is an anti-film, deconstructing the tale it tells and parodying the cinematic form, so Spamalot is an anti-musical, deconstructing the tale and parodying musical theatre. It is no wonder that alongside musical numbers that advance the plot – ‘King Arthur’s Song’, ‘I am Not Dead Yet’, ‘Knights of the Round Table’, ‘Run Away’ (appropriately staged just before Intermission), ‘Brave Sir Robin’ and ‘The Holy Grail’ – several songs subvert and satirise the musical itself. For example, ‘The Laker Girls’ cheer undercuts the seriousness of the Lady of the Lake, a medieval version of the Celtic Goddess, the Morrígan, by equating her to basketball cheerleaders. Or perhaps it establishes the divinity of the Laker cheerleaders? ‘The Song That Goes Like This’ is generic love song staged with a large chandelier (a visual reference to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera), and, finally, ‘You Won’t Succeed on Broadway’ is an elaborate production number that spoofs Fiddler on the Roof.
Spamalot is a popular and financial success. The show had an initial run of over 1,500 productions, has received mostly positive reviews, and, although a number of critics noted that the musical lacked the satirical power of the film, I would say that comparing the musical to the film is like comparing a coconut to a hand grenade. However, the reaction to Spamalot from the members of Monty Python was mixed. Terry Gilliam called the play ‘Python-lite’ and quipped ‘it keeps the pension fund alive’; Terry Jones said he had reservations about the project but thought it was ‘good fun’; Michael Palin said, ‘We’re all hugely delighted that Spamalot is doing so well. Because we’re all beneficiaries’; and John Cleese observed, ‘In the end I think it turned out splendidly’. For his part Idle noted, ‘I’m making them money, and the ungrateful bastards never thank me. Who gave them a million dollars each for Spamalot?’ How serious or sarcastic these comments are one will never know, but the Pythonic world is, as we have seen, a world often turned upside down.7
Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Spamalot are just two of the many contemporary adaptations of the Matter of Britain. As with all the narratives that make up the complex story of King Arthur and the Quest, these Python productions reveal as much about contemporary attitudes and ideologies as they do about the subject matter itself. They use an ironic, postmodern lens to observe and transform some of the essential narratives of Western culture. In adapting the heroic romances of King Arthur, his Knights, and the Quest for the Holy Grail as satiric cinema and musical comedy, the Pythons not only retell the legends to new audiences, they also employ the characters and situations from those legends to explore, satirise and subvert accepted notions about politics, power, religious authority, the use of violence and the role of women in society. Additionally, they satirise the narrative structure of the theatre and cinema. In their creation of self-aware characters who often mock the very actions they perform, Monty Python continues in the long tradition of interpreters of the Matter of Britain. Perhaps Bondel was correct, and sometime in the future cinema scholars will carefully study these comedies. Oh, right, we have just done that. ‘Wink, wink; nudge, nudge, say no more.’
Notes
1 For further information on these tales, see Chrétien de Troys (1991).
2 For information on The Idylls of the King, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and other contemporary adaptations of Arthur in fiction, see Taylor and Brewer (1983) and Thompson (1996).
3 For music in King Arthur, see Barber (2002).
4 For film adaptations of Arthur, see Hardy (1991).
5 For additional information about Monty Python’s Flying Circus, see Landy (2002).
6 See Project Bravo (2006).
7 For the Python team’s responses to Spamalot, see Plume (2005), O’Connell (2006), Elfman (2008) and Ganley (2009).
Works Cited
Barber, Richard (2002) King Arthur in Music. Woodbridge: Boyehill and Brewer.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer (1982) The Mists of Avalon. New York: Ballantine.
Bodel, Jean (1989 [c1200]) La Chaison de Saisnes, 2 vols. Annette Brasseu (ed.). Geneva: Druz.
Charles-Edwards, Thomas (1991) ‘The Arthur of History’, in Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman and Brynley F. Roberts (eds) The Arthur of the Welsh: Arthurian Legend in Mediaeval Welsh Literature. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 15–32.
Cornwell, Bernard (1997) Enemy of God: A Novel of Arthur. New York: St. Martins.
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