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". This anecdote could be a deformed (or faulty memory) description of the death of the Greek wrestler
Arrhichion 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. A 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.
Stand in 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. ==See also==