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While it’s better known for dead parrots and crossdressing lumberjacks, Monty Python has a surprisingly academic background. Five of the six members of the group (Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, John Cleese, and Eric Idle) attended either Oxford or Cambridge. Cutting their teeth writing for other BBC series, the five eventually joined up, along with American Terry Gilliam, to create Monty Python’s Flying Circus. While experimenting with the bounds of sketch comedy, the group also flexed their academic muscle throughout the course of the show, making reference to many works of classic literature in the process. Here’s a compendium of many of these references, excluding the ones I couldn’t find on YouTube.
The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights
What Episode: 15
Authors/Works Referenced: Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë & Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
Don’t Miss: The extent of the semaphore, from Catherine and Heathcliff to the baby, nurse, and old man.
Poet Inspection
Episode: 17
Authors/Works Referenced: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth, “The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls,” Alfred Lord Tennyson
Don’t Miss: “There’s Alfred Lord Tennyson in the Bathroom!”
A Tale of Two Cities for Parrots
Episode: 20
Authors/Works Referenced: A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Don’t Miss: The first line of the “special adaptation,” which quickly informs how the rest will follow
Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion visit Jean-Paul Satre
Episode: 27
Authors/Works Referenced: The Roads to Freedom series, Jean-Paul Satre
Don’t Miss: “Four hours to bury a cat?”
All-England Summarize Proust Competition
Episode: 31
Authors/Works Referenced: The epic 7-volume novel Rememberance of Things Past, Marcel Proust
Don’t Miss: The choral adaptation
Ant Poetry Reading
Episode: 41
Authors/Works Referenced: Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”
Don’t Miss: Graham Chapman’s increasingly drunk hostess
Hamlet Psychoanalysis
Episode: 43
Authors/Works Referenced: Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Don’t Miss: The use of computers in modern psychiatry
Little Red Riding Hood
Episode: German Episode 1 or Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Authors/Works Referenced: Little Red Riding Hood, The Brothers Grimm (amongst others)
Don’t Miss: John Cleese in Bavarian Drag
Shhh…super secret special for blog readers.
Comments (9)
Comment
Monty Python was so inspirational to my growing uphood. Know what I mean? wink wink nudge nudge.
posted by Johnny Cat on 6-18-2008 at 8:36 pm
In the summarizing Proust skit, Chapman’s character is supposed to list three hobbies; the omitted third one being “masterbating”. You can hear the odd spacing and pause before the huge laugh (much bigger than one would think for “animal strangulation”).
They talk about arguing for its inclusion in “Live in Aspen” and it’s well worth a watch. The session apparently included Terry Jones asking one of the heads of the BBC if he masterbated. Lovely.
posted by Boggy Creek Creature on 6-18-2008 at 11:29 pm
This is an awesome article. Thanks, Ben!
posted by adrienne on 6-19-2008 at 12:16 am
Thanks for posting this! I love MP, there’s nothing like it.
posted by ezan on 6-19-2008 at 1:18 am
All of those are wonderful, but my favorite came from one of their records (I don’t know if it was on the show): Thomas Hardy’s newest novel. In case no one knows, there’s a pair of sportscasters commentating on Thomas Hardy’s progress on his latest work as he’s writing on a desk in his front yard. “Yes yes, he’s got his pen in hand, he’s putting it on the page and, ohhhh it’s a doodle!” (”It’s a Tess of the D’Urbervilles all over again.”) and later, “It’s ‘The.’ The first word of Thomas Hardy’s novel is ‘The’!”
I haven’t listened to it in decades and I still work it around in my head. Beautiful.
posted by Worthy Evans on 6-19-2008 at 9:39 am
Boggy – I hate to be pedantic…wait…no, I really don’t. I enjoy being pedantic. The word you’re looking for is “masturbation.”
That said, I really, really love the Little Red Riding Hood sketch and use it in my German classes after we read the fairy tale.
And I’m fairly sure you could write multiple posts on their Shakespeare references alone…Hamlet isn’t the only one :)
posted by Fruppi on 6-19-2008 at 10:32 am
As much as I love all of these (Mrs. Premise, Mrs. Conclusion, and burying a cat are institutions in my family), the best literary Monty Python sketch is the Philosophers’ Football Match. Go to youtube and search “philosophers football” and it’ll come up. It’s absolute genius.
posted by Allison on 6-19-2008 at 12:26 pm
What about the Oscar Wilde Sketch?
That one was always one of my favorites!
“There’s only one thing worse than being talked about…”
posted by Ashley on 6-19-2008 at 2:16 pm
Ashley–I can’t believe I missed the Oscar Wilde sketch, either–it’s one of my favorites as well. Although, to be fair, it doesn’t specifically mention his books.
Also missed (because I couldn’t find a youtube clip for either) were the “Housing project built by characters from nineteenth-century English literature/M1 interchange built by characters from ‘Paradise Lost’” sketch from episode 35 and the “Bad Ischl Dairy Herd production of The Merchant of Venice” from the first German episode.
posted by Ben Smith on 6-20-2008 at 4:00 pm