A recently rediscovered trove of unpublished Monty Python material is about to be made public by the British Library – including two sketches written for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And there was much rejoicing.
According to London’s The Times, Python Michael Palin offered up his private archive to the library last year to be cataloged for eventual public use. Among the boxes of material were over fifty notebooks filled with rough drafts and unused ideas for Monty Python, including a more conventional ending for Holy Grail, an “amorous” Pink Knight, and a sequence involving Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a “particularly foul-mouthed private detective.”
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The real find, though, was another sketch, about a Wild West bookstore that seems to have been cut from Holy Grail reasonably close to production, as it was found under the heading, “film list.”
Palin, 75, admitted he barely remembered the sketch and assumed it had been written mostly by his writing partner, Terry Jones. “For me there’s lots of material in those boxes that I’ve not yet seen myself [since it was written],” he said. “It’s rather wonderful to hear them.”
“We did produce an awful lot of material when we were on song,” he added.
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Monty Python was a British surrealist comedy group who rose to fame with Monty Python’s Flying Circus, airing on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Written and performed by members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, Python also released four feature films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, as well as Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl and several benefit shows.
Further information from the archive will be released in the coming days, including miscellany relating to Python’s Life of Brian. A small selection of the archive will be available at the British Library’s Treasures Gallery, starting on August 7.