i.e., me.

This is long and vaguely scholarly, but you'll be all the smarter for it.

I was watching the trailer for Shrek 3, which looks fun, and this time has a decidedly Arthurian bent. Although it looks like it's going the Sword in the Stone route -- not necessarily a bad thing, but done so much that I'm hoping that the Shrekness(?) of the movie will make it as off-the-wall and original as I'm expecting it to be. Also, let it be said now that just because I'm an Arthurian 'purist' (since the majority of Arthurian romances are just fanfic, anyway) doesn't mean I'm going to rage and foam at the mouth if Merlin is depicted as an old man in a conical hat. I may roll my eyes a bit, but if he's played by Eric Idle, I think I'll deal.

I also noted when reading the cast list that, not surprisingly, Lancelot is also a featured character. Again, I'm not gonna rant and rave (well, I'm ranting) if Lance shows up, but I do consider him to be one of the most annoying and silly characters in literature ever. I don't think I'm alone, since many movies depict him in a humourously negative light.

Chretien de Troyes (who also wrote the first true Grail legend as well as my personal favourite -- Yvain, or the Knight with the Lion) was Lancelot's daddy, for all intents and purposes. In the very first line of Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart, he says (in W.W. Comfort's 1914 translation from the Old French), 'Since my lady of Champagne wishes me to undertake to write a romance, I shall very gladly do so, being so devoted to her service as to do anything in the world for her, without any intention of flattery.' The 'lady' in question was Marie, the daughter of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and wife of Count Henri I of Champagne. In essence, she commissioned a fanfic.

Chretien also states elsewhere that Marie supplied him with the subject matter: she wanted to read about a French knight linked romantically to Guinivere. (I mean, come on.) So we end up with Lancelot ... son of the Lady of the Lake (so yeah, as far as we know he lived underwater), equipped with a ring from Mum that protects him from pretty much any magic, tooling around the countryside in a cart with a piece of what he assumes to be Guinivere's hair (he found a lock of golden hair on a rock).

Now, as for the cart ... it's fairly common for Arthurian knights to suffer some regular humiliation. (Certainly nothing like any Brave princesses we've seen lately.) The 'cart' in question was one of the ones used to carry criminals through town to the gallows, mainly so people could throw stuff at them along the way. Apparently Lance's love for Guinnie was so pure and true that he didn't mind the humiliation of being thought a criminal, so long as he could give his dogs a breather on his long journey. If you've read T.H. White's The Once and Future King, you've probably got some sort of image in your mind of Lance as the 'ugliest' of the knights. This was a mistranslation somewhere along the line in his stories, and I believe actually relates back to his nobility in consenting to be thought of as 'low.'

Two random sillies re: Lancelot. Once is one of my utter favourite stories, which I use to illustrate the medieval belief that God will circumvent the laws of nature in order to protect the innocent and punish the wicked (the witch-burning scene in MPatHG is actually the best example of this). At once point, Lance and Guinnie are caught in flagrante delicto by, I belive, Kay. Hey, you guys don't know. He tells Arthur what he saw, and they decide to test her by asking how she pleads and then prodding her with a hot poker. If she's telling the truth, she won't be burned ... if she lies, pain, a nasty burn scar, and Arthur will probably lynch her.

Time for an elaborate setup. Lance hides near a stream, disguised as a commoner. While being led to her trial, Guinnie 'slips' and 'falls' into the stream, and the 'commoner' comes out and picks her up and carries her to the trial. Then, when asked how she pleads, she says, 'I swear to you that, other than this man, my husband is the only man who has ever so much as touched me.' And since God observes loopholes, she was in the clear.

The other is less literary. If you're familiar with Spamalot, you know the scene with 'The Song That Goes Like This' ... where Lady cleaned Dennis Galahad's pipes before launching into a Webber-style Broadway song with him. According to Malory and others, Galahad was the son of Lancelot.

Ew.

Let's take it one further. At the end of the show, Arthur and Lady fall in love and have a Big Broadway Wedding. Just prior, Lady had revealed that her real name is Guinivere.

Ew.

I have a feeling Mr. Idle knew exactly what he was doing.

If you have been, shut the hell up already.