Watching Robin Hood: Men In Tights by Mel Brooks which stars Cary Elwes and Dave Chappelle. I was reading the trivia section on the Internet Movie Data Base and came across this little tidbit. Patrick Stewart plays King Richard talking in a thick Scottish accent, a reference to Sean Connerys performance in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). Some critics found Connerys accent inappropriate for the role, since King Richard would not have spoken with a Scottish burr (thus providing comedic fodder for Mel Brooks). Technically, an English accent would have been no more appropriate than Sean Connerys Scottish accent and a French accent would have been best for Richard (and any other nobles of the time, possibly including Robin), as English did not yet exist as a language and English nobles spoke Anglo-Norman, a dialect of Old French, while the common folk spoke Old-English, an Anglo-Frisian tongue that has more in common with Old Norse than with Modern English. Who knew?
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 17:16:14 +0000