The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version is a 1973 fantasy romance novel by American writer William Goldman. The book combines elements of comedy, adventure, fantasy, drama, romance, and fairy tale. It is metafictionally presented as an abridgment of a longer work by the fictional S. Morgenstern, and Goldman's commentary asides are constant throughout. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace, then later by Random House, while in the United Kingdom it was later published by Bloomsbury.
William Goldman said, "I've gotten more responses on The Princess Bride than on everything else I've done put together—all kinds of strange outpouring letters. Something in The Princess Bride affects people."[1]
When the original edition failed to sell well, the author and editor Spider Robinson convinced Goldman to let him excerpt the novel, namely the "Duel Scene", in the anthology The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980). Robinson believes this helped the novel reach the right audience.[2][3]
In 2015, a collection of essays on the novel and the film adaptation was published entitled The Princess Bride and Philosophy.[4]
In a Renaissance-era world, a young woman named Buttercup lives on a farm in the country of Florin. She bosses her poor servant, Westley, calling him "farm boy" and demanding that he perform chores for her. Westley's response is always "As you wish." She realizes that the true meaning is, "I love you." After Buttercup realizes that she loves him in return and confesses her feelings, Westley goes to seek his fortune so they can marry, promising to return. Buttercup later receives a letter saying that the Dread Pirate Roberts attacked Westley's ship at sea. Believing that Westley is dead, she sinks into despair. Years later, she is betrothed to Prince Humperdinck, heir to the throne of Florin.
Before the wedding, a trio of outlaws—the Sicilian criminal genius Vizzini, the Spaniardfencing master Inigo, and the enormous and mighty Turkish wrestler Fezzik—kidnaps Buttercup. When they are pursued, the foursome climbs the Cliffs of Insanity via a rope. A man dressed fully in black pursues them. When the outlaws reach the top, Vizzini cuts the rope, but the man in black clings to the cliff face. Vizzini orders Inigo to kill the man, then runs off with Fezzik and Buttercup.
The man in black reaches the top of the cliff, where Inigo asks if he has six fingers on his right hand. After the man answers no, Inigo explains that he is seeking revenge on a six-fingered man who had killed Inigo's father Domingo Montoya. He and the man in black begin dueling with their left hands, and both are shown to be masters of fencing. After a lengthy battle, both parties reveal that they have not been fighting with their dominant hands and begin to do so. The man in black wins the duel but leaves the Spaniard alive out of respect.
When the man pursues the remaining outlaws, Vizzini orders Fezzik to stay behind and kill him. His conscience compelling him to fair play, Fezzik throws a rock as a warning to the man in black and challenges him to a wrestling match. The man accepts the challenge, outmaneuvers the giant, and chokes him until he passes out. The man in black then catches up with Vizzini. When he arrives, Buttercup has been blindfolded and a table has been set up with two seats and two wine goblets. The man in black procures a vial of the deadly "iocane powder" and challenges the Sicilian to a Battle of the Wits. The man in black takes both cups concealingly, and returns them to the table. After distracting the man in black, Vizzini discreetly switches the cups. When the man tells Vizzini to make his choice, he confidently chooses the cup in front of him, and they drink. While laughing hysterically, Vizzini reveals that he switched the cups but soon falls over and dies. The man in black explains to Buttercup that he poisoned both cups, having built up an immunity to iocane powder beforehand.
The man in black taunts Buttercup, claiming that women cannot be trusted and that she must have felt nothing when her true love died. Angered, she shoves him into a gorge, yelling, "You can die, too, for all I care!" The man in black calls, "As you wish!" Buttercup realizes the man is Westley and follows him into the gorge. They passionately embrace, but Prince Humperdink's men appear. Buttercup and Westley flee through the Fire Swamp to evade Humperdinck's party. At Buttercup's insistence, Westley tells her about his experience with the Dread Pirate Roberts and that the title is secretly passed down through a long line of men, each being captured by the previous Roberts. Westley explains how his love for Buttercup inspired the former Roberts to spare his life.
Westley and Buttercup successfully navigate the Fire Swamp, but they are captured by Prince Humperdinck and his cruel six-fingered assistant, Count Tyrone Rugen. Buttercup negotiates for Westley's release and returns with Humperdinck to the palace to await their wedding. Rugen follows Humperdinck's secret instructions not to release Westley but to take him to his underground hunting arena, the "Zoo of Death". Here, Rugen tortures and weakens Westley with his life-sucking invention, The Machine.
Meanwhile, Buttercup has nightmares regarding her marriage to the prince. She expresses her unhappiness to Humperdinck, who proposes that he send ships to locate Westley, but that if they fail to find him, Buttercup will marry him. The novel reveals that to start a war with the neighboring country of Guilder, Humperdinck had arranged Buttercup's kidnapping and murder, but he now believes that Buttercup dying on her wedding night will inspire his subjects to fight more effectively.
On the day of the wedding, Fezzik finds Inigo reverted to his old habit of drunkness, and he tells him that Count Rugen is the six-fingered man who killed his father. Inspired by the chance of revenge, Fezzik helps Inigo become sober. Knowing that Vizzini is dead, they seek out the man in black hoping that his wits will help them plan a successful attack on the castle to kill Count Rugen. Buttercup learns that Humperdinck never sent any ships and taunts him with her enduring love for Westley. Enraged, Humperdinck tortures Westley to death via The Machine. Westley's screams echo across the land, drawing Inigo and Fezzik to the Zoo of Death.
Rescuing Westley's body, they enlist the help of a magician named Miracle Max. Max pronounces Westley to be merely "mostly dead" and returns him to life, though he remains partially paralyzed and weak.
Westley devises a plan to invade the castle during the wedding, and the resulting commotion prompts Humperdinck to hasten the wedding. Buttercup decides to commit suicide when she reaches the honeymoon suite. Inigo chases Rugen through the castle and kills him in a sword fight. Westley reaches Buttercup before she commits suicide, and they embrace. Still partially paralyzed, Westley bluffs his way out of a sword fight with Humperdinck, who shows himself as a coward. Instead of killing his rival, Westley decides to leave him alive. He, Buttercup, Fezzik, and Inigo ride into the sunset on four of the prince's white horses. The story ends with a series of mishaps and the prince's men closing in, but the author indicates that he believes that the group got away.
This novel includes several narrative techniques or literary devices including a fictional frame story about how Goldman came to know about and decided to adapt S. Morgenstern's The Princess Bride.[5] In Goldman's "footnotes," he describes how his father used to read The Princess Bride aloud to him; thus the book became Goldman's favorite without him ever actually reading the text. As a father, Goldman looked forward to sharing the story with his own son, going to great lengths to locate a copy for his son's birthday, only to be crushed when his son stops reading after the first chapter. When Goldman revisits the book himself, he discovers that what he believed was a straightforward adventure novel was in fact a bitter satire of politics in Morgenstern's native Florin, and that his father had been skipping all the political commentary and leaving in only "the good parts." This moves Goldman to abridge the book to a version resembling the one his father had read to him, while adding notes to summarize material he had "removed." Morgenstern and the "original version" are fictitious and used as a literary device to comment on the nature of adaptation and to draw a contrast between the love and adventure of the main story and the mundane aspects of everyday life.[5] The nations of Guilder and Florin are likewise pure fiction.[5] Each section or chapter takes place in a certain setting or place. It's an episodic structure with each "episode" taking place in a specific part of the Kingdom of Florin (the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp or the Forest of Thieves). [6]
The narrator of The Princess Bride, while named William Goldman, is persona or author surrogate that mixes fictional elements with some biographical details that match the author's life.[5] Goldman's personal life, as described in the introduction and commentary in the novel, is fictional.[5] In The Princess Bride, Goldman claimed to have one son with his wife, Helen, a psychiatrist. In reality, Goldman married Ilene Jones, a photographer, in 1961.[7] They had two daughters named Jenny and Susanna, and they divorced in 1991.[7] Goldman's commentary contains references to his real-life Hollywood career, including the observation that the famous cliff scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was likely inspired by the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride. While Goldman did write the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969,[7] it is unclear if all the career references have a basis in truth. The commentary is extensive, continuing through the text until the end.
The book's actual roots are in stories Goldman told to his daughters (aged 7 and 4),[8] one of whom had requested a story about "princesses" and the other "brides".[9] Goldman describes the earliest character names from the "kid's saga" as "silly names: Buttercup, Humperdinck".[10] The novel is often considered a parody of adventure stories, but Goldman never intended to write it that way. He simply wanted to write a fun fairy tale for his daughters.[6] The themes of romance, escape, and revenge also play into the idea that this book could be a parody.[6] The countries are both named after coins. The florin was originally an Italian gold coin minted in Florence, and later the name of various currencies and denominations. The guilder was originally a Dutch gold coin, and later the name of various currencies used mainly in the Netherlands and its territories. The two names are often interchangeable.
Goldman said he wrote the first chapter about Buttercup which ran for about 20 pages. Then, he wrote the second chapter, "The Groom", about the man she was going to marry; Goldman only managed to write four pages before running dry. Then he got the idea to write an abridged novel:
And when that idea hit, everything changed. Tennessee Williams says there are three or four days when you are writing a play that the piece opens itself to you, and the good parts of the play are all from those days. Well, The Princess Bride opened itself to me. I never had a writing experience like it. I went back and wrote the chapter about Bill Goldman being at the Beverly Hills Hotel and it all just came out. I never felt as strongly connected emotionally to any writing of mine in my life. It was totally new and satisfying and it came as such a contrast to the world I had been doing in the films that I wanted to be a novelist again.[11]
Goldman said he was particularly moved writing the scene in which Westley dies.[12]
Reunion scene
In the novel's commentary, Goldman writes that he added nothing to the "original" Morgenstern text. He did write one original scene, a loving reunion between Buttercup and Westley, but, he said, his publisher objected to this addition.[13] He invites any reader who wants to read the "Reunion Scene" to write to the publisher (formerly Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; now Random House) and request a copy. Many readers wrote in to the publisher and did receive a letter, but instead of an extra scene, the letter detailed the (obviously fictitious) legal problems that Goldman and his publishers encountered with the Morgenstern estate and its lawyer, Kermit Shog. This letter was revised and updated periodically; the 1987 revision mentioned the movie, while the 25th Anniversary Edition published the letter with an addendum about Kermit's lawyer granddaughter Carly. The 30th Anniversary Edition has a footnote that the three pages of the reunion scene were now available online.[14] However, the website itself contained nothing but the text of the original three letters. This website has since been taken down and superseded by the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt product page for the book, which provides the 2003 version of the Reunion Scene letter as a digital download.[15]
Buttercup's Baby
The epilogue to some later editions of the novel, notably the 25th anniversary edition, mentions a sequel, Buttercup's Baby, that was "having trouble getting published because of legal difficulties with S. Morgenstern's estate". Later editions actually reprint Goldman's "sample chapter".[16]
The chapter consists of a disjointed assemblage of stories about the quartet's escape to "One Tree Island", and the eventual kidnapping of Waverly (Westley and Buttercup's daughter) by a skinless-faced "madman" who eventually throws her off a mountainside. The chapter ends with Fezzik, Waverly's appointed babysitter, leaping off the mountain to save her, and then cradling her to preserve her from the impact that seems certain to spell at least Fezzik's doom. Also noteworthy is a flashback to Inigo's past, his training as a swordsman, and his one-time romantic love interest.
The chapter also continues the author's extensive footnotes after he is outraged to learn that the fiercely protective Morgenstern estate had finally relented to an abridgment of Buttercup's Baby done not by Goldman but by author Stephen King. The footnotes detail Goldman's visit to the fictional nation of Florin, which houses a popular museum devoted to the "real" story of The Princess Bride and contains such artifacts as Inigo's six-fingered sword.
The 30th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride included hints to the sequel's plot, and a promise to have the full version completed before a 50th anniversary edition (2023).
In a January 2007 interview, Goldman admitted he was having difficulty coming up with ideas for the story:[17]
MPM: I hear you're working on a sequel to The Princess Bride called Buttercup's Baby. William Goldman: I desperately want to write it, and I sit there and nothing happens and I get pissed at myself. I got lucky with The Princess Bride the first time, and I'd love to get lucky again.[17]
Goldman died in 2018 without completing the sequel.
Adaptations
In 1982 Ray Harryhausen was approached by British producer Milton Subotsky, who had written a script based on the novel. Harryhausen liked the book but found too many problems with the screenplay. He and Subotsky worked together in an attempt to create a new script, but eventually gave up.[18]
Goldman partnered with Adam Guettel to create a musical version of the story with Goldman writing the book and Guettel writing the music, but the two parted ways on the project when Goldman demanded 75% of the author's royalties, though Guettel was writing both the music and the lyrics.[19] Guettel's score was nearly complete, but it is unlikely to be heard beyond an orchestral suite performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006.
In November 2013, Disney Theatrical announced that it will be staging a new stage musical version, based on the novel and film screenplay.[20]
In 2008, Toy Vault, Inc. announced it was working on a Princess Bride–based card game due for release in the second quarter of 2008. It also announced that it is working on a board game, the second ever produced for this movie, after a simple board game included with some VHS releases.
In 2014, Game Salute licensed the tabletop game adaptation publishing rights to the Princess Bride; a series of board and card games were released later that year.[22]
On September 13, 2020, the surviving members of the original cast participated in a live script reading that was a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Democratic Party.[24]
In 2021, BBC Radio 4 produced a two-part radio adaptation by Stephen Keyworth (referred to as "The Best Bits of the Good Parts Version"), with the first part broadcast on Christmas Day 2021 and the second on New Year's Day 2022.[25] During the week of 26 December 2021, five mini-episodes, "Bitesize Backstories", dealing with the backstories of the book itself and four of the main characters "which can be enjoyed as stand-alone stories or to enhance [the listener's] experience of the drama", were also broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Ivan Simon Cary Yules is an English actor. He starred as Westley in The Princess Bride (1987), and also had lead roles in films such as Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and the Saw series. The accolades he has received include nominations for a Screen Actors Guild Award and two Satellite Awards. Elwes' other performances in films include Glory (1989), Days of Thunder (1990), Hot Shots! (1991), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Twister (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Liar Liar (1997), Shadow of the Vampire (2000), The Cat's Meow (2001), Ella Enchanted (2004), Pope John Paul II (2005), No Strings Attached (2011), BlackBerry, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023).
The Princess Bride is a 1987 American fantasy adventure comedy film directed and co-produced by Rob Reiner and starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant, and Robin Wright. Adapted by William Goldman from his 1973 novel, it tells the story of a swashbuckling farmhand named Westley, accompanied by companions befriended along the way, who must rescue his true love Princess Buttercup from the odious Prince Humperdinck. The film preserves the novel's metafictional narrative style by presenting the story as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson.
The Silent Gondoliers (ISBN 0-345-44263-6) is a 1983 novel by William Goldman, written under the pseudonym of "S. Morgenstern". The novel purports to explain why the gondoliers of Venice no longer sing, through the story of the protagonist Luigi. Chapters I and II build up further mythology behind the name Morgenstern and the backstory of Gondolierian history, and the tale of Luigi actually starts in Chapter III.
William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. Among other accolades, Goldman won two Academy Awards in both writing categories: first for Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and then for Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men (1976).
Marathon Man is a 1974 conspiracy thriller novel by William Goldman. It was Goldman's most successful thriller novel, and his second suspense novel.
Adam Guettel is an American composer-lyricist of musical theater and opera. The grandson of musical theatre composer Richard Rodgers, he is best known for his musicals Floyd CollinsThe Light in the Piazza,, and Days of Wine and Roses.
A fictional book is a text created specifically for a work in an imaginary narrative that is referred to, depicted, or excerpted in a story, book, film, or other fictional work, and which exists only in one or more fictional works. A fictional book may be created to add realism or depth to a larger fictional work. For example, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has excerpts from a book by Emmanuel Goldstein entitled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism which provides background on concepts explored in the novel.
The Dread Pirate Roberts is the identity assumed by several characters in the novel The Princess Bride (1973) and its 1987 film adaptation. Various pirates take on the role of Roberts and use his reputation to intimidate their opponents, before retiring and secretly passing on the name to someone else.
Inigo Montoya is a fictional character in William Goldman's 1973 novel The Princess Bride. In Rob Reiner's 1987 film adaptation, he was portrayed by Mandy Patinkin. In both the book and the movie, he was originally from Spain and resided in the fictional country of Florin.
King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line for the MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh computers in 1994. It features high-resolution graphics in a style reminiscent of Disney animated films and is the only King's Quest game with multiple protagonists: Queen Valanice and Princess Rosella, who are both spirited away to the realm of Eldritch, and Rosella is transformed into a troll. They must find a way to return Rosella to normal and find her true love, get rid of a powerful evil force threatening this realm, and get back to their kingdom Daventry.
The Brides of Dracula are fictional characters in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. They are three seductive vampire "sisters" who reside with Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania, where they entice men with their beauty and charm, and then proceed to feed upon them. Dracula provides them with victims to devour, mainly implied to be infants.
"The Goose Girl" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1815. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 533.
Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade is a work of non-fiction first published in 2000 by novelist and screenwriter William Goldman. It is the follow-up to his 1982 book Adventures in the Screen Trade.
The Color of Light is a novel by William Goldman, published in 1984. It is about the life of writer Charles 'Chub' Fuller, who while attending Oberlin College from 1968 to 1972 channels his childhood experiences as the only child of an alcoholic, suicidal father and a moody, impossible-to-please mother into a series of short stories, shared only with his friend and foil Stanley 'Two-Brew' Kitchel.
Castle in the Air is a young adult fantasy novel written by Diana Wynne Jones and first published in 1990. The novel is a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle and is set in the same fantasy world, though it follows the adventures of Abdullah rather than Sophie Hatter. The plot is based on stories from the Arabian Nights. The book features many of the characters from Howl's Moving Castle as supporting characters, often under some sort of disguise.
In English-speaking popular culture, the modern pirate stereotype owes its attributes mostly to the imagined tradition of the 18th-century Caribbean pirate sailing off the Spanish Main and to such celebrated 20th-century depictions as Captain Hook and his crew in the theatrical and film versions of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, and various adaptations of the Middle Eastern pirate, Sinbad the Sailor. In these and countless other books, films, and legends, pirates are portrayed as "swashbucklers" and "plunderers". They are shown on ships, often wearing eyepatches or peg legs, having a parrot perched on their shoulder, speaking in a West Country accent, and saying phrases like "Arr, matey" and "Avast, me hearty". Pirates have retained their image through pirate-themed tourist attractions, film, toys, books and plays.
The Good Companions is a novel by the English author J. B. Priestley.
Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern was a German philologist in Livonia, the first director of the library of the Imperial University of Dorpat. He coined the term Bildungsroman.
Home Movie: The Princess Bride is an American comedy television miniseries directed by Jason Reitman, a "fan made" recreation of the 1987 film The Princess Bride. Produced while the participating actors were isolating themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, it is filmed in a deliberately DIY fashion, with an ensemble cast recording their scenes on their own smartphones, and multiple actors playing the most prominent roles. It features the final screen performance of Carl Reiner, the father of the original film's director Rob Reiner. It premiered in short installments in June and July 2020, on Quibi.
On September 13, 2020, most of the original cast members of the 1987 film The Princess Bride took part in a virtual live dramatic reading of the film script to support Wisconsin Democrats. The returning cast included Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, and Carol Kane, with additional performances by Rob Reiner as the Grandfather, Josh Gad as Fezzik, Eric Idle as the Impressive Clergyman, Whoopi Goldberg as the Ancient Booer and the Mother, and Jason Reitman as the narrator, among others. Norman Lear joined the Q&A session at the end, which was hosted by Patton Oswalt. Cast members promoted the event beforehand using the hashtags "#PrincessBrideReunion" and "#DumpTrumperdinck." More than 110,000 viewers donated a dollar or more to Wisconsin Democrats to view the livestream, which raised $4.25 million and received widely positive reviews, with special praise for Patinkin's performance.
↑ Greene, Richard; Robinson-Greene, Rachel, eds. (2015). The Princess Bride and Philosophy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN9780812699142.
1 2 3 4 5 Constantakis, Sara, ed. (2010). A Study Guide for William Goldman's "The Princess Bride". Novels for Students. Vol.31. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning. pp.1–2. ISBN978-1-4144-4947-0.
1 2 3 Alfonso, Eva (2014). The Adventure Screenplay in William Goldman: the playful and the ironic in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride. Communication & Society. pp.1–15.
1 2 3 "William Goldman". Newsmakers. September 29, 2005. Retrieved November 2, 2019– via Gale in Context: U.S. History.
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