The Princess Bride
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the novel. For the movie, see The Princess Bride (film)
 This is the slipcase cover of the deluxe first edition of The Princess Bride. The regular hardcover version had the same image and colors, except for the brown border which is the fabric that surrounds the cardboard of the case. The first edition features red text for the abridgement notes. |
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| Author | William Goldman |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (USA) |
| Released | 1973 |
| Media Type | Hardcover |
The Princess Bride is a 1973 novel written by William Goldman and originally published in the USA by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. It combines elements of comedy, adventure, romance and fairy tale tropes. It was made into a feature film in 1987 by Rob Reiner.
Contents |
[edit] Story
In the introduction, William Goldman claims that the story was actually written by an "S. Morgenstern," and that it became his favorite book as a child, spurring his love of adventure stories. He states that he edited out huge passages about Florinese history in the book and that his "revision" is intended to preserve the "good parts" of the tale only.
Buttercup lives on a farm with her parents in Florin, where she enjoys nothing but riding her horse (named "Horse") and tormenting the farm boy (named Westley, but whom she always calls "Farm Boy"). As the story begins, she is entirely uninterested in love, until the day Count Rugen comes to her house. Unbeknownst to Buttercup and her family, the Count had heard rumors of Buttercup's nearly unsurpassed beauty (she is, at the time, said to be informally ranked around #20 in all the world), and came to see if she would be a suitable bride for his friend, Prince Humperdinck. His wife, the Countess, seems much more interested in Westley, and Buttercup becomes jealous, and realizes to her astonishment that she is in love with Westley. Buttercup confesses her love, and Westley tells her he loves her, too, and decides to move to America to earn money so they could buy a farm in England and have children -- but does not leave without a kiss.
Later she is told that Westley was killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts while on his way to America. Devastated, Buttercup promises to never love again.
Meanwhile Prince Humperdinck realizes he needs an heir sooner rather than later, as his father, the aged King, is dying. Rugen informs him of Buttercup, and the Prince asks her to marry him. She refuses, even after he threatens to kill her, but finally accepts when he explains that he doesn't care at all about love, he just needs an heir.
Between wedding plans and Buttercup's princess training, three years pass. Within a month of the wedding, shortly after being introduced to the commoners of the country, Buttercup is kidnapped by three criminals: a Spaniard sword master named Inigo Montoya, seeking the six-fingered nobleman who killed his father; the lonely, timid giant named Fezzik who doesn't think he has a right to think; and the leader of the group, Vizzini, a genius Sicilian hunchback. The criminals have been hired to start a war between Florin and their rival country, Guilder; their plan is to kill the Princess on the Guilder frontier, leaving a trail for the Prince to find. They take Buttercup on their boat headed for Guilder and discover that another boat is pursuing them. They reach the Cliffs of Insanity and begin scaling it with Fezzik's strength pulling all four of them up on a single rope. Their pursuer, a man in black, catches up and climbs after them. When the bandits reach the top they cut the rope, expecting the man in black to fall and die, but he manages to grab onto the face of the cliff in time. When the man in black reaches the top, he wins a swordfight with Inigo, beats Fezzik with his strength and speed, and outsmarts and poisons the clever Vizzini. He takes Buttercup who, after pushing him off the ravine, discovers that it is her Westley.
The couple is reunited and they enter the Fire Swamp, where Westley explains to her that the Dread Pirate Roberts made him his valet, and eventually turned over his title to Westley who was becoming a great pirate. At the end of the fire swamp, they meet Prince Humperdinck. Buttercup surrenders them both to save Westley, who the Prince promises will be taken back to his ship. In reality, Westley is taken off to the fifth level of the Zoo of Death, which is Prince Humperdinck's own specialized zoo for hunting; Here is where the Prince's advisor Count Rugen plans to "break him." Westley notes that the Count has six fingers on his right hand.
Meanwhile, Buttercup begins to have nightmares in which she is condemned as a murderer for abandoning Westley. She tells Humperdinck that she still loves Westley, and the Prince appears to sympathize with her. In reality, he plans to kill Buttercup on their wedding day to start a war with Guilder (it is revealed here that the Prince himself hired Vizzini to kidnap and murder Buttercup and pin the blame upon Guilder).
Inigo is also reunited with Fezzik, who informs him that the man he's looking for is Count Rugen. Since Vizzini is dead and Inigo needs a planner to tell him how to carry out his revenge, Inigo decides to track down the man in black (Westley) to assist them. They are clued in on his location by a "death scream" from Westley when he is tortured to death. Inigo and Fezzik reach the castle and manage to overcome various perils to get to the fifth floor of the Zoo of Death, where they find the dead Westley. They take the body to Miracle Max, a former miracle man of Humperdinck, and receive a resurrection pill to revive him for one hour on the eve of Prince Humperdinck and Buttercup's wedding.
As the wedding commences in the castle, Inigo, Fezzik, and Westley storm the palace. Inigo finally hunts down Count Rugen and kills him in a duel, repeatedly proclaiming his famous line, "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die." At the same time, Westley stops Buttercup from committing suicide; their reunion is interrupted by the arrival of Humperdinck.
Through threats to dismember him in a duel, Westley persuades Humperdinck to surrender, just before Inigo enters the room. Fezzik also shows up, leading four white horses, and they all ride away from the castle. However, in keeping with the satirical tone of the book, several mishaps befall them as they find themselves being pursued by Humperdinck's armies, leaving their ultimate fate uncertain. Goldman ends this book by stating that he believes that they managed to escape and live relatively happy lives, although this does not necessarily mean that they "lived happily ever after."
[edit] Context
The book affects to be an abridgement of an older version by "S. Morgenstern", which was originally a satire of the excesses of European royalty. Goldman, however, "remembered" the book as it was narrated to him by his father: as an exciting adventure tale, without the complex political overtones. His work is then declared to be a recreation of the abridgement told to him by his father. The book, in fact, is entirely Goldman's work, and Morgenstern and his "original version" never existed. Nor is Goldman's family accurately described in the book. He has two daughters, not a son, and his wife is not a psychologist. The countries Florin and Guilder do not exist and never have, although both were units of currency – the same unit of currency, in fact – from The Netherlands and a common term for a 2 shilling piece in pre-decimal Britain as well as other countries in the Commonwealth. They remain legal currency in the Netherlands Antilles to this day. Goldman carried the joke further by publishing another book called The Silent Gondoliers (about why the gondoliers of Venice no longer sing to their passengers) under S. Morgenstern's byline. The Piccoli family from The Princess Bride also makes an appearance in this book.
The device of claiming that a book is a pre-existing work that the author merely discovered and edited is an old one, which has been used by authors as widely separated as Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, Italian literary novelist Umberto Eco, the American Edgar Rice Burroughs, British fantasy writer Mary Gentle, The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, and science-fiction author Michael Crichton (Eaters of the Dead), and the Dilbert comic strips. (See also false document, frame tale.)
[edit] Reunion scene
In addition to the "original Morgenstern" passages that Goldman says he cut, he also claims in the book to have written a new scene: a loving reunion between Buttercup and Westley after they have been apart for many years. In the novel, Goldman says that there was an objection to his adding text that was not written by Morgenstern to his abridgement of the book (Goldman was only allowed to excise text), but that any reader who wants to read the Reunion Scene may write to the publisher (formerly Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; now Random House) and receive one for only the cost of a self-addressed stamped envelope. Many readers wrote in to the publisher and did receive a letter,[1] 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 publishes the letter with an addendum about Kermit's lawyer granddaughter Carly.
[edit] Buttercup's Baby
The epilogue to some later editions of the novel mentions a sequel, Buttercup's Baby, that was having trouble getting published because of legal difficulties with S. Morgenstern's estate. This sequel seems to be just as fictional as S. Morgenstern's unabridged edition, though later editions actually reprint Goldman's "sample chapter" of this book. The most recent, 30th anniversary edition of the book, included hints to the sequel's plot, and a promise to have the full version completed before a 35th anniversary edition (2009).
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Reconstructivist Art: The Princess Bride
