The Spider and the Fly (poem)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Spider and the Fly is a poem by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), published in 1829. The first line of the poem is "'Will you walk into my parlor?' said the Spider to the Fly." When Lewis Carroll was readying Alice's Adventures Under Ground for publication he replaced a parody he had made of a negro minstrel song[1] with a parody of Howitt's poem. The "Lobster Quadrille", in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is a parody of Howitt's poem (it mimics the meter and rhyme scheme, and parodies the first line, but not the subject matter, of the original). [2] An illustrated version by Tony DiTerlizzi was a 2003 Caldecott Honor Book.[3]
Another parody is from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 cartoon series, in the episode "Enter the Fly", where Shredder says "Step into my parlor, said the Knucklehead to the fly".
In 2007, this poem was also the basis of a musical by Benjamin Stahl. The musical contained various sections of the actual poem in the lyrics and expanded upon the story a great deal.
[edit] References
- ^ Gardner, Martin., The Annotated Alice, 1998
- ^ Lewis Carrols parody of Mary's poem accessed 3 October 2007
- ^ "2003 Caldecott Medal and Honor Books" Association for Library Services to Children. Retrieved October 8, 2007
[edit] External links
- Text of the poem, along with a Lewis Carroll parody of it
