THE PRINCESS BRIDE

'''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, and an attempt to adapt it into a musical was made by Adam Guettel.

Contents

Plot summary

Context

Reunion scene

''Buttercup's Baby''

Musical

See also

External links

Plot summary

Buttercup, the twentieth most beautiful woman in the world, lives on a farm with her parents in Florin, where she enjoys nothing but riding her horse (named "Horse") and tormenting the farmhand Westley, whom she always calls "Farm Boy". Every day, she gives him imperious orders, to which the farm boy always answers, "As you wish." Buttercup is uninterested in love, until the day Count Rugen comes to her house. His wife, the glamorous Countess, seems interested in Westley's charms. Buttercup becomes jealous, and realizes to her astonishment that she is in love with Westley. Buttercup confesses her love, Westley explains that every time he said "As you wish" he had meant "I love you". He decides to travel to America to earn money so they can marry— having exchanged a kiss. Buttercup then takes interest in her appearance, so that Westley may be surprised when he comes back, and her beauty becomes notorious.
Buttercup later receives word that Westley has been killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Devastated, she promises to never love again.
Meanwhile, Florin's Prince Humperdinck realizes he needs an wife to get an heir, as his father the King is dying. The prince tells Count Rugen about his dilemma. Rugen tells him about Buttercup, and the Prince asks her to marry him. Buttercup decides to accept Humperdinck's proposal, as he assures her that she will not be expected to love him.
Three years pass. About a month before the royal wedding, Buttercup is kidnapped by three criminals: a Spanish fencing master named Inigo Montoya, who is seeking the six-fingered nobleman who had killed his father; the gentle giant Fezzik; and their leader Vizzini, a brilliant, wicked Sicilian hunchback.
The criminals have been hired to start a war between Florin and neighboring Guilder. They have been paid to kill the Princess on the Guilderian frontier, leaving a trail for the Prince to find. They head for Guilder by boat, but discover that another boat is pursuing them. The group reaches the Cliffs of Insanity and begin scaling them. Their pursuer, a mysterious man in black, climbs after them. When at the top of the cliffs, they cut their rope, expecting the man in black to fall to his death. However, the man in black manages to grab onto the face of the cliff and slowly climbs to the top. Inigo is left behind to kill him while the others move on . When the man in black reaches the top he defeats Inigo (the greatest fencer in the world) in a duel, overcomes Fezzik (the greatest hand fighter in the world) in a grappling match, and finally outsmarts and poisons the clever Vizzini.
The man in black tells Buttercup that he is the Dread Pirate Roberts, and mocks her for agreeing to marry the Prince rather than remaining faithful to Westley in memory of him. Furious, Buttercup pushes him down the hillside into a deep ravine, saying, "you can die too, for all I care." He calls out to her as he falls, "As you wish!", and Buttercup realizes that the man in black is actually Westley in disguise.
Buttercup throws herself down the hill, and the couple are reunited at the bottom of the ravine. They flee into the Fire Swamp to avoid Humperdink, who is searching for Buttercup.
After a passage through the dangers of the Fire Swamp, including snow sand (note: although in the film version, Westley and Buttercup encounter lightning sand, in the novel Goldman makes a point of that the Fire Swamp does ''not'' contain lightning sand. He comments that both types of sand are quicksand-like substances; however, lightning sand is said to be moist and kills by drowning, while snow sand is powdery and kills by suffocation), the Rodents Of Unusual Size (immense, carnivorous rats shortened to R.O.U.S.), and bursts of fire that emerge from the earth, they encounter Prince Humperdinck. Buttercup surrenders in order to save Westley, whom, the Prince promises, will be taken back to his ship. Westley is taken off to be tortured by the Prince's advisor Count Rugen. Westley observes that the Count has six fingers on his right hand, before being clubbed unconscious.
After weeks of suffering from persistent nightmares, Buttercup tells Humperdinck that she still loves Westley. The Prince appears to sympathize with her, and offers to send his men to find Westley. In secret, he plans to kill Buttercup on their wedding night. It is revealed that it was Humperdink who hired Vizzini to kidnap and murder Buttercup in order to justify a war with Guilder.
Inigo had waited in the Thieves' Quarter for Vizzini to come back, drinking brandy. Fezzik had joined the brute squad; when there is an order to clear out the Thieves' Quarter, Fezzik finds Inigo, lying helplessly on the street, with a brandy bottle in his hand. Inigo reunites with Fezzik, who tells him that Count Rugen is the six-fingered man who murdered Inigo's father. They decide to track down the man in black to assist them. They track Westley to the Zoo of Death, led by his screams as Rugen sucks the life out of him using his nefarious invention, "the machine". Inigo and Fezzik arrive to find Westley's lifeless body. They take the body to Miracle Max, a sorcerer/doctor who used to work for the King until he was fired by Humperdink. Max prepares a resurrection pill that is supposed to revive Westley for one hour, but, because of Max's mistake, only works for 40 minutes.
As the royal wedding commences, Buttercup resolves to kill herself rather than live without Westley. Meanwhile, Inigo, Fezzik, and Westley storm the castle. Inigo finally hunts down Count Rugen and kills him in a duel, repeating throughout his famous line, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to die." Westley arrives in time to prevent Buttercup from committing suicide, but their reunion is interrupted by the arrival of Humperdinck.
Westley is badly weakened by his brush with death, but bluffs Humperdinck into surrendering to him rather than fighting a duel. Inigo arrives, while Fezzik brings four horses from the royal stables. Westley, Buttercup, Inigo, and Fezzik all ride away from the castle. However, in keeping with the darkly comic tone of the book, several mishaps befall them as they find themselves being pursued by Humperdinck's guardsmen. Their ultimate fate is left uncertain. Goldman ends this book by stating that he believes that they all managed to escape and live relatively happy lives, although this does not necessarily mean that they "lived happily ever after."

Context

''The Princess Bride'' is presented as Goldman's abridgment of an older version by "S. Morgenstern", which was originally a satire of the excesses of European royalty. The book, in fact, is entirely Goldman's work. Morgenstern and the "original version" are fictional and used as a literary device.
Goldman's personal life as described in the introduction and commentary in the novel are also fictional. In ''The Princess Bride'' he claims to have one son with his wife, a psychiatrist. In reality, Goldman has two daughters, and his wife is not a psychiatrist. The countries Florin and Guilder never existed, 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 and 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 name.
The device of claiming that a book is a pre-existing work that the author merely discovered and edited has been used by authors as diverse 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, C.S. Lewis in his Space Trilogy, fictionalist Alison Croggon, L. Frank Baum, and science fiction author Michael Crichton (''Eaters of the Dead''), zoologist Gerolf Steiner (''The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades''), and the Dilbert comic strips. (See also false document, frame tale.)
Iñigo Montoya is also a fictional Scottish scientist and philosopher featured in José Báez Guerrero's 1996 novel "Ceroles," published in the Dominican Republic in Spanish. Dr Montoya is author of "Propinquity of Self," an essay on the "involutive character of religion" quoted in Ceroles.

Reunion scene

In the novel's commentary, Goldman claims that he has added nothing to the "original" Morgenstern text. However, he says that he did write one original scene, a loving reunion between Buttercup and Westley, but claims that his publisher objected to this addition. 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,[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 [2], while the 25th Anniversary Edition publishes the letter with an addendum about Kermit's lawyer granddaughter Carly ([3]). The 30th Anniversary Edition has an asterisk at this point saying that you can now find the three pages of the reunion scene online at www.theprincessbride.org, but to date the reunion scene does not appear on the page.

''Buttercup's Baby''

The epilogue to some later editions of the novel, notably the 25th anniversary edition
([4]), 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 (see link above). 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).
In a January 2007 interview, Goldman admitted that the story is not written and he is having a hard time writing the story. The full interview can be seen here http://www.movingpicturesmagazine.com and here is a quote from the interview

'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 Princess Bride the first time, and I'd love to get lucky again.

Musical

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 they could not agree to the division of the creative royalties. Guettel's score was nearly complete, but it is unlikely that it will be heard beyond an orchestral suite that was performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006.

See also

★ Ruritanian romance

External links

★ Reconstructivist Art: The Princess Bride