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 was in the process of being made into a musical by Adam Guettel. Guettel and book writer Goldman 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.

Plot summary

In the introduction to the novel, William Goldman claims that The Princess Bride story was actually written by a Florinese author named "S. Morgenstern", and that his father read the book to him when he was a child, when he had pneumonia. He says that this experience sparked his love of reading and adventure stories. Goldman goes on to say that when he purchased a copy of the Morgenstern Princess Bride for his son's tenth birthday, he was surprised to discover that his son didn't enjoy it at all and hadn't even started on the second chapter. As he sat down to read the book he purchased, he realized it was much longer than he expected and contained a lot of political satire and Florinese history between the adventure and romance scenes. Realizing that his father had abridged the book when reading it aloud, Goldman decides to "revise" The Princess Bride to include only the "good parts" of the tale. The rest of the novel contains frequent commentary by Goldman, set in a different typeface than the main text of the book.

The Princess Bride opens with a series of brief, comic descriptions of some of the world's most beautiful women and their eventual fates. The heroine of the story is a young woman named Buttercup, who at this point is not the most beautiful woman in the world, but might be ranked in the top twenty.

As the twentieth most beautiful woman in the world, 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 (Westley, whom she always calls "Farm Boy"). Everyday she bossed the farm boy around, and the farm boy merely answered, "as you wish." Buttercup is entirely uninterested in love, until the day Count Rugen comes to her house. The Count had heard rumours of Buttercup's beauty, and came to see her for himself. His wife, the glamorous Countess, seems more interested in Westley's charms. Buttercup becomes jealous, and realizes to her astonishment that she is in love with Westley. Buttercup confesses her love, and Westley returns it, explaining every time he said "as you wish" he really meant "I love you". He decides to travel to America to earn money so they can marry—but does not leave without a kiss. Buttercup then takes interest in her looks, for Westley to be surprised when he comes back, and the fame of her beauty rises.

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 heir, as his father the King is dying. People around suggest Princess Noreena, a princess of a neighboring country, Guilder. However, things don't work out quite well during the meeting with the prince and the princess, and so the arrangement is broken. The prince tells his trustful Count Rugen that he wouldn't care if his wife was a commoner as long as she was beautiful. Rugen tells him about Buttercup, and the Prince asks her to marry him. Buttercup initially refuses, but decides to accept Humperdink's proposal when he explains that he doesn't expect her to love him. He just needs a suitable woman to be his Queen and mother to his children.

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 killed his father; the gentle giant Fezzik; and the leader of the group, Vizzini, a brilliant but 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 Guilder frontier, leaving a trail for the Prince to find. They head for Guilder by boat, but soon discover that another boat is pursuing them. The group reaches the Cliffs of Insanity and begins scaling them. Their pursuer, a mysterious man in black, catches up and climbs after them. When the gang reaches the top of the cliffs they cut the 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, who hates waiting, swears on the sword of his father that the man in black will reach the top alive, and he lets down a rope for him. When the man in black reaches the top he first wins a sword fight with Inigo, but spares his life because of admiration of his skill. The man in black then beats Fezzik with his strength and speed, 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's memory. 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.

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's guardsmen, who are searching for Buttercup. As they walk, Westley explains that the Dread Pirate Roberts had indeed captured him, but rather than killing him took him as his heir and gave Westley his title.

After a passage through the dangers of the Fire Swamp, including the snow sand, the ROUSes, and the bursts of fire, they encounter Prince Humperdinck. Buttercup surrenders in order 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 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.

Meanwhile, 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 reality, he plans to kill Buttercup on their wedding night. 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, and when there was an order to clear out the Thieves Quarter, Fezzik meets Inigo, lying helplessly on the street, ranting, 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. Since Vizzini is dead and Inigo needs a strategist to help him carry out his revenge, he decides to track down the man in black to assist them. They track Westley to the Zoo of Death, led by the screams of Westley produced by the Count's inventive torture apparatus, called The Machine. Inigo and Fezzik arrive to find Westley's lifeless body. They take the body to Miracle Max, a former miracle man of the King who was fired by Humperdinck. Max prepares a resurrection pill that will revive Westley for one hour.

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, repeatedly proclaiming 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, and Fezzik finds 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 psychologist. In reality, Goldman has two daughters, and his wife is not a psychologist. 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 is an old one, which 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, and science-fiction author Michael Crichton (Eaters of the Dead), and the Dilbert comic strips. (See also false document, frame tale.)

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^{[citation needed]}. 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 has yet to actually have the reunion scene on the page.

Buttercup's Baby

The epilogue to some later editions of the novel mentions a sequel^{[citation needed]}, 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).

See also

• Ruritanian romance

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