Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty by Charles Robinson


Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose is a classic fairy tale known in several versions. This one belongs to the brothers Grimm with one exception - the king and the queen left the castle after their princess fell asleep. Charles Robinson for some reason didn't illustrate the grand finale with the prince, so the story, if we confine ourselves just to pictures, ends with everybody asleep.

The frontispiece of the story belongs to The Big Book of Fairy Tales, published by Blackie & Son, London in 1911, and portrays the aforementioned scene where the royal couple leaves the sleepy castle. This scene comes from older versions, where the sleeping princess was left in the castle, but in those versions, everybody left. She was alone and unprotected (no thorns around her home either).

Briar Rose is an alternative title, given by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. This title is very rarely used in editions published after WW2.


The wicked fairy is used for the decorative capital letter, the first letter of the story (after the title, of course). Decorative letters were very popular in the Art Nouveau era and can be found in scripts many centuries ago. Now they are almost forgotten as well.


This is one of the crucial scenes in the story. Despite the prophecy and full fifteen years for preparation, nobody looked after the princess on the day when she was supposed to prick her finger and fall asleep. So she wandered around and found a staircase to the castle tower she obviously didn't know. There she found an old lady with a spindle and we all know what happened next.

Everybody fell asleep. Even the guard who was so focused on drinking, trying to find a balance between coffee and wine, stopped in the middle of his move, with a pitcher halfway to his mouth.


The famous scene with a kitchen boy who escaped his punishment because everybody fell asleep is from a dramatic point of view unimportant but still one of the most popular ones in the audience.

Well, one hundred years later, he was still punished.

Unfortunately, we didn't see the prince who came to the rescue. We have to be satisfied with the final scene - the guard from before.

Yes, he finally managed to get that drink. It was a nice ending to a full century of abstination and a lovely intro to the wedding which, again, is not portrayed in this version of Sleeping Beauty.

If you want to see more, including the prince, seven good fairies, and a dwarf (yes, a dwarf with seven league boots!), you are cordially invited to visit the page with Charles Robinson's contemporary Robert Anning Bell who also illustrated the same story.

This is it:

https://robert-anning-bell.weebly.com/sleeping-beauty.html

Enjoy!

Komentarji

Objavite komentar

Priljubljene objave iz tega spletnega dnevnika

Goose Girl

Slika
Goose Girl, ilustrated by Charles Robinson Goose Girl is a fairy tale written by the brothers Grimm. It deals with all the major questions and themes from their collection: social status, trickery, the importance of a given word, marriage, and rigorous punishment. We'll summarize the story with the help of Charles Robinson's illustrations from the book The Big Book of Fairy Tales. As with all other fairy tales in this book, it starts with a typical decorative letter. Once upon a time, there was a princess whose father died. Her mother arranged a marriage to her daughter with a prince from another kingdom. The princess has to leave and only one servant (a waiting maid, actually) comes with her. She also gave her a handkerchief with three drops of her blood and a talking horse. Both had the power to remind the princess of her royal origin but she was so inexperienced she didn't really understand it. After some time, the princess became thirsty. She asked her companio...
Preberite več

Frog Prince

Slika
Frog Prince by Charles Robinson Frog Prince is also known as Frog King. It's the first fairy tale in the Children and Household Tales by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, officially noted as KHM 1. It's a very important story, a classic tale about a given word and a broken promise, paternal authority, an undesirable groom in the form of the frog, and, of course, a marriage as a typical happily ever after ending. Charles Robinson made the illustration which were published in 1911 by Blackie and Son in London. The book was titled The Big Book of Fairy Tales and this blog features several fairy tales from the same collection. Once upon a time, there was a princess whose favorite pastime was playing with her golden ball. Unfortunately, one day it dropped it in the pond. The princess was sad. She would like to get her ball back. But how? Then a frog appeared. He asked her what was wrong. Can he help her? She explained her problem and promised to reward the frog. He could eat by her table, pl...
Preberite več

Happy Prince

Slika
The Happy Prince and Other Tales  Written by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Charles Robinson When Oscar Wilde became a father, he wanted to offer his son a few good stories for children. Unfortunately, none of the books on the market suited Wilde's exquisite taste, so he decided to write a book of stories for kids himself. His wife Costance very likely helped him at work, at least with the editing part (after all, she already had some experience with writing fairy tales) but we'll never know how much of her wit is in the five tales presented below. (frontispiece)      Anyway, Oscar Wilde definitely infused some of his best intellectual powers in this work which, by the way, was never popular among children. But it's still a masterpiece and we will explore it with illustrations by Charles Robinson. The illustrator made great effort as well. He didn't just create pictures of the scenes from the tales but approached to the project as a decorative artist and designer so th...
Preberite več