The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. Honouring one’s promises is obviously the moral, of sorts: if you make an agreement with someone, you shouldn’t renege on your promise.īut beyond that, the fact that such a basic storyline has existed in a variety of subtly different forms (Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s tale being another prominent example, where the hag’s transformation seems, rather distastefully, to let the male protagonist off for rape) is a testament to its adaptability, suggesting the true ‘moral’ or meaning of ‘The Frog Prince’ was loose enough to be interpreted, and reinterpreted, by a succession of different storytellers.Īnd at least it guarantees frogs their place in the annals of literature ( along with Aristophanes’ play). The fact that it’s been around for so long suggests that the notion of metamorphosis from the ugly (back) into the beautiful held some appeal to numerous nations and cultures.
What is the meaning of such a tale, then? It’s difficult to say. In his Travels, John Mandeville recounted the tale of the daughter of Hippocrates, who was turned into the ‘forme and lykeness of a gret Dragoun, that is an hundred Fadme of lengthe’, and was destined to remain in such an uncomely state until a brave knight ventured to kiss her and release her from her dragonhood.Īnd it seems that the tale of the Frog Prince had been known in Scotland since the late Middle Ages, although it would only be referred to in print by English writers from the eighteenth century onwards, and it was really in the nineteenth century, when the Brothers Grimm set down their telling of the tale, that the story became a firmly established fairy tale. The notion that a kiss could transform a person from hideous monstrousness into a state of beauty and normality was popular in the Middle Ages.
Many of the ingredients of the classic fairy tale are present in ‘The Frog-Prince’: the beautiful princess, the handsome prince, the marriage at the end, the magical transformation, the evil fairy/witch, the importance of the number three, and the idea of undergoing a trial before the happy resolution materialises. And that, in summary, is the story of the frog-prince. She accepted, and they went to live in the prince’s father’s land, where they were married and lived happily ever after.
When this had occurred, he was magically changed back into a prince, and offered the princess his hand in marriage. The only thing that could break the spell was if he managed to persuade a beautiful princess to take him out of the spring and let him spend three nights in her home.
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