The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
"The
Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (German: Nussknacker und Mausekönig) is a story written in 1816 by Prussian author E.
T. A. Hoffmann, in which young Marie Stahlbaum's
favourite Christmas
toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in
battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. In 1892, the Russian composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa
and Lev
Ivanov turned Alexandre
Dumas's adaptation of the story into the ballet The
Nutcracker.
Summary
The
story begins on Christmas Eve, at the Stahlbaum house. Marie, seven, and her
brother, Fritz, sit outside the parlour speculating about what kind of present
their Godfather, Drosselmeyer, who is a clockmaker and inventor,
has made for them. They are at last allowed in, where they receive many
splendid gifts, including Drosselmeyer's, which turns out to be a clockwork castle
with mechanical people moving about inside it. However, as they can only do the
same thing over and over without variation, the children quickly tire of it. At
this point, Marie notices a nutcracker, and asks to whom he belongs. Her father tells her that he
belongs to all of them, but that since she is so fond of him she will be his
special caretaker. She, Fritz, and their sister, Louise, pass him amongst
themselves, cracking nuts, until Fritz tries to crack one that is too big and hard,
and the nutcracker's jaw breaks. Marie, upset, takes him away and bandages him
with a ribbon from her dress.
When
it is time for bed, the children put their Christmas gifts away in the special
cabinet where they keep their toys. Fritz and Louise go up to bed, but Marie
begs to be allowed to stay with the nutcracker a while longer, and she is
allowed to do so. She puts him to bed and tells him that Drosselmeyer will fix
his jaw as good as new. At this, his face seems momentarily to come alive, and
Marie is frightened, but she then decides it was only her imagination.
The
grandfather clock
begins to chime, and Marie believes she sees Drosselmeyer sitting on top of it,
preventing it from striking. Mice begin to come out from beneath the floor
boards, including the seven-headed Mouse King. The dolls in the toy cabinet
come alive and begin to move, the nutcracker taking command and leading them
into battle after putting Marie's ribbon on as a token. The battle goes to the
dolls at first, but they are eventually overwhelmed by the mice. Marie, seeing
the nutcracker about to be taken prisoner, takes off her slipper and throws it
at the Mouse King. She then faints into the toy cabinet's glass door, cutting
her arm badly.
Marie
wakes up in her bed the next morning with her arm bandaged and tries to tell
her parents about the battle between the mice and the dolls, but they do not
believe her, thinking that she has had a fever dream caused by the wound she
sustained from the broken glass. Several days later, Drosselmeyer arrives with
the nutcracker, whose jaw has been fixed, and tells Marie the story of Princess
Pirlipat and Madam Mouserinks, who is also known as the Queen of the Mice,
which explains how nutcrackers came to be and why they look the way they do.
The
Mouse Queen tricked Pirlipat's mother into allowing her and her children to
gobble up the lard that was supposed to go into the sausage that the King was to eat at dinner that evening. The King,
enraged at the Mouse Queen for spoiling his supper and upsetting his wife, had
his court inventor, whose name happens to be Drosselmeyer, create traps for the
Mouse Queen and her children.
The
Mouse Queen, angered at the death of her children, swore that she would take
revenge on Pirlipat. Pirlipat's mother surrounded her with cats which were supposed to be kept awake by being constantly
stroked, however inevitably the nurses who did so fell asleep and the Mouse
Queen magically turned Pirlipat ugly, giving her a huge head, a wide grinning
mouth, and a cottony beard like a nutcracker. The King blamed Drosselmeyer and
gave him four weeks to find a cure. At the end, he had no cure but went to his
friend, the court astrologer.
They
read Pirlipat's horoscope
and told the King that the only way to cure her was to have her eat the nut
Crackatook (Krakatuk), which must be cracked and handed to her by a man who had
never been shaved nor worn boots since birth, and who must, without opening his
eyes hand her the kernel and take seven steps backwards without stumbling. The
King sent Drosselmeyer and the astrologer out to look for both, charging them
on pain of death not to return until they had found them.
The
two men journeyed for many years without finding either the nut or the man,
until finally they returned home to Nuremberg and found the nut in the
possession of Drosselmeyer's cousin, a puppet-maker. His son turned out to be
the young man needed to crack the nut Crackatook. The King, once the nut had
been found, promised Pirlipat's hand to whoever could crack it. Many men broke
their teeth on it before Drosselmeyer's nephew finally appeared. He cracked it
easily and handed it to Pirlipat, who swallowed it and immediately became
beautiful again, but Drosselmeyer's nephew, on his seventh backward step,
stepped on the Mouse Queen and stumbled, and the curse fell on him, giving him
a large head, wide grinning mouth, and cottony beard; in short, making him a
nutcracker. The ungrateful and unsympathetic Pirlipat, seeing how ugly he had
become, refused to marry him and banished him from the castle.
Marie,
while she recuperates from her wound, hears the Mouse King, son of the deceased
Madam Mouserinks, whispering to her in the middle of the night, threatening to
bite the nutcracker to pieces unless she gives him her sweets and dolls. For
the nutcracker's sake, she sacrifices them, but then he wants more and more and
finally the nutcracker tells her that if she will just get him a sword, he will finish off the Mouse King. She asks Fritz for one,
and he gives her the one from one of his toy hussars. The next night, the nutcracker comes into Marie's room
bearing the Mouse King's seven crowns,
and takes her away with him to the doll kingdom, where she sees many wonderful
things. She eventually falls asleep in the nutcracker's palace and is brought
back home. She tries to tell her mother what happened, but again she is not
believed, even when she shows her parents the seven crowns, and she is
forbidden to speak of her "dreams" anymore.
Marie
sits in front of the toy cabinet one day while Drosselmeyer is repairing one of
her father's clocks. While looking at the nutcracker and thinking about all the
wondrous things that happened, she can't keep silent anymore and swears to him
that if he were ever really real she would never behave as Pirlipat did, and
would love him whatever he looked like. At this, there is a bang and she faints
and falls off the chair. Her mother comes in to tell her that Drosselmeyer's
nephew has arrived from Nuremberg. He takes her aside and tells her that by
swearing that she would love him in spite of his looks, she broke the curse on him and made him human again. He asks her to marry him.
She accepts, and in a year and a day he comes for her and takes her away to the
doll kingdom, where she marries him and is crowned queen.
Adaptations
- Composer Carl Reinecke created eight pieces based on the story as early as 1855.[1] The pieces would be performed with narration telling a short adaptation of the story.[2]
- The Nutcracker (Histoire d'un casse-noisette, 1844) is a retelling by Alexandre Dumas, père of the Hoffmann tale, nearly identical in plot. This was the version used as the basis for the 1892 Tchaikovsky ballet The Nutcracker, but in that, Marie's name is usually changed to Clara.
- The story was adapted for BBC Radio in four weekly 30-minute episodes by Brian Sibley, with original music by David Houston and broadcast 9 December to 30 December 1991 on BBC Radio 5, later re-broadcast 27 December to 30 December 2010 on BBC Radio 7. The cast included Tony Robinson as "The Nutcracker", Edward de Souza as "Drosselmeyer", Eric Allen as "The Mouse King", James Grout as "The King" and Angela Shafto as "Mary".
- The story was issued as a storybook and tape in the Once Upon a Time fairy tale series.
- The Nutcracker (Polish: Dziadek do orzechów) is a 1967 film directed by Halina Bielińska.
- It was also adapted into the 1979 stop motion film Nutcracker Fantasy, the traditional animation films Schelkunchik (Russia, 1973), and The Nutcracker Prince (Canada, 1990)[3] and the 2010 film The Nutcracker in 3D.
- There is a German animated direct-to-video version of the story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, released in 2004, which was dubbed into English for American showings. It uses only a small portion of Tchaikovsky's music and adapts the Hoffmann story very loosely. The English version was the last project of veteran voice actor, Tony Pope, before his death in 2004.
- The Mickey Mouse Nutcracker is an adaptation of this tale, with Minnie Mouse playing Marie, Mickey playing the Nutcracker, Ludwig Von Drake playing Drosselmeyer, albeit very briefly, and Donald Duck playing the Mouse King.
- The Enchanted Nutcracker (1961) is a made-for-TV adaptation of the tale, written in the style of a Broadway musical, starring Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence. It was shown once as a Christmas special, and never repeated.
- In 2001, a direct-to-DVD CGI-animated movie, Barbie in the Nutcracker, was made by Mattel Entertainment starring Barbie in her first-ever movie and features the voices of Kelly Sheridan as Barbie/Clara/Sugarplum Princess and Kirby Morrow as the Nutcracker/Prince Eric.
- In 2010, The Nutcracker in 3D – a live-action film, based only loosely on the original story – was released.
- The Nutcracker (2013) is New Line's live-action version of the story reimagined as a drama with action and a love story. It was directed by Adam Shankman[4] and written by Darren Lemke.[5]
- Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale is a 2007 holiday themed animated direct-to-video film produced by Warner Bros. Animation.
- In 2012, Big Fish Games published a computer game Christmas Stories: The Nutcracker inspired by the story.
- Care Bears Nutcracker Suite is based on the story.
- On December 25, 2015, German television station ARD aired a new live-action adaptation of the story as part of the 6 auf einen Streich (Six in one Stroke) television series.[6]
- Disney's 2018 live-action film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a retelling of the story; it is directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston.[7]
References
· "Nussknacker
und Mausekönig, Op.46 (Reinecke, Carl)". IMSLP/Petrucci Music
Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music.
· · Fleming, Adam
(November 30, 2011). "Adam
Shankman To Helm 'The Nutcracker'". Deadline.com. Retrieved December 1, 2011.
· · White, James
(December 7, 2009). "The
Nutcracker Is Back(er)".
Empire Online. Retrieved November 26, 2011.
·
"The
Nutcracker and the Four Realms Press Kit" (PDF).
wdsmediafile.com. Walt Disney Studios. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
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