Cendrillon

1 Writer

Additional Project Info

The beloved fairy tale we know as Cinderella has hundreds of variants in all parts of the globe. The original, Rhodopis, (meaning rosy cheeks) was an oral tale about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt told by Strabo, a Greek geographer, around two thousand years ago. The first literary European version, Cenerentola, (meaning ash cinders) was published in Italy by Giambattista Basile, in 1634. The version we are most familiar with was published in French by Charles Perrault in 1697 as Cendrillon, meaning (little ashes) and became anglicized as Cinderella. Perrault is credited with the addition of the iconic glass slippers. The moral of the tale being that beauty is a treasure but graciousness is priceless. Without it, nothing is possible; with it, one can do anything. Conversely, the second moral is, even possessing intelligence, courage, breeding and common sense, you can still fail without the help and patronage of a godmother. There are dozens of books, operas, ballets, plays, musicals, films, animations and even video games adapted from or loosely based on the Cendrillon/Cinderella plot. Cendrillon can be catalogued as a 510A, Persecuted Heroine, if persecuted by a female Antagonist, or 510B if persecuted by a male Antagonist. In my scripts Cendrillon is a 510B.