Beauty and the Beast (Disney song) author Jerry Griswold believes that the song's opening line "tale as old as time" alludes to the fact that Belle's story is an ancient, timeless one "deliberately situated within the context of other traditional tales;" hers is simply "the newest incarnation" of it. "The Translation of the Songs in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast": an example of Manipulation" author Lucía Loureiro Porto agrees that although the song "does not tell any story, it is made of phrases that imply that love is as old a feeling as mankind." According to Perry Seibert of AllMovie, "Beauty and the Beast" is "as
Beauty and the Beast peasants; it may reflect the social changes occurring at the time of its first writing. Hamburger (2015) points out that the design of the Beast in the 1946 film adaptation by Jean Cocteau was inspired by the portrait of Petrus Gonsalvus, a native of Tenerife who suffered from hypertrichosis, causing an abnormal growth of hair on his face and other parts, and who came under the protection of the French king and married a beautiful Parisian woman named Catherine. The tale has been notably adapted for screen, stage, prose, and television over the years. Beauty and the Beast Beauty and