The lives of the Grimm brothers Wilhelm and Jacob, famous for their literary works in the nineteenth century, have been dramatized. Wilhelm struggles to write something entertaining among the sea of dry, non-fiction books they write, and he begins collecting oral-tradition fairy tales to print. Their life story is interspersed with reenactments of three of their stories: "The Dancing Princess," "The Cobbler and the Elves," and "The Singing Bone."