Snow Glass Apples: A Play For Voices (6 page)

(Pause)

It is starting to get hot in here. They have
told the people bad things about me; a little truth to add savour
to the dish, but mixed with many lies.

SFX: THE FURNACE CRACKLES.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I was bound and kept in a tiny stone cell
deep beneath the palace, and I remained there through the autumn.
Today they fetched me out of the cell; they stripped the rags from
me, and washed the filth from me, and then they shaved my head and
my loins, and they rubbed my skin with goose grease.

SFX: INSIDE A CELL, FEET CRUNCHING ON STRAW,
THE QUEEN BACKING AWAY …

QUEEN

Don’t touch—don’t you try to touch me—don’t
you dare!

SOLDIER

All right. Get her legs. You two, get her
arms. And up with her!

SFX: OUTSIDE, THE HOWL OF THE WIND, A DISTANT
CROWD

QUEEN—INTIMATE

The snow was falling as they carried me—two
men at each arm, two men at each leg—utterly exposed, and
spread-eagled and cold, through the midwinter crowds; and brought
me to this kiln.

SFX: A LOW HUBBUB, THE HOWL OF THE WINTER
WIND …

CROWD

Witch!—Monster!—Murderess!—Poisoner!
—Bitch!

PRINCE

Into the kiln with the old monster!

PRINCESS

(whispers)

Goodbye, stepmother.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

My stepdaughter stood there with her prince.
She watched me, in my indignity, but she said nothing more.

As they thrust me inside here, jeering and
chaffing as they did so,

I saw one snowflake land upon her white
cheek, and remain there without melting.

SFX: THE CROWD NOISE AND THE BOOM OF THE KILN
DOOR FROM THE OPENING SEQUENCE.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

They closed the kiln-door behind me… It is
getting hotter in here, and outside they are singing and cheering
and banging on the sides of the kiln…

She was not laughing, or jeering, or
talking. She did not sneer at me or turn away. She looked at me,
though; and for a moment I saw myself reflected in her eyes.

SFX: THE MUFFLED NOISE OF THE CROWD BECOMES
LOUD FOR A MOMENT. THEN IT FADES … UNDER IT SLOWLY THE CRACKLING OF
THE FIRE BECOMES AUDIBLE …

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I will not scream. I will not give them that
satisfaction. They will have my body, but my soul and my story are
my own, and will die with me.

The goose-grease begins to melt and glisten
upon my skin. I shall make no sound at all. I shall think no more
on this.

(pause)

I shall think instead of the snowflake on
her cheek.

(beat)

I think of her hair as black as coal, her
lips, more red than blood, her skin, snow-white.

(A beat. Then she whispers, finally, ending
it all,)

Snow-white.

SFX: AN ECHOING SILENCE. CLOSING MUSIC,
CRYSTALLINE AND DARK.

When first exploring the task of creating
this book we imagined a work like the first Gaiman Play for Voices
we created,
Murder Mysteries
. Plays are not the easiest
things to read and always present a design challenge. However after
a careful study we began to believe we could do a better job of
creating a text that was easier to follow and had a little more
life to it on the page. We tried a number of different layouts and
designs before we settled on what my wife Michelle came up with.
“Why not centre the text and change the colour of the type for the
Queen’s voice so that the reader gains a better sense of the change
from the past and present voice of the Queen.” We tried this and I
think you’ll agree that it has a natural flow that is easy to read
and makes for a lively rubinicated page design.

The early monk scribes described their pages
as
textus
meaning cloth they saw ‘thought’ as a thread, and
the narrator as a spinner of yarns and the true storyteller, the
poet, as a weaver. Our goal in creating a fine book is to create a
cloth for the story so fine that you forget the cloth altogether
and are immersed in the story. Of course it is especially alluring
when we get to work with a master weaver.

The Snow White Fairytale has a rich history
of famous illustrators such as Walter Crane (1882), Arthur Rackham
(1909), and Maurice Sendak (1973) to name a few of my favourite
artists and their Snow White book publication dates. Their vision
of the delicate girl has shaped the visions of thousands of young
minds and set the story of Snow White into the collective
unconscious of popular culture. In the forward to this book Jack
Zipes has pointed to a plethora of elaborations on Snow White’s
Grimm origins. These permeantations provide a wealth of opportunity
to envision the complexities of this story which at first may seem
as innocent as air. It is always wise to hear both sides of a story
before we cast judgement: this is something that is greatly lacking
in our culture of one sided views. Snow White always appeared to me
as unbelievably innocent and naive. Consequently, I relished the
thought of exposing the myth in pictures from a new direction. I
leapt at this chance to tell the story through the medium of wood
engraving, which seemed fitting since the first attempt on Snow
White’s life takes place in the forest. My second goal for the
artwork was to free the Queen from the injustices and biases that
have dogged her. I wanted to empower her so that she could reclaim
her humanity as Gaiman has artfully woven into the text.

I’ve been asked why I don’t use colour in my
wood engravings. It’s simply because I prefer the stark truth of
black and white. Let the colour be in the fabric of the story and
I’ll cast dramatic shadows with bold blacks and thin white lines.
Black and white has a rich tradition in relation to storytelling as
the wood blocks of Albrect Durer, John Tennial, Frans Masereel and
Lynd Ward can prove. Alfred Hitchcock’s black and white films are
another example of the black art that I admire.

Barbara Walker writes in
Feminist Fairy
Tales
, “Snow White’s stepmother seems to have been vilified
because (a) she resented being less beautiful than Snow White, and
(b) she practiced witchcraft.” Barbara Walker also sees the
injustice the Queen receives when she is labeled ‘witch’. She
states,“As for witchcraft, the last bastion of female spiritual
power fell when the church declared its all-out war on witches, the
name they gave to rural mid-wives, healers, herbalists, counselors,
and village wisewomen, inheritors of the unraveling cloak of the
pre-Christian priestess. A queen who was also a witch would have
been a formidable figure, adding political influence to spiritual
mana. Snow White’s stepmother therefore seems to me a projection of
male jealousies.” I think Gaiman has captured this point in his
retelling of the tale. With the engravings I’ve created for this
book I hoped to capture some of the feeling and history that
surrounds Snow White. I wanted to portray a beauty in the Queen and
a sense of the demonic in the Princess. I prepared each block with
a vigour that would have made the Queen proud. I polished each end
grain maple surface and carefully incised my lines with purpose. I
can only hope they do justice to
Snow Glass Apples
and the
mythos of Snow White.

George Walker