"SNOWWHITE" "Child, are you ill?" "Why ask me that?" "You, after all, wish death on her who always stung your eyes by being over fair." "Why such a gentle gaze for me?" "The kindness which so lovingly wells from your eye is only sham, the kindly tone to order made." "Hate dwells within your heart." "Did you not send the huntsman out and bid him raise his falchion high against the abominated face?" "Have I been taken ill, you ask?" "Scorn ill becomes such winsome lips." "Yes, kindness turns to wicked scorn when it deals wanton cruel wounds." "I am not ill;" "why, I am dead!" "Yes, I am dead." "That poisoned apple hurt so much, oh so much, and Mother, you, you were the one who brought me it." "And now you mock my being ill?" "Love, you mistake me." "You are ill, yes, really gravely ill." "The wholesome garden air, no doubt, will do you good." "I beg of you, bruise not your toubled little head on any thoughts." "Be quite at peace, stop brooding over this or that, seek exercise, go jump and run, hail and pursue the butterfly, abuse the air, berate it as not warm enough yet." "Be a child and you will soon have lost that hue that overcasts your rosy face like a pale shroud." "Think on no sin, the sin shall be forgotten." "Years ago I may have sinned in your regard;" "who'd now bring that up?" "Unpleasant things the mind forgets with ease when it can think dear things close by." "What!" "Not in tears!" "Yes," "I must cry to hear that you would break the neck of what went by so swiftly as you meant to wring my own." "Yes." "Mourn culpable forgetfulness which aims to flatter." "Like this you harness wings to sin, and yet it flies ill with the new-rigged pair which does not fit." "It roosts too near to me and you try to jolly it off with blandishment;" "so near to me and you, so touchable near, that will never leave my mind, nor will you, who committed it." "Huntsman, did you not vow my death?" "Indeed, Princess, swore deadly blow." "Yet dealt it not, as loud and true the fairy tale confirms." "What moved me was your touching plea, your countenance as sweet as the snow kissed of the sun." "I sheathed what was to murder you, plunged it in the deer that chanced to cross our path," "I sucked its blood up with a ravenous will." "But left your own untapped..." "Say not, therefore, I vowed your death, for, pitying, I broke the vow before I ever did you harm." "There, then..." "Why are you crying so?" "He raised the dagger just in jest;" "To stab at you, he would have had to stab his own compassion first." "So he refrained, for kindness lives fresh in him like the sparkling sun." "Give me a kiss, and forget," "let's see a bright eye, and good sense." "How am I to kiss these lips whose kisses spurred the hunter on to brutish deed?" "I'll never kiss you." "It was with kisses, after all, that you inflamed this hunter here." "And death was mine the instant he became your sweet and best beloved." "What's this you say?" "She... me?" "With kisses?" "I really think it must be true, this man in the green coat stands in less awe than is fit before the Queen's high majesty." "O Snowwhite, what a wicked game did callous hatred play with you!" "A wonder that you are alive." "Both knife and poison you withstood ;" "What stuff can you be fashioned of?" "You're dead, and yet alive, too touchingly alive." "Indeed, so little dead, the living fall in love with you!" "Tell: did this huntsman stab at you?" "No, in this man's bosom beats a feeling and compassionate heart." "If but the Queen had such a heart she'd be a better mother to me..." "I have your good much more at heart than wild distrust suggests to you." "I never launched this huntsman forth to you by kisses." "Mindless fear has led you to suspect all this." "The truth is that I all along have loved you as my pure, dear child." "Where would be cause, and grounds, and right for me to hate you, whom I cherish just like a child of my own breast!" "Do not trust the craven voice that whispers sin which is not there." "Trust the right and not the left," "I mean the false, which presumes to make the wicked mother of me, envious of beauty." "Come, do not pay heed to the preposterous yarn pouring into the world's all too receptive ear the news that I am crazed with jealousy, by nature bad, while all of it is empty talk." "I love you ;" "no confessing has confessed more genuinely yet." "Your beauty only makes me glad, beauty in one's own daughter is like balm to mother's flagging joy, not goad to such repulsive deed as fantasy has underlaid this fable here, this spectacle." "Don't turn away, be a dear child, trust parent word like your own self." "I'd be happy to believe, since to believe is quiet bliss." "But with how much belief can I believe where no belief can be, where roguish malice lies in wait, where proud injustice stiff-necked sits?" "You speak as gently as you can, but cannot act as gently yet." "The eye which glints with so much scorn darts down to me so dire with threat, unmotherlike, and grins with doom behind your tongue's endearing notes which it disdains:" "it tells the truth and I believe in it, in that proud eye alone, not the treacherous tongue." "I find your trust well placed, my child." "Must you keep adding, little prince, more fuel yet unto these flames, when healing floods is what we need?" "Mind, piebald stranger, mind you don't trespass upon a queen's domain." "What would I not dare for the Princess's dear sake?" "What, monstrous woman?" "What?" "Indeed;" "I may seem small and weak but I'll repeat a thousand times, ten, a hundred thousand times to you:" "a wicked crime has here occurred, and witness points to you, the Queen." "For poison meat was flung before this lovely child as to a dog." "Why?" "Let your malice tell you that, your easy conscience!" "Come, sweet child," "let's go indoors for a short spell and ponder over this our grief." "If you feel weak, just lean upon this trusty shoulder which will rejoice in such a load." "We beg to leave you, Queen, meanwhile to that short span of time;" "we will later resume our talk." "Please come, allow me this sweet liberty." "Begone then, torn-up rigging you." "Go, bridal pair, to death betrothed." "Go, grief, take puniness in tow and lovey-dovey arm in arm." "Come, tender huntsman," "let us chat." "I'd gladly spend the livelong day just talking, arm in arm with you." "How it acts on me, the speech that issues from your lovely lips!" "How merry is your word alone." "Enraptured by its wealth, my ear hangs in a hammock, as it were, of heark'ning ;" "dreams of violins, of lispings, nightingales' sweet sobs, love twitterings." "And now and then against our garden's margin drift dream ripples like the lake's light surf." "Speak, and I am wrapt in sleep, and thus a prisoner of love, hobbled, yet infinitely rich, free as no freeman yet was free." "You speak high-minded princes' talk." "No, let me listen, so the love I swore to you down in the park's green pleasances shall never waft in idle words away from me." "I would but listen and within respond unto your note of love." "Speak, so that I may ever be silent and true to you." "Forsworn is quick with words;" "it speaks as fast as a spring in the wind that lashes it and bubbles over babbingly." "No..." "let me silence keep, and faith with you." "This understood, I love you more than just with loving." "Tenderness ceases to know itself then, showers moisture upon me, as on you." "Let love be humid as the night, lest ever arid dust perturb it." "Speak, then, so that your speech, like dew, may trickle down upon our love." "You are so still..." "Where are you looking?" "Why, you talk like a waterfall of silence, which you do not keep." "What ails you?" "You look so gravely, so wretchedly down at your toes as if you sought the language there that whispers love." "Be not distressed, speak out if something weighs on you, spread it face upward like a rug on which we'll then disport ourselves." "On heartache it's such fun to frolic." "You are still talking, though you pledged silence a while ago." "Why talk continually and in such haste?" "Trust does not know such rapid speech and love is fond of downy rest." "Oh, if you were not dedicated to my delight in every way, then say so, please." "Speak, for you said betrayal used such busy talk, so glibly spoke bad faith alone." " Oh drop this, please." " Yes, let us chat, and be cheerful," "let low spirits and all paltry woe be banished from the realm of love." "Lets frolic then, dance and make merry;" "what care we for the ills of Time who would command us to be mute?" "Something to see there in the park?" "What I see is dear and sweet to just the eye, which merely gazes." "It's holy to the sense which captures the picture in its subtle nets." "But to the mind which knows the past it's ugly like the turbid flow of muddy water." "The sight is of two kinds," "lovely and bad." "Provocative and sweet." "Come here and look at it with your own eyes." "No, you tell it." "What do you see?" "And I will gather from your lips the picture's subtle lineaments." "When you depict it you soothe the harshness of the view with judgment wise and shrewd." "Well?" "Start." "I'd like to hear instead of watching." "It is the sweetest sensual glow that ever kindled loving pair;" "the Queen kissing the huntsman's lips and he returning kiss for kiss." "They sit beneath the willow tree whose pendent trailers wave and brush at either head." "The grass embraces the knot of intertangled feet." "The planking groans beneath the weight of two bodies turned to one in their ecstatic bliss of love." "Oh, thus a pair of tigers love deep in the jungle, world-forlorn." "The sweet delight which makes them one, tears them apart, only the more entranced to give themselves again." "I am speechless and imageless before this scene." "Care you to see it and be speechless too?" "No, it would turn my stomach." "Come, away from the repulsive sight." "The magic of its colors scarce will let me loose;" "it is a scene which surely has sweet love for painter." "How she is lying there, the Queen, fair crushed in his encircling arms." "How she cries out with passion, that yokel staunching her with kisses." "This is how lid is put on dish, no, on a heaven, for heavenly delight is surely what this mouth encloses." "That rascal is quite impudent, he thinks his forester's green suit saves him from stabs." "I call stabbing what so entranced gleams up to me." "I am delirious." "What a woman..." "Not the rascal, just the woman." "He spoils it all, the rascal, the brute!" "Ah, that sweet, sweet woman..." "If only I could lose the mind that took this in." "Now I am lost." "Tempest is sweeping over all that once was love, still wants the name, but bears it not." "Enough!" "Alas for me that I must hear..." "For both, what I was made to see!" "I want nothing more than to be dead and smiling." "Dead." "That's what I am and always was." "I've never known hot gusts of life," "I am as still as yielding snow wich lies supine for rays of sun to take it up." "Thus I am snow and melt beneath the warming breath which wafts for spring and not for me." "Sweet is the seeping off." "Dear Earth, receive me in your dwelling house!" "I hurt so underneath the sun." "Is it my doing, this sharp ache?" "No, not yours..." "How could it be?" "How dear you are!" "The smile you give me, the laugh you offer!" "Love me not," "I only undermine your peace." "Oh, had I only left you there!" "How fair you were, so still and white." "Like snow upon the wintry world." "Snow?" "Always snow?" "Forgive me, winter image dear," "Iikeness of pious white repose!" "If I offended you, it was done but in Love." "Now Love, in tears, averts his face from you again towards the Queen." "And pardon, love, for lifting you from that glass vault in which you lay and rested with cheeks like roses, open lips, and semblance of a living breath..." "That was a sight sweet unto death :" "would only I had left it so, then love would kneel before you still." "Well, well!" "Now that I am alive you cast me off as if I weren't!" "How strange you men are, to be sure." "Do scold me, hard ; it pleases me." "Hate me, and I'll drop on my knees to you." "Call me worthless knave:" "it shall be boon to me." "But now let me seek out the Queen who I intend to liberate from an unworthy love." "Please be right angry, right enraged with me." "Why should I, though?" "Do tell me why?" "Because I am the kind of brute that throws you over for another more teasing to his mind." "A brute, you?" "No, never a brute!" "So, it is more tempting to your mind, your senses?" "How lacking in sense do your senses prove." "What pack of hounds incites your sense so that, affrighted like a doe, you flee before the enemy who chases you." "But let it be, flee from me then, run to the brook which slakes your thirst with better drink." "I'll stay and smile;" "enticing you with pallid arms" "I'll trace your flight with merry voice." ""Snowwhite's awaiting you, come here and knock at the old door", and then I laugh aloud." "Then you will turn your dear and faithful head to me and will implore me to be still, for screaming was no use." "Do go!" "I wish you'd go now;" "I dismiss you." "My humble duty to my Queen." "Your humble duty to the Queen?" "Can I be dreaming?" "But of course!" "Am I not allowed to give you greetings for Mamma who down there in the shady park is engaged in some embroidery?" "Some needlework to do with love..." "Not my affair." "I owe her love, and love will greet her thus through you." "Say I forgive her..." "Rather no; as things stand now it would not be exactly fitting for a child." "Seek pardon for me on your knees;" "you will be kneeling anyway for your own love's sake." "Work it in as a sweet tidbit on the side and take due note how graciously she'll nod and in strained emotion" "leave her hand to your consuming kiss, and, since you were so well behaved, send me forgiveness for my fault." "How I impatiently await my mother's word!" "So, do hurry off." "Snowwhite, I cannot make you out." "That's neither here nor there, go now, I ask you." "Leave alone the flower which shows its fullest bloom to solitude alone." "It was not meant for you in any case." "Therefore be calm." "Surrender me here to a dream which gorgeously unfolds like an exotic plant." "Go to other flower, be off and sip a sweeter nectar there." "Compose yourself, and tarry here." "I'll bring the Queen back here for you all reconciled." "In just a while I'll seek her in the shady park." "Of that foul hunter I'll demand a reckoning, when, where, and how I may encounter him." "Till then, be calm and wait for her return." "He is all restless, and commends repose to me, which clearly has a deeper hold on me than him." "Let all go forward as it must." "The Prince's breach of faith does hurt but I don't cry;" "as I would not be jubilant if now I had proof of his most devoted love." "I do not care to act out more chagrin than does chagrin, and it stays mute and gulps its fear down, which is what I do myself." "Here comes Mamma herself, and quite alone." "O kindly Mother, pardon me." "What is this?" "Do get up, my child." "No, on my knees before you..." "thus." "What is amiss?" "What moves you so, what is that tremor in your breast?" "Get up and tell what troubles you." "Do not withdraw the gentle hand, I want to cover it with kisses." "How I was longing for this touch!" "Squirming excuses do not plead so anxiously to be forgiven as I do here." "Forget, forgive," "let you be my indulgent mother, and me the child of your kind heart, who shyly nestles at your waist." "O sweet hand, I suspected you of fell design upon my life, proff'ring the apple: it's not true." "Sin is so subtly engineered by multifarious thought alone." "Yes, thinking is the only sin existing here." "Absolve me, please, of the distrust which hurts you so." "To love you is all I want." "What?" "Was the huntsman never sent?" "Did I not spur him on with kisses to do the sinful, sinful deed?" "Think how your thinking goes awry." "I only feel!" "And feeling's though is shrewd, it is awake to every point of this affair." "And by your leave feeling conceives far more nobly than thinking does of any case." "Its judgment, bare of any judging, judges more shrewdly, more simply too." "So I don't hold with thinking much, it pores and ponders back and forth, full of grave airs and lofty view, says " It was thus"" "and forces down a petty verdict of damnation." "Off with the judge who only thinks!" "Not feeling, he will think minutely." "His judgment has the stomachache, it's pale and drives the plaintiff mad, acquits the sinner all the more of sin and voids the whole complaint, all in the same breath." "Go and fetch that other justice for me, sweet all-unknowing feeling bring." "Hear what it says." "Why, not a thing!" "It smiles, kisses sin to death, treats it to sisterly caress, with kisses strangles it." "My feeling declares you free of any sin, it kneels in suppliant entreaty before you, begging :" "call me sinner, me, who so tensely sues for pardon!" "I sent the poisoned apple down, you ate of it and died, you know." "Dwarves kept you in the catafalque of glass till by the Prince's kiss you were brought back to life." "This is what happened, is it not?" "But for the kiss, it is all true;" "these lips of mine have never yet been kissed by desecrating lips of man." "How could the Prince have kissed, at that?" "No hair yet grows on his smooth cheek, he's but a little boy as yet." "High bred, indeed, but precious small, weak as the body he inheres," "small as the sense he cherishes." "About a prince's kiss, Mamma, say nothing more." "The kiss is dead as if it never had perceived the moistening touch of lip to lip." "What did I mean to speak of?" "Yes..." "Transgression fallen on its knees before you, the dear transgressor." "No, that is false." "You tell yourself a lying tale." "The story goes that I am the ill-natured Queen, who sent her huntsman after you and brought you poisoned fruit to eat." "Now make precise response to this." "Is it to mock me that you ask forgiveness from me?" "All this studied mime and move, shrewdly premeditated speech?" "I must say, you have rendered me suspicious now." "What's in your mind?" "To gaze at this mild, kindly hand, to look at its beauty, wondrously stirring emotions in a child all but extinct." "No, you are not a sinner;" "how could you have found the mind for it?" "Nor am I one." "We are as yet unstained by any shamefulness." "Look purely up to the pure sky, do good, as we are doing now." "We may have done each other harm, but that occurred too long ago for us to know." "Open your dear lips and, I beg of you, tell me the merriest thing you can." "I issued word for you to die, spared neither kisses nor caresses for him who was to track you down, who chivied you like forest game through woods and meadows, till you dropped." "Yes, I know that tale, and more, that of the apple, the glass shrine." "Tell something else, oh be so kind." "Does nothing other come to mind?" "Are you so fond of those devices you cannot stop redrawing them?" "With kisses did I spur the hunter, no, the killer, on." "To think how my kisses rained like dewdrops down upon the face which swore me faith, and doom to you." "Forget this, if you please, dear Queen." "Give it no thought, I beg of you." "Roll not those big eyes as you do." "Why are you shaking?" "All your life you did nothing but good to me," "I feel such gratitude for you..." "If love knew better words it might perhaps discourse less clumsily." "If love, being boundless, is poor at speech, it is because it's so wholly wrapped up in yourself." "Hate me, enabling me to love but the more childishly, the more for the impulsive warmth alone and for no other reason but that love itself is sweet and choice to him who brings it simply forth." "Do you not hate me?" "I hated myself much more than you." "I once did hate you, envying your beauty, spiting all the world," "Ioud as the world was in your praise, in homage bowing low to you, but looking at myself, the Queen, askance and sidelong." "That roused my blood and made it tigerish." "I did not see with my own eyes," "I did not hark with my own ear." "Mere groundless hatred saw and heard, ate, daydreamed, played and slept for me." "In sadness I laid down my head, did what hate did." "That's over now." "Hate wants to love." "Love hates itself for loving less than vehemently." "But look, here comes the youthful Prince." "Go, kiss him, call him your beloved." "Tell him I'm warmly fond of him despite some bitter words thrown off in your behalf." "Go, tell him so!" "You, lovely Queen, are whom I seek." "Well!" "Lovely?" "A genteel salute." "I love you, Prince, for Snowwhite's sake, with whom you wish to be betrothed." "Snowwhite declines to be my bride." "She says I am changed since lifting her out of her shrine and bringing her here." "If she is right, you are to blame." "To you I wholly give myself." "Whence such a feeble cast of mind that like a wavering stalk of reed bends to each shaking of the wind?" "Whence?" "I don't know whence, truth to tell." "But this I know, only too well:" "I am in love and with whom?" "With you, who are her Grace the Queen." "Such love is little to my taste." "It moves too fast." "Too juvenile your whole demeanour is for me, far too mercurial your mind, too rash such acts." "Have patience, Sir, don't tell me of your love for me." "You have some scolding left to do at me, for Snowwhite's sake, whom you quite callously forget." "Ho, Huntsman!" " Who wants the villain?" " No villain he." "In hunter's garb he is ten thousand princes worth." "Be not so rash, consider whom your idle storming may offend." " Ah, there you are." " At your command." "Act out, as if the time were now, the scene of Snowwhite's late ordeal in the forest." "Here and now, act as if you meant to kill." "And you, girl, entreat him for your life." "Your audience, the Prince and I, will blame you if you play your parts too gingerly." "Well, then, begin!" "Here, Snowwhite, I will take your life." "Oh, just like that?" "Lift up the dagger first." "I feel no terror at your haughty threat." "Why would you want to choke to death this life of mine which never has inflicted taunt on you or harm?" "The Queen hates you ;" "her orders were to kill you here, with kisses sweet she vehemently urged me on." "With kisses..." "What seems to trouble the dear Queen?" "Nothing, go on..." "You're doing well." "The villain plays the villain's part most naturally;" "it covers him as snugly as his hunter's garb." "Prince, Prince!" "Therefore prepare yourself for death." "And make no difficulties, please." "You irritate the Queen's eye and so must quit this goodly world." "She who commands me wishes it." "Get ready; why do you resist?" "I have no right to struggle, when rude death has me by the throat?" "Are you my death, you flinty man?" "No, your gaze is mild and good, upon your brow dwell gentle thoughts." "You kill wild beasts, but no such men who are not openly your foes." "I see it now, compassion makes your weapon falter." "Thanks!" "If but the Queen were minded so." "Really!" "Was this not God's truth?" "Has what you really mean slipped out?" "In that case, Huntsman, drop the part so unbecoming such a man." "Go to and charge the wicked wench who frightened me all afternoon with crafty prating." "Kill her, bring here that faithless heart of hers and lay it at your sovereign's feet." "What is...?" "Snowwhite, run away!" "Villain, let go at once!" "O Queen, the serpent that you really are!" "All this is but a game..." "Let's go into the park." "Spring air, strolls up and down the shady lanes," "light chatter on the graveled paths shall be our quarrel's happy end." "I am a serpent in your eyes, if not much worse." "No harm in that, for the impending hour will prove to you that I am not." "Snowwhite, come here." "Prince, by your leave I'm calling her child of my heart." "We were just acting, after all!" "The roles were aptly cast, indeed." "In earnest, as it were, a blade was leveled in a hunter's hand :" ""Who is the villain?"" "Come, let us all into the park." "I don't fully trust you anymore." "Come, rabbit princelet." "Huntsman, come;" "let laugher ring us on our way." "Aye, Queen." "Now you are pining, as before, are bitter, give me mournful looks;" "why such a wordless change of mood?" "You know I do not nurse a grudge, so you repine quite groundlessly." "The Prince has turned back his love to you again." "Yet you sulk, and don't see the love approaching you on every side." "The idea that grates on you and hounds me will not leave me, it always haunts my fearful mind and never, while I live and breathe, will I quite cleanse myself of it." "It stains my heart with tarry black and muffles any joyous sound within my soul." "I am so tired, that open coffin I would seek to lie in, an unfeeling form." "If I could just be with my dwarves" "I'd be at peace and you'd be rid of me." "I plague you, and our face proclaims you wish me a thousand miles away." "No, no!" "If I could just be at the dwarves'!" "How was it there?" "All still and blithe?" "Peace dwelt there silent as the snow." "Were I with them, who were as kind as brothers to me;" "in their sphere, sparkling with cheerful cleanliness." "Pain, like a nasty residue repellent to the well-bred taste," "life's polished table never knew." "Joy, like a bed sheet, was so pure you dropped off into sleep on it, into a realm of motley reveries." "Unchivalrous behaviour was unknown among the people there, there everyone loved gentle ways, conduct of breeding." "Discourse sweet found lips that echoed in response." "Were I still there!" "But something drove me back in tears among you here, back to a world in which a heart is bound to droop and waste away." "There was no hatred there, among your dwarves?" "Then no love either, perhaps..." "For love is fed by hate, you know, and love above all loves to love frozen, bitter hate." "I never heard an uncouth word." "Hate never troubled love." "If love was there," "I truly cannot tell." "Hatred is called for to make loving felt." "There I knew not what loving meant;" "here, where but hatred is, I know." "Longing for love as I have been I know of love;" "by hatred touched, the questing spirit yearns for love." "While yonder at the dwarves' it dwelled in undisturbed serenity." "No more of this." "It's past and gone." "Then let us laugh together, dear." "No, laughing needs a different mood from that my bosom harbours now." "I'm only in a mood to cry." "With kiss and blandishment you spurred the huntsman and just recently pricked him to murder, after all." ""Go to and charge the wicked wench," you said and fairly shook with rage." "Though later calling it a game." "You are full of vengefulness, play an unheard-of game with me who know not how to guard myself." "Sink me into my grave, Snowwhite's dear retreat." "I will attain a smiling mood below ground, where my joy resides." "Lay me beside it, be so kind!" "You're smiling, laughing now, you know?" "It's for a single moment, though;" "the very next retells to me of wickedness and woe from you, shakes threatening fingers, points for long," "looks with wide-open eyes at me, as you are doing ;" "whispers then :" "this mother is no mother, nor the lovely world I knew." "Love is suspicion, silent hate, the Prince, a hunter," "life is death." "You're not the good Queen but the proud sensuous one, who sent the gory huntsman after me." "You fancy him, you flatter him, allow him the voluptuous kiss by which you egg him on to kill." "I am his prey." "All this is what the other, bitter, moment says." "You'll hate me doubly now, no doubt." "I stoked his fire with kisses, right?" "Not so?" "Why not speak up and tell?" "Shout it out loud to the mild world, repeat it to the winds, the clouds, carve it in trees' luxuriant trunks, breathe it unto the gentle airs, so that with their perfume they might dispense it like a gift of spring." "Then everyone will sip of it, praise you as guiltless, call me bad, because I fed murder with love and launched it with a poison kiss." "Ho, here!" "Where are you, Huntsman?" "Come." "All done with shame, I will kiss you and call you most beloved man, the best, most faithful, strongest, the loveliest and most impudent." "Snowwhite, you help me praise the man." "Enough, this maddens you." "I wish I had not touched again that festering wound." "It bleeds afresh and now will never heal again." "If you could pardon me, o Queen." "To hell with pardoning, with shame, with long-suffering mercy!" "Ho there, serf!" "You called, exalted lady?" "My chosen man..." "But first the kiss." "If I could perish..." "But it seems I am to stay and explain this game of ours, or she who's lt will call it coarse." "You speak in my stead, tell the foolish, stricken maiden here my hate of her, my love of her." "Brandish your knife." "Don't, my dear, let it repose right in its sheath, all you should do is comfort her." "Tell her of things she can believe and I find calming;" "mute it all back to what it was before this saucy game began." "Begin, then, and be on your guard, say not too little," "Iest your speech in its jejuneness say too much." "Snowwhite, come over to me." "Why, gladly,since I fear no more." "I meant to kill you, you still think?" " Yes, and yet, no." "I throttle yes, and no is quick to tell me yes." "Say that I do believe." "Speak so that yes must aye believe you, for of no I'm tired and yes is dear." "I will believe whatever you say." "I love to say "yes, I believe."" "No's gone against my grain so long." "So: yes, I do believe you, yes." "This is Snowwhite's true voice, you see?" "Mistrustful, she is not herself but a tormentor who torments herself and others bound to her by love." "If now I call a lie what suspicion says, a barefaced, venomous lie, why..." "Then Snowwhite believes me?" "Do you not?" "Yes, and how gladly!" "Why not yes, to anything you say." "Yes-saying feels so good, is so endlessly sweet." "I hold it true." "Why, if you piled up fairy tales as high as heaven, tried lies on me palpably crude, grossly inept," "I still would answer yes, forever yes." "I have to say yes, always yes;" "faith never has so sweetly swelled my heart as now, nor a confessing been half so dear as now, this yes." "Say what you like, I will believe." "How easy you make things for me, for the dear Queen, for yourself." "For which, my thanks." "Still think, I'm peddling shameless lies to you;" "in my dear Lady's interest I string together idle tales." "No, don't lie to your own self." "I know it was your soul that spoke." "I trust you." "Such confidence walks surely, never falsely trusts." "Speak lies, but my very credence will convert them into silver truth." "I say beforehand yes to all;" "whatever you may think and speak my yes will stamp the truth on it." "Speak, for within my trusting mind is held a captive, as it were, who longs to leave his fusty cell." "Free then of guilty and shame I here pronounce the Queen." "You think it right?" "I, think it right?" "Why, on what grounds should I distrust such welcome news?" "I do believe it; carry on." "Run on, as briskly as you like." "That she enflamed me to the crime with fiery kisses is untrue." "The fairy tale that says so, lies." "How could it be truth when you call it lie?" "Go on, I am convinced." "That she detests you like an adder for your fresh beauty's sake, that is a lie:" "is she not herself as splendorous as a summer tree?" "Look at her now, and call her fair." "Fair, oh how fair..." "The lavish splendour of spring is not so exquisite." "Why, her magnificence excels the polished marble given shape by an accomplished sculptor." "Sweet as mellow dream is she;" "the fervid sleeper's fancy can't imagine such a fiery shape." "And should she be envious of me, who like the winter maid so still and cold stands by her side?" "That's past belief." "How could it be?" "Continue then, you see I am quite of your mind in this affair." "Beauty does not hate beauty so as fairy tales have given out." "No, for she is so fair herself, how could she hate the sister form which, lying at her feet, implores to be permitted as her shade to dwell in her vicinity?" "That I had meant to kill you is of rankest childish fancy born." "I never had the heart for it." "From the very start I felt touched by the childish sweet appeal of your lips and eye." "I lowered knife and arm as one, and drew you up to me, sweet maid." "The deer which sprang across our path I stabbed instead." "Was it not so?" "I hardly think it worth our while that I should vouch for it." "But, yes." "Of course it's yes." "That's right." "Why, yes." "The Queen did not send poison to your dwarves';" "the poisoned apple is untrue." "Poison the lie which so asserts." "This venomous assertion is plump and enticing" "like a fruit swelled with seductive glamour, but so made inside that he who dares to taste of it is stricken ill." "A black and crazy and repugnant lie, to scare small children with." "Throw out the lie." "What more can you bring forward?" "Please, produce another silly lie and wring its neck deftly!" "Why is the Queen so silent?" "She's musing over sorrow spent, the error which possessed you two and wrought malignant flaring strife." "So much misjudgment makes her weep." "Snowwhite, go kiss her, if I may make free to ask the favour now." "Allow me this sweet embrace." "How pale you are!" "Excuse my wish to take the life out of your pallor with kisses." "Might they drink up all traces of the dreary hue which so impairs your loveliness." "Say, Huntsman, don't you know more news?" "Oh, so much more..." "But I fall silent now, ends meet with kisses now, although the onset is not over yet." "The Queen is nodding graciously and in her grace my speech is quenched." "Blissful, I therefore hold my peace." "Kind Father, press your august seal upon the quarrel, still unquenched between two such high-flaring hearts." "Take this kiss, and as messenger of peace stamp out the jealous flames." "I always thought you were at peace." "What sort of quarrel, sweet child?" "No quarrel left, just smiling words." "Jest which parades with serious mien and fools you with portentous brow." "A feud there was, but is no more." "Love knew how to prevail and hate went down before such force of love." "I hated, but it was in jest, an impulse, reckoned genuine, though but the menace of a whim." "That's all, and now is dulcet peace." "Yes, injured envy thought a while it had to hate." "But it hurt myself far more than others here." "Snowwhite corroborates it all." "And is this hunter free of guilt?" "The Prince indicts him bitterly." "The very sky is not more pure." "You think, perhaps, that he's had illicit concourse with the Queen, kiss and embrace exchanging..." "Believing that, you would mistake this fine man's character and mind, which are as noble as a gem." "Love has to love him, honour crown his brow, beyond a doubt." "Brave man, as many thanks as gratitude may owe to you," "I shall repay." "All is in harmony, my Lord, contention looks like skies of blue." "If so, a miracle indeed has come to pass in this brief hour." "The cad is thus a cad no more." "Be silent, noble Prince;" "ignoble is your insistence on a flaw which you depict time and again, and strive to make proliferate instead of fade." "Had it grown big, we would not now be standing here so peacefully assembled." "Give your hand, forget the error in a friendly clasp." "Shall I forget that the accursed poisonous evildoer here, this villain dressed in hunter's green, did but a little hour ago rut on the Queen's abundant grace?" "Try making me forget that I am an anointed prince and lord, but not this sin which is too great to be forgotten or annulled." "Come, there's no sinning any more." "Sin fled before us and has now become extinct." "As faithful child, I kiss this sinner's hand and plead with her to sin a great deal more in such endearing way." "What, Prince?" "Would you pile up contention here?" "Have you forgotten that you swore an oath but some few hours ago?" "Did you not pledge the Queen your love, knees bent before that revered sight of splendour?" "Now show your love, for it behoves you most of all in merry mood to offer homage's shy kiss." "I, too, have thought myself ill used, cast out, pursued, the prey of hate." "How stubborn and obtuse I was to think at once of wicked sin, adopt suspicion in such haste, and to be blind in bitterness." "Throw off your premature ideas of law incensed and sentence passed." "Mildness is law here, mildness is peace crowned and regnant;" "do observe the lovely consecrated feast which scatters sins high in the air and as with petals plays with them." "Be glad you can be of good cheer." "Could I but speak the way I ought in such a great and sacred cause!" "But my persuasive gift is small;" "what's more, delight's too wild in me," "I am too boisterously filled with lofty contradictory joy." "How sweetly said, you lovely child!" "Accept this kiss, and all must hold a feast of royal joy today." "Prince, you are best advised to hug the mood of universal bliss." "You surely would not want to be a stranger to a joy so heartfelt, giving, and intense?" "Still an angry look?" "Not angry, yet not reconciled ;" "at a loss for what to say." "Are you not weary any more?" "Back in your laughing, cheerful mood, scattering happiness like seeds?" "Not weary." "Never again." "But look, the Prince shuns our rejoicing timidly." "Does that become a noble lord?" "Why, yes, it does;" "a coward, anyhow." "I don't know if he is or not." "But this was not well done by him." "Go, Huntsman, bring him back to us." "I will berate him when he comes, and he is sure to;" "all he wants is to be sedulously coaxed." "Then he'll be sure to be your swain." "And then, then I submit, should we remind ourselves..." "What do I say?" "Ah yes, then say, as by coincidence one day:" ""You goaded him with fiery kisses to the..."" "Oh please be silent, please!" "It was the tale that said this." "Not you, and never I." "I said so once, once thus..." "That is all over." "Come, Father, accompany us all inside."