Starting with snow white

American Women Playwrights, 1900-1950
, Shafer addresses 
those who “made a particular contribution to the American theatre and […] will be 

---

79
remembered for at least one significant play which moved audiences, challenged 
conventional ideas, or broke new ground in the theatre” (Shafer 458). While one might 
argue that Merington’s work moved audiences, the play was mainly directed toward 
children, for educative purposes. Thus, the audiences that would be “moved” might not 
recognize Merington’s artistry as a playwright or storyteller.
Merington Situates 
Snow White 
in an American Context 
Although 
SNOWWHITE And the SEVEN DWARFS: Fairytale Play, with 
incidental Music, for Children: Founded on ‘Schneewittchen’ by Goerner, and the Fairy 
Tale Plays of the Brothers Grimm
is based on “a German play for children by a prolific 
writer of children’s comedies and fairy tale drama,” Merington productively adapts the 
former European tradition and folkloric base to speak to American culture (“The Little 
Girl/Little Mother” 106). Despite her address of the conventional, which is somewhat 
chastised in the aforementioned critical texts, it is likely that it was this very subject 
matter, in a tale like 
Snow White 
that made her highly relevant in her day. Lucia, et al., 
argue, “The melodrama, and more particularly the maternal melodrama, were staples of 
the era” (8). Specifically, a “variation of the maternal melodrama, in a more updated 
form, centers on an erotic triangle involving a mother, her love interest or second 
husband, and her late-teen/early twenties daughter” (Lucia, et al., 9). Even though the 
theme is recognized as a focal point of cinematic production here, one might argue that 
this, the central conflict of 
Snow White
,
 
is precisely what the American public was 
interested in seeing depicted, or re-framed, again and again.

---

80
In light of these cultural desires, Merington keenly begins the action of her 
version of 
SNOWWHITE 
with the Prince of Goldland and his infatuation with Snow 
White. In so doing, she not only draws the romance between the Prince and Princess to 
the forefront, but also enables an earlier display of the aforementioned love triangle that 
the American public expectantly awaited in entertainment.
PRINCE. 
But who is she, Otto, and who can she be? 
OTTO.
Prince, how should I know, and what matters it? 
PRINCE. 
It matters this: - that she is loveliest
Of all the maids in all the world! The maid 
I’ll woo; and win; and wed! My bride!
(Merington 1.1, 1-2) 
In this brief interlude, between the Prince and his tutor, the audience or reader might not 
initially capture the American transformation. Instead, this exchange seems to recall 
Shakespeare’s 
Romeo and Juliet, 
where another prince falls in love at first sight. This 
allusion is extended when the Prince here aims to win Snow White as “a pilgrim”/knight 
(Merington 1.1, 4). Neither is who he appears—Romeo masked and the Prince of 
Goldland cloaked. With this pairing of dramatic moments in mind, one can see 
Merington employing European models, even where she opens the fairy tale itself anew, 
with an 
American romance. 
Snow White 
classically began with the origin of the extraordinary young beauty, 
not with a proclamation of love or even the introduction of romance. Terri Martin Wright 
claims that “
Disney’s
implementation of love at first sight in the film was entirely 
American, replacing the medieval European idea of coupling strangers” (98; emphasis 
added). Later, with respect to the same early interlude between the Prince and Snow 
White, Wright asserts that

---

81
The Disney writers decided that their Snow White story would be ‘more 
romantic’ if the prince and princess met long before the final kiss” (qtd. Thomas 
in Wright 104). American audiences may not have accepted a marriage of two 
strangers that was completely devoid of romantic attachment. Because American 
society lacked a nobility, arranged marriages were never commonplace (104-105).
While I would agree with Wright’s assertions that this early meeting serves as an 
American innovation to the