Starting with snow white

you. 
Instead of a 
human 
heart, your 
precious huntsman has brought back the heart of a pig; and Miss Snow White is alive at 
this moment. Ha, ha, for 
you
! Ask your Magic Mirror if Snow White’s not alive” (White 
141). Yet, at this point, the magic mirror is an ancillary device, merely goading the 
queen on. Witch Hex has, in fact, provided her all that she needs in terms of motivation 
for renewed jealousy, leading toward her murderous acts. 
Hex also informs Brangomar who the dwarfs are and where they live, provides 
her with the poisonous devices, and the means to draw close to Snow White. At this 
moment in particular, Ames allows Hex to tell the audience what he has been doing all 
along with this character, “Dreary me!
Have I got to plan it all out for you again?
[…] 
There’s only one safe way… […] First, I must transform you into a different looking 
person altogether […] And then give you some means of disposing of Snow White that 

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the Dwarfs can’t trace back to you. Fiddle, fetch me the deadly poison things” (White 
143-4; emphasis added). As Hex plots out the next steps of the play’s action, offering a 
couple of poison antidotes and disguises, the queen and her jealousy are brushed aside, 
peripheral, rather than the locus of the action they should be. It is Hex who manipulates 
the play’s actions with Brangomar no more than a pawn in the game. Without Hex, the 
queen is an empty-headed jealous figure, stymied into inaction by her stupidity. The 
characters in the play rely on Hex
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just as the audience does. Subsequent actions of the 
play are only ascertained by following this central character—a now essential figure who 
had no place at all in the (Grimms’) “classic” version of Snow White. Here, a 
reader/viewer looks toward White’s/Ames’ new character and key 
Snow White 
innovation, in the same way that he/she inspects the stage directions of the playwright.
White/Ames calls readers/viewers to see the play through Hex’s and his own eyes and 
figures her character and the text of the play in such a way as to give the audience little 
choice but to comply. 
Owning 
Snow White 
Although White/Ames contributes to the romance and humor that Merington’s 
play showcases also inserting gendered representations in ways that were more keenly 
attuned to American culture and a wider American audience, in each of these elements, as 
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In the final scene, the Prince and Snow White do not come together until “The Witch” (since turned into 
a reputable character at court) gives her blessing, “You’re just a dear sweet little girl, and that’s good 
enough for any man, prince or pauper.” After this she gestures for the Prince to offer Snow White a ring, 
“Put it on, Florimond. […] Now, young man, lead her to the throne and crown her properly, and we’ll all 
swear allegiance to our new little Queen” (230-231).

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well as with the insertion of additional characters, White/Ames also provides a distinctive 
version of the 
Snow White 
tale which has not been told in the same way before or since, 
without reflecting on Ames as
 the creator
. In “Winthrop Ames: The Gentleman as 
Producer-Director,” MacArthur provides a detailed study of Ames in these roles. He 
asserts that as a producer, Ames was a “genius” in the “imaginative execution and skillful 
direction […] of his productions” (MacArthur 351). MacArthur likewise notes that “his 
[(Ames’)] strong personality completely dominated everything he accomplished in the 
theatre”; “The artistic details which other producers left to their staff had to be personally 
supervised by Ames or performed solely by him” (MacArthur 350). Having such a heavy 
hand in each of his productions (attending to “new lights and lighting effects”, set design 
and costumes, and examining the effects and details within a performance “from every 
angle” in the theatre itself), was the result of a college education at “Harvard, [where] he 
studied art, music, English literature, drama, and architecture” and developed a 
“scholarly” interest in theatre (350). Here, he gained the foundation for his domination of 
two of New York’s major theatres. All of this background is significant to Ames’ 
individuation of the