The Snow Queen Acrostic Synopsis
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, adapted by Peter Denyer
Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, 1994
Hans Christian Andersen
This is the story of a young girl called Gerda, who lived with her grandmother and her foster brother Kay in the attic of a tall house in the far-off land of Norway. Although they are poor, they have always been very happy together and Gerda and Kay love one another very much. Then one dark winter’s afternoon, while Gerda is out meeting their granny from work and Kay is sitting at home alone learning his twenty-seven times table, a strange and terrifying figure suddenly appears in the room.
He doesn’t realise at first that this is the Snow Queen, a cruel and cold-hearted woman. Once, centuries before, she had made a magic evil mirror which possessed the power to make everything that was beautiful in the world appear hideous and ugly, while at the same time making everything nasty and evil appear ten times worse than it really was. And now she has come to take Kay away.
Entrancing him with her glacial stare, she causes a tiny splinter from this magic mirror to enter his eye, so that when Gerda and Granny come home Kay is rude to them because the glass splinter has made him blind to everything good and turned his heart cold. His unkind words upset them, but Kay couldn’t care less and goes out to ride his sledge around the town square. The Snow Queen reappears and whisks him away to her freezing palace of ice in the Far North. Meanwhile, Gerda and Granny are left at home, wondering what has happened to him.
Since she can’t bear to be without Kay, even if he had been nasty to her, Gerda sets off to find him. She learns from some people in the square that Kay had been carried off in a big white sleigh, driven by someone so muffled up in furs that no one could see who it was. Gerda follows the sleigh to a forest full of birds. Here she meets two kindly ravens, Cora and Corr, who agree to take her to the royal palace where a young stranger has just arrived to marry Princess Katrina. Thinking this might be Kay, Gerda sets off with her two new friends to find out.
Now as you will know already, the young man who had come to the palace to marry Princess Katrina wasn’t Kay at all, but a prince called Erik. Still, he and the princess take pity on Gerda and agree to help her find Kay. Meanwhile, the wicked Snow Queen has summoned her ugly servant Igor to seek out Gerda in the royal palace and kill her, to prevent her getting to Kay and winning him back from her evil clutches.
On arriving at the palace, Igor puts on a false moustache to disguise himself and tells the prince and princess that he is Gerda’s father, come to take her home. But fortunately for Gerda the prince is able to unmask Igor, and Corr recognises him as the Snow Queen’s henchman. They all try to catch him but he is too quick for them and manages to escape.
When the Snow Queen learns that her plans have been thwarted she is at first angry with Igor, but decides to give him another chance. To help him get past the palace guards, she concocts a potion that will make him invisible to everyone for six hours – everyone, that is, except children and animals. So Igor drinks the potion and returns to the palace, only to be captured by the combined efforts of Gerda, who is a child, the ravens, who are animals, and the palace guards, who do what they’re told. Igor is slung in the dungeons while all toast Gerda and wish her luck in her quest for Kay.
Quelling her increasing fury at her henchman’s inability to perform the simplest task without mucking it up, the Snow Queen spirits Igor out of the royal dungeons and sends him off to a forest through which Gerda is due to pass on her way north, now dressed in fine clothes and riding in a golden coach. Igor helps some robbers capture the coach in return for Gerda, but the robber chief’s daughter, Haikki, ruins the plan by demanding Gerda for her own playmate. Igor is not happy with this but Haikki chases him away and settles down to talk to her new friend.
Up in the Far North, Kay’s heart is growing colder and colder. Once it has become completely frozen, he will be in the Snow Queen’s power forever. Meanwhile, back in the forest, Gerda pleads with Haikki to let her go and save him. The robber girl eventually relents and gives her Jorvik, a pet reindeer, to carry Gerda to the Snow Queen’s palace. And so they set off, but Jorvik loses his way and they end up in an Eskimo village, where the Oldest Eskimo in the World protects Gerda once again from the ever-persistent Igor and puts her on the right road to the Snow Queen’s palace in Finland.
Eventually, Gerda reaches the great hall of the Ice Palace, but she is too late. Kay’s heart has turned completely to ice and he no longer members Gerda or the home where he was once happy. Gerda is so upset that she begins to cry. One of her hot tears lands on Kay’s chest and melts the ice splinter where it has lodged in his heart. Suddenly his heart is warm again. He recognises Gerda and weeps happily in her arms.
Even as they flee the Ice Palace, however, the Snow Queen returns. She can hardly believe what has happened. Kay had been hers completely, she had made him forget everything beautiful in the world and now the warmth of Gerda’s love has snatched him back from her. She decides to hunt them both down and, in her fury, whips up the biggest snowstorm the world has ever seen.
Nobody at the royal palace knows what has become of Gerda and Kay, but the prince and princess have invited their granny to a big banquet anyway to greet them on their return. There is great rejoicing all round when the two children finally appear riding Jorvik the reindeer, hotly (or rather, coldly) pursued by the Snow Queen. In a terrible battle the Snow Queen is finally defeated when the others rally behind Gerda, whose heart is purer than anyone’s, and they succeed in chasing the evil one away by saying the opposite of everything she says. Everyone now joins in the banquet of celebration – including Hans Andersen, the author who invented them all in the first place!
[click here for an autobiography of Hans Christian Andersen]