This is perhaps most notable in the punctuating words of the witch. "One midnight gone!" cries the witch at the mid-point of the first act, then sings "It's the last midnight," before she leaves the play. The return to the words and themes of the woods is the only constant of the play. This is because the play is about journeys, not about coming to some final moral conclusion. The woods, unlike the safety of the home, is unpredictable -- not even the witch knows that the spell she weaves to regain her beauty will deprive her of her magic, or that the golden floss first provided by the baker will come from her own beloved, adopted child Rapunzel.
Interestingly enough, Rapunzel is the one character who never says 'Into the Woods,' and when other characters provide often humorous reflections on what they have learned in the woods, such as Cinderella's maimed sisters note ruefully that "now we're really blind," Rapunzel merely sings meaningless notes. "I only did it because I loved you," says the witch when Rapunzel justly accuses her adoptive mother of overprotecting her in a tower. But unlike traditional fairy tales, in "Into the Woods," love is not enough -- the learning process, rather than the end 'learned' product or tale is what is important.
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