Lyrics by Frank DiGiacomo and Julian R. Pace.
Photography by John Dowling.

After the transformed Prince reveals himself to Beauty’s astonished eyes, he tells her how it happened that he became the Beast.

LYRICS
Prince:
        I was not always the way you first saw me.
        
        I once loved a woman well versed in the arts of love and magic.
        She drew me to her, and revealed to me all the depths of my nature,
        and I was filled with confusion and with…horror!
        Then, for her own amusement, by the darkest secrets of her craft,
        she made me appear to all the world as what I had become for her:
        a distorted monster.
        She saw no further into me than that.
        Through her I traveled halfway down the path of knowledge;
        but she abandoned me short of the goal of wisdom.
        For, tiring of me at the last, she left me under her spell,
        not knowing herself where to lead me.
        She enchanted my castle, my court, and my friends.
        My awful appearance kept my humbled state
        ever-present in my mind;
        and to that burden was added the imprisonment of those dear to me
        in forms other than their own.
        So she left me, secure that no one would ever again find anything to love in me.
        So I have lived, having searched so deep in my soul,
        yet despairing of ever freeing myself from her enchantments.
        I have needed one to love me and accept me for what I was.
        Ah, but that awful curse has brought me the truest love
        I could ever hope to have.
        Only you have seen the Prince beneath the Beast.