Nascuntur poetae -- Proserpina and the devil -- Fanny Otcott -- Brother fire -- The penny that beauty spent -- The angel on the ship -- The message and Jehanne -- Childe Roland to the dark tower came -- Centaurs -- Leviathan -- And the sea shall give up its dead -- Now the servant's name was Malchus -- Mozart and the Gray Steward -- Hast Thou considered my servant job? -- The flight into Egypt -- The angel that troubled the waters -- The long Christmas dinner -- Queens of France -- Pullman Car Hiawatha -- Love and how to cure it -- Such things only happen in books -- The happy journey to Trenton and Camden -- Our town -- The skin of our teeth -- The matchmaker -- The Alcestiad -- The drunken sisters -- The marriage we deplore -- The unerring instinct -- Scenes from The Emporium -- Bernice -- The wreck on the five-twenty-five -- A ringing of doorbells -- In Shakespeare and the Bible -- Someone from Assisi -- Cement hands -- Infancy -- Childhood -- Youth -- The rivers under the earth -- Foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays -- Notes for the producer : The Long Christmas Dinner -- Notes for the producer : The Happy Journey -- A preface for Our Town -- Our Town : story of the play -- Our Town : some suggestions for the director -- Our Town - from stage to screen : a correspondence between Thornton Wilder and Sol Lesser -- Preface to Three Plays -- Notes on The Alcestiad -- Noting the nature of farce -- Some thoughts on playwriting -- Richard Beer-Hofmann's Jaakobs Traum -- Sophocles's Oedipus Rex -- Foreword to three comedies by Johann Nestroy -- George Bernard Shaw -- Shadow of a doubt.
Summary:
This collection takes the measure of Wilder's extraordinary career as a dramatist by presenting the complete span of his achievement, beginning with his early expressionist experiments and daring one-act plays, ranging through the full flowering of maturity, and encompassing the intriguing dramatic projects of his later years, such as his adaptation of the ancient story of Alcestis (The Alcestiad) and plays written for dramatic cycles based on the Seven Deadly Sins and the varied ages of an individual's life. Complementing the selection of plays is an illuminating group of essays that captures Wilder's reflections on his plays and contains a revealing epistolary account of the film adaptation of Our Town, as well as evaluations of dramatists such as Sophocles, George Bernard Shaw, and the Austrian satirist Johann Nestroy (whose farce Einen Jux will er sich machen Wilder brilliantly transformed into The Matchmaker).--From publisher description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.