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A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE
10 Minute Play, Drama / 1w, 2m
Thornton Wilder
This short play, set on the foredeck of a ship lying disabled in mid-ocean, is part of Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons .
“The foredeck of the Nancy Bray, lying disabled in mid-ocean... The figurehead of the Nancy Bray has been torn from its place and nailed to the forepost, facing the stern...”
When God appears to have deserted the scene, can false gods suffice? Three exhausted survivors of a shipwreck in mid-ocean put this proposition to a test when they turn the figurehead of their broken vessel into the Great God Lily — and worship her. Miraculously, a ship arrives on the scene.
In his Foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays, published in 1928, Wilder explained that almost all the playlets in the book are religious, “but religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer’s concession to a contemporary standard of good manners.” He wanted to explore religious themes and questions without being preachy or didactic. “Didacticism is an attempt at the coercion of another’s free mind,” he wrote, and that was not his intention. In fact, it was often his intention in such playlets as this one to stand the biblical story on its head – to shake up the language, as it were. He also said about his plays dealing with religious themes and stories that in “these matters beyond logic, beauty is the only persuasion.”
This short play is included in the collection Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons.
This playlet was first published in the Yale Literary Magazine in October 1917, Wilder’s sophomore year. Together with its sister playlet Mozart and the Gray Steward, it was republished in Harper’s Magazine in 1928, Wilder’s first appearance as a dramatist in a major national journal. In 1932, it was anthologized in Curtains! A Book of Modern Plays, also a Wilder first.
The foredeck of the Nancy Bray, lying disabled in mid-ocean.
Thornton Wilder: It's Time
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both drama (Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth) and fiction (The Bridge of San Luis Rey). He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, hiked the Alps with the heavyweight boxing champion ...