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A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE
10 Minute Play, Comedy / 2w, 1m
Thornton Wilder
This short play, written in verse and set in that stable in Bethlehem, is part of Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons .
“The scene being made plain showeth forth that stable in Bethlehem...”
This Interlude moves from the kitchen of the inn to the stable, where Maria rests with her new-born infant while Joseph watches over them. A serving maid enters bringing grain, news and irony – she has a sad younger brother whose name is Judas. Set in verse, Wilder’s odd-ball celebration of the miracle of the birth does not neglect the shadows that lie ahead, among them Judas and the shroud.
This short play is included in the collection Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons.
Wilder's two Christmas Interludes were composed in 1916. Interlude I was published for the first time in 2009. Interlude II appeared in the Oberlin Literary Magazine in December 1916, and was reprinted soon after in an anthology of Oberlin Verse, Wilder’s first appearance in an anthology. Among all of Wilder’s plays, short and full-length, Interlude II has the distinction of being the only work composed entirely in rhymed couplets. It is considered the best of the small number of Wilder's published poems. Wilder performed in Christmas pageants as a boy and remembered them fondly. In these playlets he seems to be saying, “If you want another Christmas pageant, let me show you how it might be done – and let’s be bold and playful about it!”
An especially playful element appears at the end of Interlude II, where he suggests that the playlet be followed by The Second Shepherd’s Play, a medieval mystery play frequently performed during the Yuletide Season, and The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, a comedy adapted from Rabelais by Anatole France and produced in translation in New York in 1915 by Granville Barker.
That stable in Bethlehem.
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 ...