Proserpina and the Devil

“A puppet show, Venice, 1640 A. D.”

This piece of madcap farce, featuring a play within a play, stars a Manager, two Manipulators (the term for people who manipulate marionettes), four lively marionettes, and a host of allusions to characters and places from the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, and medieval and nineteenth century European theater. Is it any wonder that, as the Second Manipulator complains, “A person can’t tell which is his right hand and which is his left in this place”?

This short play is included in the collection Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons.

This playlet was published in the Oberlin Literary Magazine in December of 1916, when Wilder was nineteen, and was reprinted in January 1920 in the “little magazine” S4N. Wilder has great fun here playing with the history of marionette plays, dating at least from early Greek and Roman theater, and including morality plays performed by marionettes, and operas performed by marionettes, especially in nineteenth century Europe. His reading and his vivid imagination are visibly at work as he plucks characters and places from the Old Testament, Greek and Roman underworlds, European fairy tales and folk lore, and the Commedia dell’Arte, and tosses them liberally into the rich stew of this short play.