Brother Fire

"A hut in the mountains of northern Italy. . . ANNUNZIATA is preparing the evening meal over the fire. . ."

None other than Saint Francis himself descends from a cold and rainy mountaintop after communing with Brother Wind, Sister Rain and the Queen of Heaven. His friends, a peasant woman and her eight-year-old daughter, take pity on him and invite him to supper. St. Francis proves to be a troublesome and enigmatic guest. It is the child rather than the pragmatic mother who comes closest to understanding his behavior.

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PROGRAM NOTE: Wilder was an Oberlin College freshman when he wrote this playlet, published as Brother Fire: A Comedy for Saints in the May 1916 issue of the Oberlin Literary Magazine. Wilder's favorite professor, Dr. Charles H.A. Wager, was a classical scholar and an expert on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, and it is likely that his contact with Prof. Wager led to a playlet clearly inspired by these lines from Saint Francis's Canticle of the Sun, written in about 1224, two years before his death:

"Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night.
He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong."

Wilder visited Assisi on his first trip to Italy in 1920-21. In the late '50s and '60s, Wilder attempted to write seven one-act plays depicting the Seven Deadly Sins. Someone from Assisi-representing the Sin of Lust--stars none other than the same St. Francis long before he became a saint. It ran successfully at off- Broadway's Circle in the Square Theater in 1961-1962, alongside two "Ages of Man". It was translated into Italian and was subsequently very well received by Italian audiences.

Wilder conceived this playlet to be part a series of "Footnotes to Biographies" suggested by the miniature portraits in Herbert Eulenberg's Schattenbilder.