The Angel on the Ship

"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.

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PROGRAM NOTE: 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.

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."