The Marriage We Deplore

"The Living room of Mrs. Eva Hibbert-Havens, Boston."

In this five-minute, five-person drawing room comedy, the mother, daughter
and son of a blue-blooded aristocratic Boston family wrestle with social mores, hypocrisy and each other as they contemplate the hazards, fortunes and possible delights of marrying beneath themselves.

PROGRAM NOTE: This play, written in 1917 when Wilder was a Yale College sophomore, was first published by TCG Press in 1998 in The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume II. The work foreshadows Wilder's fascination, often hilariously depicted, with the deleterious impact of wealth and class on personality and community; see such works as The Cabala (1926) The Matchmaker (1954) and Theophilus North (1973).