The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume I by Thornton Wilder

Author:Thornton Wilder [Wilder, Thornton; Gallup, Donald; Wilder, A. Tappan;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781559368131
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group

This play became available through the research and editing of F. J. O’Neil of manuscripts in the Thornton Wilder Collection at Yale University.

In June 1957, Thornton Wilder wrote in his journal that In Shakespeare and the Bible and A Ringing of Doorbells were plays he could “terminate any day, but which will never be finished.”1

The author’s manuscript of A Ringing of Doorbells ended abruptly with this exchange:

MRS. BEATTIE (Firmly but not sharply to Daphne): Have you a remarkable voice?

DAPHNE: No.

MRS. KINKAID: Daphne!

MRS. BEATTIE:

Just how “terminated” is the play? The answer would appear to be: all but Mrs. Beattie’s last line. After dinner one evening at his home in Hamden, Connecticut, Thornton Wilder read aloud to me a nearly complete draft of this play and spoke of his plan to bring the story to a logical, but unconventional, conclusion. Mrs. Beattie, as envious of the Kinkaids as they are of her, wants to help them in spite of their attempt to trick her. A fair solution then to the missing last line seemed to be a reprise of Mrs. Beattie’s earlier line: “Alive and together . . . that’s the point,” as her summing up at the point of decision. The stage directions that I added are consistent with what appears to be Wilder’s intention. Combining the antique cabinet and the telephone, both already established in the text, with a writing kit and checkbook, allows a moment of suspense as Mrs. Beattie moves toward the desk, and then a final tableau as she turns back to face the Kinkaids, checkbook in hand.

F. J. O’Neil

April 1997

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