The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder

First published: 1956, in Three Plays

First produced: 1954, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Scotland

Type of plot: Comedy

Time of work: The 1880’s

Locale: Yonkers and New York City

Principal Characters:

• Horace Vandergelder, a merchant of Yonkers, New York
• Dolly Levi, a friend of his late wife
• Cornelius Hackl, and
• Barnaby Tucker, clerks in Vandergelder’s store
• Irene Molloy, a milliner

The Play

The Matchmaker tells the story of a rich widower, Horace Vandergelder, who employs the services of a matchmaker, Dolly Levi, to find him a wife. While he is in pursuit of his own happiness, Vandergelder does his best to thwart the happiness of others, including his two overworked clerks, Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker, and his niece Ermengarde, who wants to marry Ambrose Kemper, a penniless artist. Act 1 takes place in Vandergelder’s living quarters above his general store in Yonkers. In the opening scene, Vandergelder informs Ambrose that he will never be allowed to marry Ermengarde. That done, Vandergelder proceeds to outline his plans for the day, plans that include a trip to New York City to visit Irene Molloy, a widowed milliner whom he is thinking of marrying. While he is getting ready to go out, he is visited by a shady character named Malachi Stack, who is looking for a job. On an impulse, Vandergelder hires the man and sends him ahead to New York to book a hotel room.

Meanwhile, Ambrose tries to persuade Ermengarde to elope with him, but she will not hear of it. Mrs. Levi interrupts the couple to counsel caution, reminding Ambrose that Ermengarde stands to inherit a fortune if she does not disobey her uncle. She also informs them that Vandergelder might soften toward their situation because he himself is planning to marry. She then reveals her philosophy of “profit and pleasure,” explaining that by arranging things for people she ekes out a living, but that her real pleasure is in making life more interesting. She says that she is like an artist who finds that nature is never completely satisfactory and must be corrected.

In the next scene the audience gets its first glimpse of Mrs. Levi and Vandergelder together. Although ostensibly she is operating as a matchmaker to find him a suitable bride, it is clear to the audience that she herself has her cap set for him and will probably use every trick at her disposal to catch him. In fact, in order to cool his ardor for Irene Molloy, Mrs. Levi invents a new love interest for him, “Ernestina Simple,” and promises to introduce them that evening at the Harmonia Gardens in New York. Meanwhile, Cornelius and Barnaby decide that it is high time to get out of Yonkers and have an adventure, so they light a fire under some canned goods until the cans explode, creating such a mess that the two clerks have no choice but to close the store and head for New York.

Act 2 takes place in Irene Molloy’s hat shop. As the curtain rises, Irene is lamenting to her assistant, Minnie Fay, that she longs for some excitement in her life. At that point Cornelius and Barnaby, who have been wandering around town, enter the shop to avoid being seen by Vandergelder, whom they have just seen with Mrs. Levi in the park. Pleased by the unexpected intrusion, Irene helps them hide when Vandergelder appears in the shop a few minutes later. From their hiding places, they overhear Irene boast to Vandergelder that she knows a certain Cornelius Hackl, a wealthy young man-about-town who dines regularly at the Harmonia Gardens—misinformation supplied by Cornelius in an effort to impress her. Even Mrs. Levi tries to protect the young men from discovery, but a sneeze betrays them; Vandergelder, suspecting the worst, storms out, vowing to turn his attentions to Ernestina Simple. Irene insists that Cornelius treat them all to an evening on the town, complete with a fancy meal at the Harmonia Gardens. Act 2 ends with the clerks agreeing that, although they have no idea how they are going to pay for the evening ahead, they are, indeed, in the middle of a real adventure.

Act 3 takes place at the Harmonia Gardens, where Vandergelder and Malachi Stack arrive together, followed by Mrs. Levi with Ermengarde and Ambrose in tow. The moment Mr. Vandergelder spots them, he orders Malachi to see to it that Ambrose and Ermengarde are taken to the home of a spinster friend, Miss Flora Van Huysen, with a note instructing her to detain them until he arrives. Meanwhile, Cornelius, Barnaby, Irene, and Minnie arrive and are seated within earshot but not within view of Vandergelder, because a screen separates the two parties. At one point Vandergelder is unaware that he has dropped a purse full of money, and Malachi retrieves it and gives it to Cornelius, who is then able to splurge. Mrs. Levi then tells Vandergelder that Ernestina Simple has run off with another man. Before he has a chance to protest, she lets him know that if he has any designs on herself instead, she has no intention of marrying him. While he blusters in bewilderment, she keeps insisting on her opposition to such an idea—an idea that she has now firmly planted in his mind.

Act 3 continues in a farcical mode with all opportunities for confusion and concealment exploited. Toward the end of the act, Cornelius and Barnaby try to disguise themselves with items of clothing borrowed from Irene and Minnie in an attempt to deceive Vandergelder, but Cornelius is found out and fired. The act ends with Vandergelder having lost or alienated nearly everyone of any importance to him—a sad situation that Mrs. Levi makes clear to him in no uncertain terms.

The conflicts of act 3 are resolved happily in act 4, which takes place in the living room of Flora Van Huysen. It is clear from the start that Miss Van Huysen is no ally of Vandergelder and is only waiting for the chance to compensate for her own lost hopes by helping young lovers find happiness together. The act begins in confusion when Cornelius arrives with Barnaby, who is still dressed as a girl, and the two are mistaken for Ambrose and Ermengarde. Moments later, the real Ambrose and Ermengarde arrive, and in spite of the confusion of identities, Miss Van Huysen rushes to befriend them. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Levi and Vandergelder arrive. It is obvious that Mrs. Levi’s candor at the Harmonia Gardens has had its effect on Vandergelder’s attitude, for he forgives the young people, gives them his blessing, and then asks Mrs. Levi to marry him. She agrees, and the play ends with the promise of marriage not only between Vandergelder and Mrs. Levi but also between Ambrose and Ermengarde, Cornelius and Irene, and, one suspects, Barnaby and Minnie.

Dramatic Devices

The Matchmaker is at once a parody of nineteenth century Viennese farces and a tribute to them. Thornton Wilder understood the appealing comic irony of scenes in which characters divided by a screen are unaware of each other’s presence or in which characters are unaware of others hiding in a nearby closet. The playwright used such familiar devices to make a fresh point. Stock devices—trap doors, concealed characters, mistaken identity—are used to advance the theme that it is only immersion in life, regardless of its foolishness, that brings joy. Those who sit back and watch—as most of the characters do at the beginning of the play—become cynical, detached, and unhappy.

Those who immerse themselves in life have little time to waste analyzing it, for they are too busy living it. Dolly Levi’s return to life is symbolized by her return to the Harmonia Gardens, a place of enormous vitality and excitement. All sorts of people dine there, and there is music and gaiety and dancing—a scene of almost frenzied activity when compared with the hothouse solitude of Miss Van Huysen’s house or Mrs. Levi’s lonely room near Trinity Church.

Another convention Wilder puts to good use is that of introducing several couples who, after overcoming many obstacles or putting up much resistance, end up in each other’s arms. In a play titled The Matchmaker, one expects the presence not only of a character eager to arrange matches but also of several couples either eager or reluctant to be matched. Wilder’s matchmaker is able to satisfy the needs of heart, head, and purse and, in the end, to upset convention but surprise no one by reserving the best arrangement for herself.

Finally, Wilder uses scene changes effectively to give the play the momentum it needs to make its point. Vandergelder’s feed and grain store in act 1 symbolizes the world of plod and profit, in contrast to the world of pleasure and abandon symbolized by the Harmonia Gardens of act 3. The millinery shop in act 2 is respectability in conflict with scandal, since it is assumed by the upright patrons that the proprietress is a fallen woman. In contrast to this is Miss Van Huysen’s home in act 4, the lonely retreat of an unhappy spinster. Because her home is also in contrast to the chaos that invades it, however, it provides the right atmosphere for Mrs. Levi’s magic to work. In this setting, all conflicts can be resolved, and Mrs. Levi can deliver her soliloquy about life and money free from the distractions of a crowd of diners.

Critical Context

During his lifetime, Thornton Wilder was the object of much critical controversy. While critics such as Edmund Wilson praised him for his optimism, seeing in it an affirmation of the invincible human spirit, others deplored what they considered a lack of social consciousness. Although some dismiss Wilder as a literary lightweight, the undiminished popularity of his works and the apparent timelessness of his themes have prompted a reappraisal that has been largely favorable. Revivals of Our Town (pr., pb. 1938) have demonstrated that play’s continuing ability to capture something of the paradoxical American spirit, that curious combination of hope and melancholy.

Those who know little about Wilder often approach him expecting to find Walt Disney and are surprised to find that he is closer in spirit to Walt Whitman. The message that emerges from all of his works is that human happiness is a matter of cooperating with destiny. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), Wilder first expressed his faith in the logic behind destiny, and his later novels such as The Ides of March (1948), The Eighth Day (1967), and Theophilus North (1973) all illustrate his belief that it is this faith that gives humankind the power to temper logic with humanity and thus create its own myths. The Skin of Our Teeth (pr., pb. 1942) is the most obvious example of Wilder’s mythmaking in dramatic form, but the presence of myth also explains the continuing appeal of both Our Town and The Matchmaker.

Because he broke with stage convention by using a virtually empty set in Our Town, Wilder made the play’s mythical qualities more apparent than they are in The Matchmaker, where they are obscured by the trappings of Viennese farce. Nevertheless, he manages to make it abundantly clear, through the use of soliloquies, that Mrs. Levi’s skill as a matchmaker stems from her understanding of the need for compromise between the logic of viewing the world as foolish and the wisdom of accepting its foolishness. Because of his experimentation with staging and structure, not to mention the enduring popularity of his unfashionable optimism, Thornton Wilder has had a profound influence on the modern American theater.

Sources for Further Study

Blank, Martin. Thornton Wilder: New Essays. West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill, 1999.

Burbank, Rex J. Thornton Wilder. New York: Twayne, 1978.

Castronovo, David. Thornton Wilder. New York: Ungar, 1986.

Dekoster, Katie, ed. Thornton Wilder. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1998.

Grebanier, Bernard. Thornton Wilder. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964.

Lifton, Paul. Vast Encyclopedia: The Theatre of Thornton Wilder. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.

Schroeder, Patricia R. “Thornton Wilder: Disparate Moments and Repetitive Patterns.” In The Presence of the Past in Modern American Drama. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989.

Wilder, Thornton. Conversations with Thornton Wilder. Edited by Jackson Bryer. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1992.