Midsummer Magazine 2007 - Utah Shakespearean Festival

Share the Experiencethe Design,the Imagination,the Rehearsals,the Direction,the Construction,the Opening!Our members enable the Festival to create a one-of-a-kindtheatre experience. Won’t you join the hundreds of memberswho have already made their commitment? Stop bythe office, call 435-586-7880, or go online to www.bard. org.Share the experience by becoming a memberor renewing your membership today!Gifts of $50 or more allow you to purchase ticketstwo weeks before public sales!and got married, which was foolish” (Wilder269). His wife foolishly died. Having spentthe majority of his years sensibly acquiringmoney, Vandergelder is now ready to marryagain, in part because he needs a goodhousekeeper and women do a better jobof running a house if they have the feelingthat they own it. But that is only one reasonto marry. Vandergelder freely admits that“There’s nothing like mixing with womento bring out all the foolishness in a man ofsense. . . . I’ve just turned sixty, and I’ve justlaid side by side the last dollar of my firsthalf million. So if I should lose my head alittle, I still have enough money to buy itback. After many years’ caution and hardwork, I have a right to a little risk. . . . Yes,like all you other fools, I’m willing to risk alittle security for a certain amount of adventure”(Wilder 270).His intended bride, the widow IreneMolloy, wants a certain amount of adventuretoo. Fearful that any social life wouldbe bad for business, she has not gone torestaurants, balls, the theatre, or operas.Though she does not love Horace, she hasdecided to marry him (if he asks) so thatshe can get away from her hated millinerybusiness. But, just like Horace, practicalityis not the only reason for her. She will marryHorace because he seems that he wouldmake a good fighter, and “the best part ofmarried life is the fights. The rest is merelyso-so” (Wilder 301).Dolly, on the other hand, wants tomarry Horace for his money. Not becauseshe loves money but because money canbuy the “four or five human pleasures thatare our right in the world” (Wilder 409).She intends to send Vandergelder’s moneyout doing all the things her first husbandtaught her, to rejoin the human race insteadof retiring into herself with her cat and herevening rum toddy, “thanking God that .. . [she is] independent—that no one else’slife [is] mixed up with . . . . [hers]” (Wilder408). For Dolly, “money . . . is like manure;it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread aboutencouraging young things to grow” (Wilder409).Appropriately, Dolly instructs Barnaby,the youngest person in the play, to tell theaudience the moral of the play. Barnabybelieves “it’s about adventure . . . . [andhopes] that in your lives you have just theright amount of—adventure!” (Wilder 415).Or as Thornton Wilder wrote, “My play isabout the aspirations of the young (and notonly of the young) for a fuller, freer participationin life” (Wilder xiii).22 • Midsummer Magazine 2007