Overview

Volume Two of Thornton Wilder's collected short plays, which makes available again the author’s long out-of-print first collection of one-acts, The Angel That Troubled the Waters, along with two previously unpublished plays—The Unerring Instinct and The Marriage We Deplore. This volume also brings back into print one of Wilder’s most remarkable and least-known full-length plays, The Alcestiad, or a Life in the Sun, an inventive retelling of the ancient Greek legend of Alcestis, who gave her life for her husband Admetus and was brought back from hell by Hercules. The volume is rounded out by Wilder’s exemplary essay, “Some Thoughts on Playwriting.” Edited by Donald Gallup and A. Tappan Wilder, Preface by A.R. Gurney