Turning to structure, Wilder had a lot to draw on. He was an intellectual at heart who knew the history of drama as well as anyone of his generation. He started early, hiding in the back rows of local theaters, and one of his hobbies in later life was dating the hundreds of plays of Lope de Vega. As he said once in an interview:

I would always advise any young writer for the theater to do everything—to adapt plays, to translate plays, to hang around theaters, to paint scenery, to become an actor. . . . There’s a bottomless pit in the acquisition of how to tell an imagined story to listeners and viewers.

The Matchmaker is a masterpiece of plotting. A play needs an overall arc of action—at least the kind of play that Wilder loved—and each act of a comedy needs the same sort of arc. Just look at how Wilder handles this in The Matchmaker. Act One opens with Vandergelder juggling the demands of family and business, and it ends with an explosion of canned goods as his employees declare their day of freedom. Act Two opens with a sensible woman vowing to marry a man she doesn’t love and ends with a song by the man she’s beginning to love as they stand on the brink of the biggest night of their lives. Act Three opens quietly as Vandergelder instructs a waiter on how to serve him a sensible dinner and ends in comic chaos that is full of discoveries.

MRS. LEVI:

Well, there’s your life, Mr. Vandergelder! Without niece—without clerks—without bride—and without your purse. Will you marry me now?

VANDERGELDER:

No!

MRS. LEVI:

Damn!!

THE CURTAIN FALLS

Wilder was a “playwright” in the true sense of the word. He was a wright, a craftsman, a writer who feels a kinship to the shipwright and the wheelwright and all the other wrights whose livelihoods depend on training and technique.

Wilder was also a master of a second kind of comic structure: he built his play on certain traditional comic motifs, some of which were established by Plautus, others of which were invented by Shakespeare. By my count, there are about twelve basic motifs, or themes, that recur again and again in comedies down through the ages, and The Matchmaker contains quite a handful of them.

One of the foremost of these is when the older generation tries to stand in the way of the sexual urges of the younger generation, and Wilder pounces on it in the very first line of the play. The lights come up and Vandergelder, who is getting a shave, declares to a young man standing nearby:

VANDERGELDER:

Loudly.

I tell you for the hundredth time, you will never marry my niece.

Did Wilder know A Midsummer Night’s Dream, She Stoops to Conquer, and The Rivals like the back of his hand? You bet he did. This is no coincidence.

Other time-honored comic motifs that Wilder drew upon include that of the country mice going to the big city (compare The Taming of the Shrew, Pots of Money), the bickering couple who end up together (Much Ado About Nothing, Private Lives), the older man who desires a young wife (The School for Scandal, London Assurance), the wily servant who saves the day (A Servant of Two Masters, One Man, Two Guvnors), and on it goes with at least three or four more motifs clearly in evidence. Wilder turned The Matchmaker into a master class of comic themes.