In Wilder's version, an irascible, penny-pinching store owner, Horace Vandergelder, refuses to let his niece marry the poor artist she loves, although he himself plans to remarry. In all of these permutations, the basic plot has been the same as it is in The Matchmaker. The Matchmaker was itself adapted as Hello, Dolly!, which began in 1963 and ran for years, ranking as one of Broadway's longest-running musicals. Wilder's first adaptation was called The Merchant of Yonkers, which failed on Broadway in 1938, running for only twenty-eight performances. Wilder referred to his play as a 'free adaptation' of Nestroy's, which itself was adapted from British playwright John Oxenham's 1835 comedy A Day Well Spent. A closer influence was Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich Machen, performed in Vienna in 1842. The character of Dolly Levi came from French playwright Molière's comedy L'avare, or The Miser, from which Wilder lifted some scenes directly.

The traditional aspects of the play should come as no surprise: Wilder himself was the first to acknowledge the sources that it was based upon. It uses such time-honored conventions as characters hidden under tables and in closets, men disguised as women, a complex conspiracy to bring young lovers together, and a happy ending in which three couples are united with plans to marry. Thornton Wilder's play The Matchmaker is a farce in the old-fashioned sense.

The matchmaker play