The theatre of Tennessee Williams PDF
Preview The theatre of Tennessee Williams
i THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS Brenda Murphy is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. Among her 18 books on American drama and theatre are Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre (1992), Understanding David Mamet (2011), Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film, and Television (1999), The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity (2005), and as editor, Critical Insights: Tennessee Williams (2011) and Critical Insights: A Streetcar Named Desire (2010). In the same series from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama: THE PLAYS OF SAMUEL BECKETT by Katherine Weiss THE THEATRE OF MARTIN CRIMP (SECOND EDITION) by Aleks Sierz THE THEATRE OF BRIAN FRIEL by Christopher Murray THE THEATRE OF DAVID GREIG by Clare Wallace THE THEATRE AND FILMS OF MARTIN MCDONAGH by Patrick Lonergan MODERN ASIAN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 1900–2000 Kevin J. Wetmore and Siyuan Liu THE THEATRE OF SEAN O’CASEY by James Moran THE THEATRE OF HAROLD PINTER by Mark Taylor-Batty THE THEATRE OF TIMBERLAKE WERTENBAKER by Sophie Bush Forthcoming: THE THEATRE OF CARYL CHURCHILL by R. Darren Gobert THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS Brenda Murphy Series Editors: Patrick Lonergan and Erin Hurley LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Brenda Murphy, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Brenda Murphy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3025-1 PB: 978-1-4081-4543-2 ePub: 978-1-4081-4533-3 ePDF: 978-1-4081-4532-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To George vi CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations x Introduction 1 1 The 1930s’ Plays (1936–1940) 9 2 Battle of Angels and Orpheus Descending (1939–1941 and 1957) 35 3 The Glass Menagerie (1942–1945) 51 4 Summer and Smoke and Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1945–1948 and 1964) 64 5 A Streetcar Named Desire (1945–1947) 77 6 The Rose Tattoo and Camino Real (1951 and 1946–1953) 91 7 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1951–1955) 107 8 Suddenly Last Summer and Sweet Bird of Youth (1953–1959) 121 9 The Night of the Iguana (1940–1948 and 1959–1961) 135 10 The Later Plays (1961–1983) 149 Critical Perspectives 181 All in the Timing: The Meanings of Streetcar in 1947 and 1951 181 Bruce McConachie A Broken Romance: Tennessee Williams and America’s Mid-Century Theatre Culture 205 John S. Bak vii Contents “A Vast Traumatic Eye”: Culture Absorbed and Refigured in Tennessee Williams’s Transitional Plays 232 Felicia Hardison Londré “There’s something not natural here”: Grotesque Ambiguities in Tennessee Williams’s Kingdom of Earth, A Cavalier for Milady, and A House Not Meant to Stand 243 Annette J. Saddik Conclusion 263 Notes 267 Chronology 270 Further Reading 278 Notes on Contributors 293 Index 295 viii ACkNOWLEdgMENTS My heartfelt thanks are due to the libraries and their staffs that made the research for this volume not only possible but also pleasurable: my home library, the Homer Babbidge Library of the University of Connecticut, which provided me with research space as well as help and resources; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which has the richest source for Williams manuscript materials and one of the kindest and most helpful library staffs I have ever encountered; and the Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, and the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, all of which provided important material for this study. I am grateful to Mark Dudgeon at Bloomsbury Methuen Drama and series editor Patrick Lonergan for their invaluable advice and support, and for giving me the opportunity to write this book, which is the result of 30 years of thinking about, writing about, and teaching the works of Tennessee Williams. I would also like to thank my students in two courses on Tennessee Williams at the University of Connecticut in 2011–12. They inspired me with the sense that Williams’s works are exceedingly relevant to life in the twenty-first century and were not only tolerant but enthusiastic as I tried out many of the ideas in this book on them. As always, my husband, George Monteiro, contributed his unique critical acumen at crucial stages and moral support throughout the writing of this book. The University of the South has granted permission to quote from unpublished manuscripts by Tennessee Williams. Copyright © 2013 The University of the South. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the University of the South, Estate of Tennessee Williams. All rights reserved. ix
The list of books you might like
