Vision and Form in the DRAMA OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND ARTHUR MILLER by MAN ...

293 Pages·2015·10.86 MB·English

Vision and Form
in the
DRAMA OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND ARTHUR MILLER
by
MAN MOHAN KRISHNA JUNEJA
A Dissertation Submitted for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
1968
ProQuest Number: U622464
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 11
Foreword Iv
I Locust Upon the Leaf: Tennessee Williams 1
II The Commoner*s Fate: Arthur Miller 126
Afterword
List of Works Cited
Appendix I A Tennessee Williams Bibliography 253
Appendix II An Arthur Miller Bibliography 267
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
DR PARIS LEARY for his stimulating gij.idance and enlightening instruct­
ion, his tolerance and patience;
PROFESSOR A.R. HUMPHREYS for his help in numerous ways at every step,
his constant encouragement, his idealistic optimism in the face
of my equally cynical pessimism;
DR C.L, BARBER of the School of English, University of Leeds, under
whose guidance 1 wrote a brief research exercise out of which the
present study grew;
MR G.S. FRASER and DR T.W. CRAIK for the initial discussion and approv­
al of the subject of the present dissertation, and occasional
opportunity provided by the former to clarify some of the ideas
herein presented;
THE RESEARCH BOARD of this University for one of the heavily contested
research scholarships, and additional financial assistance to
undertake extended visits to Cambridge and London;
MR A.R. SIDDIQUI and MR ERIC VICKERS for enthusiastic assistance in
obtaining innumerable books, journals and photostats through the
Inter-library Loans Service;
THE STAFF of the Brotherton Library, Leeds; the .British Museum Reading
Room and the Collindale Newspaper Library; the Cambridge University
Library; for frequent use of their holdings and facilities;
PROFESSOR D.S.R. WELLAND of the University of Manchester for the loan
of a rare microfilm;
MISS PATRICIA DOUGHERTY, MRS ANN SCOTT, MRS IRIS KAY^ MISS INGE VACKER
and DR PAUL MACHMER for help with translation from material in
European languages;
MRS JEAN HUMPHREYS, SISTER M. ST PLACID, and PROFESSOR P.A.W. COLLINS
for their cheerful encouragement ;
My ageing PARENTS who could ill-afford my absence in recent years;
MY WIFE, VEENA, who had to make, among other sacrifices, the most
terrible choice between mother and wife for these two years, and
cheerfully agreed to send our 3-month old firstborn 6000 miles
away that 1 might complete this work: for her unfailing love and y
encouragement.
FOREWORD
FEW living dramatists, writing in English, share the relentless commit­
ment of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller to an exploration of the
hopes and disappointments of contemporary man. What distinguishes the
two from the rest of the "few" is, apparently, their enormous popular
success on both sides of the Atlantic; but,more significantly, their y
fervent concern with the perfection of a dramatic form congenial to
their vision of man in the modern world. The production, in 1945, of
The Glass Menagerie marked the beginning of an era in the cultural
history of the West, of which the climax, in this writer’s opinion, is
yet to come. A study of the theatre’s moral and social concerns during
this epoch, as evidenced in the development of two of its luminaries,
is the purpose of the following essay.
However, any final evaluation of the position of the two playwrights
must rest on the completed work of each, and since they are both young
enough, and artistically productive enough, to upset any interim estimates.
IV
V
it would not be in order, at this stage, to expend too much critical
energy in "placing" them in any "tradition" or "school". Some of
Tennessee Williams* works, or certain elements in them, may suggest,
for instance, a literary descent from the long line of romantic
tragedy which originated in the "first American drama", Thomas Godfrey’s
The Prince of Parthia (l767), and continued well into the latter part
of the nineteenth century. Williams’ work might equally be viewed in
the context of the Southern literary renaissance. In more international
terms, it might be related to the expressionist theatre in Germany and,
with even greater relevance, to the "dream" plays of Strindberg. Miller’s
antecedents seem to go back, on the one hand, to the satirical social
drama of the eighteenth century in America, or more immediately, to the
ceaseless aesthetic activity that hovered round the Group Theatre in the
1930’s, and on the other hand, to the social drama of Ibsen and Tchehov.
Both writers would appear to owe a good deal to the Strindberg-derived
expressionism and native realism of Eugene O’Neill. Yet, to put Williams
and Miller in any of these contexts would be fallacious, because, for
instance. Miller, whose early work bore the definite stamp of Henrik Ibsen,
seems to have swung very nearly to the opposite pole - Strindberg.
Legitimate studies can be, and have been made of the literary and dramatic
"influences" in the playwrights’ work, but they tend to distract atten­
tion from the essence of the plays by fragmenting the integral vision
into the "original" coûtent and the "borrowed", or, as is more often the
case, into what is presumptuously described as the "source" material, and
VI
the "treatment".
To concentrate on the total conceptions of the playwrights, there­
fore, the method followed in this dissertation has been one of direct
and (it is hoped) close analysis of the plays in a more or less chrono­
logical order. Existing critical studies of both playwrights have been
profitably used, and particular attention has been paid to the immediate
and spontaneous, if inevitably somewhat hasty, response that the first
stage production of each elicited. Wherever possible, first-hand know­
ledge of some recent British performances, in some cases even the
cinema and television adaptations, has been brought to bear upon the
discussion of the text, but the basic premise in each case has been the
printed script.
In view of the prolific output of Tennessee Williams, a greater
degree of selection of primary sources has had to be made in his case
than in Miller's. But in both, the central frame of reference has been
the major full-length drama meant for stage production. Filmscripts,
novels, stories and one-act plays, valuable as they are in their own
right, have been referred to only where they were relevant to an analysis
of the major plays. Likewise, any relationship between the personal and
psychological lives of the authors and their works has been kept out of
the discussion. Within the limited framework thus provided, however, an
effort has been made to trace the development of the authorà.* social and
moral preoccupations in their own times as well as those of a universal
nature where a work does transcend the bounds of contemporaneity.
v il
Professor Graham Hough once described the "historical novel" as
an absurd term since every novel, Professor Hough said, is "historical":
it is subject to the unwritten agreement that it shall present a report
on the historical reality of characters and events in a particular place
at a particular time. Drama, it must be recognised, shares this limitat­
ion with the novel. By its very nature as a mimetic art, most criticism
of it tends to concentrate on a discussion of characters not altogether
unlike the gossip, on the top of a bus or amidst the smoke of a public
house, about actual human beings in life. Presuming it as a "slice of
life" the laws of life rather than art are applied to it. There is very
little of the stylistic criticism which, in the case of poetry for inst­
ance, seeks to find out how the poem "works". Drama is even denied the
narrative insight of the novel and much of the latter's "authority"
embodied in the novelist's own "voice" as well as several intermediate
shades of it articulated by the affirmations and denials of characters
who may be close to, or removed from, the authorial sympathies. Committed
basically to mimesis, drama - and social drama in particular - tends to
be much more of a representational form, and much less of an autonomous
artefact, than even the novel. Nonetheless, the mode of representation
comes very close to the heart of à playwright. That the play must "work"
is vital to him, not only because, during his lifetime, it decides
whether he is to live or "die" as a practitioner of his craft, nor merely
because he is interested at all costs in articulating the evaluative
content of his vision, but, 1 think, primarily because as an artist he