Williams, Tennessee

Williams, Tennessee [ Thomas Lanier] (1911–83), American dramatist, who after a hard youth began to write plays while still a student. His main concern was the plight of the romantic soul in an unromantic world, and the plays—whose outspokenness caused much controversy—show compassion for those who find themselves unable to function in the clear light of American reality.

In 1939 Williams was awarded a prize by the Theatre Guild for a group of four one-act plays American Blues, but after this auspicious start his first full-length play Battle of Angels (1940) was a failure and did not reach Broadway. It was later revised as Orpheus Descending (1957; London, 1959) with some success. He finally achieved recognition with The Glass Menagerie (1945; London, 1948), a sensitive study of his own mentally afflicted sister, though in the play her handicap was transmuted into a club-foot which became the image of the arbitrary crippling of individual desires. It was followed by A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; London, 1949), a powerful study of the clash between the old and new America—symbolized by the pathetic, self-deceiving Blanche Du Bois and her brutish brother-in-law—which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. His next plays were Summer and Smoke (1948; London, 1951), about a prim spinster's fall from grace, and The Rose Tattoo (1951; London, 1959), about a spirited Sicilian-American widow who idealizes her married life. Camino Real (1953; London, 1957) was an unsuccessful essay in Symbolism based on Don Quixote, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955; London, 1958) an intense drama of family relationships set on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta; the latter received another Pulitzer Prize. Suddenly Last Summer, produced with Something Unspoken in a double bill entitled Garden District (NY and London, 1958), featured cannibalism; and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), a study of a fading film star, involved castration. Period of Adjustment (1960; London, 1962) was a marital comedy which of all Williams's works probably most resembles an orthodox Broadway offering; but The Night of the Iguana (1961; London, 1965), set in a Mexican hotel, returned to a more exotic setting. The following decade was not a happy one for Williams, whose talent seemed to be slipping away as he battled through a series of personal crises. The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (Spoleto, 1962; NY, 1963), the double-bill Slapstick Tragedy (1966), The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968), and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) had only short runs in New York. The pungent Small Craft Warnings (1972; London, 1973) seemed to indicate the return of dramatic vigour; but the production of The Red Devil Battery Sign destined for New York in 1975 failed to reach there, though the play was seen in London in 1977. Williams's last works were The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976)—a revision of Summer and Smoke—Vieux Carré (1977; London, 1978), set in a New Orleans boarding house, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979), and Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), a portrayal of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.