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Literature
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Showing or Telling: Narrators in the Drama of
Tennessee Williams
Just as the writer of a play embodies his subject in visible action and
audible speech, so the novelist, dealing with a situation like Strether's,
represents it by means of the movement that flickers over the surface of
his mind. . . . In drama of the theatre a character must bear his part
unaided; if he is required to be a desperate man, harbouring thoughts of
crime, he cannot look to the author to appear at the side of the stage and
inform the audience of the fact; he must express it for himself through his
words and deeds, his looks and tones. The playwright so arranges the
matter that these will be enough, the spectator will make the right
inference.'
1 Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction (London, I92I; rpt. New York, I957), p. I57.
2 The Craft of Fiction, p. III.
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Narrators in the Drama of Tennessee Williams 85
There are plays meant for reading. I have read them. I have read the
works of 'thinking playwrights' as distinguished from us who are per-
mitted only to feel, and probably read them earlier and appreciated them
as much as those who invoke their names nowadays like the incantation
of Aristophanes' frogs. But the incontinent blaze of live theatre, a theatre
meant for seeing and for feeling, has never been and never will be extin-
guished by a bucket brigade of critics, new or old, bearing vessels that
range from cut-glass punch bowl to Haviland teacup. And in my dissident
opinion, a play in a book is only the shadow of a play and not even a clear
shadow of it.3
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86 American Literature
venient to his purpose."4 Tom does present the play, but he is also
very much involved in it. He is not simply an objective observer who
serves as a point of view; he is a major character and even play-
wright. The setting of the play is in his memory, and in the opening
speech, he casts himself as artist-magician: "Yet, I have tricks in my
pockets, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage
magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth, I
give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion" (I, i, p. 22). As
playwright, he creates the play to exorcise his sister from his memory,
to try to explain his own actions to himself, and to free himself from
his guilt. He exits memory, enters the present time of the Epilogue,
and exclaims: "Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but
I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I
cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak
to the nearest stranger-anything that can blow your candles out!
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles,
Laura-and so goodbye . . ." (II, vii, p. "I5). Neither Tom the
character within the play nor Tom the playwright can escape the
reality of Laura in the present.
Tom is even identified as stage manager at one point in the play.
As Amanda melodramatically recounts how things used to be when
she had gentlemen callers at the plantation in Mississippi, the stage
directions read: "Tom motions for music and a spot of light on
Amanda, her eyes lift, her face glows, her voice becomes rich and
elegiac" (I, i, p. 27). Tom not only arranges setting and theme; he
also directs the technical aspects of the play at this point.
Tom is, then, the undisguised narrator and central character in this
play. Yet there is also a disguised narrator who may also be associated
with Tom in so far as Tom is a poet, a stand-in for Williams, and the
creator of the play. This narrator who appears primarily in the stage
directions, functions very much like a dramatized narrator in prose
fiction; he is one of the characters who also tells the story. Through
Tom, who acts, narrates, directs, and writes his play, we can begin
to understand how Williams works. He does not merely let the play
tell itself; like Tom he frequently interjects himself or another im-
plied narrator into the play to give the reader information which
4Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (I949; rpt. New York, I970), p. 22. All
further references to this play will be from this source.
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Narrators in the Drama of Tennessee Williams 87
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88 American Literature
(p. 69). Once again the reader, not the theatre audience, has the
advantage of the poetic metaphor.
The same beauty of poetic expression occurs later when Laura sits
at the table with her gentleman caller. As the curtains billow, we are
told that "there is a sorrowful murmur from the deep blue dusk"
(II, vi, p. 83). In II, vii, the stage directions acquire a pattern of
imagery from the action. Because Tom has chosen not to pay the
light bill, the house is dark, and all of this section is played to the
light of candles which Jim has carried in and set beside Laura. The
actual light of the play is transformed into poetic metaphor when
Jim leans toward Laura "with a warmth and charm which lights her
inwardly with altar candles" (II, vii, 97). After he reveals his engage-
ment, "the holy candles on the altar of Laura's face have been snuffed
out" (II, vii, p. 97). This pattern of imagery, created by the narrator/
poet of the play, invokes the characteristics of the lyric poem. The
figurative language may inspire the actors to portray the sensitivity
of Laura, but only the reader can perceive the enclosed lyric structure
of the written direction.
In his first successful play, then, Williams creates both undisguised
and disguised narrators, both of whom may be Tom Wingfield/
Tennessee Williams. The persona of the stage direction supplies addi-
tional information, comments on action and theme, and contributes
poetry through patterns of imagery. While the narrative technique
is particularly appropriate to the autobiographical The Glass Me-
nagerie, it serves similar functions in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The narrator of this later play takes his reader into his confidence
with the use of the pronoun "we." This intimacy is exhibited near
the beginning of Act II after Big Daddy asks Reverend Tooker, "Y'
think somebody's about t'kick off around here?" The narrator then
speaks directly from the stage directions to the reader in Act II:
"How he would answer the question we'll never know, as he's spared
the embarassment by the voice of Gooper's wife, Mae, rising high
and clear as she appears with 'Doc' Baugh, the family doctor, through
the hall door."5
Although this disguised narrator sometimes allies himself with
the reader through the pronoun "we," at other times, he seems to be
5 Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (New York, I955), p. 49. All further
references to this work will be from this source.
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Narrators in the Drama of Tennessee Williams 89
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go American Literature
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Narrators in the Drama of Tennessee Willi'ams 9I
it, not even the most important. The bird I hope to catch in the net of t
play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying
to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy,
flickering, evanescent-fiercely charged-interplay of live human beings in
the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the
revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always
left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to
himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and
probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him
away from 'pat' conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a
play, not a snare for the truth of human experience. (p. 85)
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92 American Literature
7Tennessee Williams, Camino Real in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams (I953; rpt.
New York, I970), II, 547. Further references to this play will be from this source.
8 Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams (I950;
rpt. New York, I970), II, 350. All further references to this play will be from this source.
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Narrators in the Drama of Tennessee Willi.ams 93
about the past lives and the current thoughts of his characters, to
create a pattern of imagery, to comment on the themes of the play,
and finally, to present his theory of playwrighting. Williams does not
confine his own comments to his prefaces as Shaw tended to do, but
tells the story much as the narrator does in prose fiction. He tells in
the printed play while the acted play shows. Each version offers its
own riches for the audience or the reader, for Williams both shows
and tells.
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