shown on Broadway in the spring of 1945, Mississippi-born Tennessee Williams was practically unknown; almost over-night, he became an international success.Glass Menagerie is a mixture of straightforward, realistic play construction and poetic , highly imaginative conception and language. Williams used this combination for most of his works. The structure of his plays is basically conventional; his vision, his voice , is imaginative and sensitive.The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, its images are hazy. The characters, too, are poetically conceived and removed from the daily life of the Great Depression of the 1930 s. In a few lines in the opening narration, Williams sets the social background of the period; but he is not really interested in the larger society. In all his plays, what interests him most is the psychological makeup of his characters. Laura Wingfield passes her life listening to phonograph records and rearranging her collection of glass animals. Tom wants to be a writer and to escape to the sea. Amanda lives in the past glories of being a Southern belle. In contrast to the Wingfield family, the gentleman caller is not poetic. He is from the real world, and it is the touching confrontation of this real man with the withdrawn Laura that provides the climax of the play.play after play, Tennessee Williams probed the psychological complexities of his characters. Though Williams became known principally for his colorful women characters - Amanda and Laura in The Glass Menagerie, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Alma in Summer and Smoke, and Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - he also created some great male characters, among them Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Marlon Brando s portrayal of Stanley in the original production, and in the movie, established a kind of mumbling, torn-Tee-shirt technique of acting that was to become popular with many of the younger male actors of the next decade.
Comprehension Questions and Tasks
1. Explain the term slice of life dramatic technique. Comment on the drama in USA in the XIX-th century. What influenced the modern American drama?
. What was new in the little theatres that appeared in America in the twenties? How was contemporary America reflected in O Neill s plays? Comment on the play Beyond the Horizon. Why does Lillian Hellman speak of some of her characters in The Little Foxes as tender grapes ? Comment on O Neill s and Hellman s contribution to the world theatre.
. What is the central idea of ​​the play Death of Salesman written by Arthur Miller? How can we characterize the talent and place of Arthur Miller in the literary trend? p align="justify">. What are the chief characteristics of Tennesee Williams plays? Comment on his women characters. How does Williams combine serious and ridiculous material in his works?
GLOSSARY
Adventure novel - a novel where exciting events are more important than character development and sometimes theme. - the emphasis, or stress, given a syllable in pronunciation. Accents can also be used to emphasize a particular word in a sentence. - A major division in the action of a play. The ends of acts are typically indicated by lowering the curtain or turning up the houselights. Playwrights frequently employ acts to accommodate changes in time, setting, characters onstage, or mood. In many full-length plays, acts are further divided into scenes, which often mark a point in the action when the location changes or when a new character enters. - A figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic or metaphorical meaning . Many works contain allegories or are allegorical in part, but not many are entirely allegorical. - The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable: descending dew drops ; luscious lemons . Alliteration is based on the sounds of letters, rather than the spelling of words; for example, keen and < span align = "justify"> car alliterate, but
