Tennessee Williams' Late Style: the Aging Playwright and His Imagination.

Abstract

The later plays of the American playwright Tennessee Williams have received considerably less critical attention than his earlier, more popular plays, such as A Streetcar Named Desire. During his later period, from 1961 until his death in 1983, Williams rejected his characteristic style of lyrical realism and conducted a restless quest for new modes; he wrote grotesque tragicomedies, expressionistic two-character plays, plays in the manner of the Theatre of the Ridiculous, and autobiographical dramas. The playwright often subordinated character development to the overall expression of such conditions as despair, aging, madness, corruption, and loneliness. In this dissertation, twenty-four of the later plays, including seven unpublished works, are analyzed to support the argument that these are avant-garde plays written in part as a reaction against his earlier style. The unpublished plays analyzed are: Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis?, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, The Red Devil Battery Sign, This Is (An Entertainment), "Kirche, Kutchen and Kinder," Something Cloudy, Something Clear and A House Not Meant to St and . Williams altered his style in response to such factors as his entrance into life's "second half," his tiring of his previous style, and a desire to emulate younger, avant-garde playwrights. The resulting plays, which vary in dramatic quality, nevertheless link thematically with his more popular plays and help unify his canon. For example, the expressionistic two-character plays and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel explore abstractly the condition of modern despair, a key theme of his earlier plays. Also, the masterpiece Vieux Carre, one of three self-portrait plays written in the later period, contains numerous echoes of his earlier plays and like The Glass Menagerie is cast in the form of a memory play; in its complex structure, it paints the self-portrait of a lonely, aging, homosexual playwright exploring the roots of his imagination.