Product Description

SET IN ST LOUIS DURING THE DEPRESSION, THE GLASS MENAGERIE IS ONE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' MOST POWERFUL AND MOVING PLAYS. ABANDONED BY HER HUSBAND WHEN HE 'FELL IN LOVE WITH LONG DISTANCES', AMANDA WINGFIELD COMFORTS HERSELF WITH RECOLLECTIONS OF HER EARLIER, MORE GRACIOUS, LIFE IN BLUE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE WAS PURSUED BY 'GENTLEMAN CALLERS'. HER SON TOM, A POET WITH A JOB IN A WAREHOUSE, LONGS FOR ADVENTURE AND ESCAPE FROM HIS MOTHER'S SUFFOCATING EMBRACE. LAURA, HER SHY CRIPPLED DAUGHTER, HAS HER GLASS MENAGERIE AND HER MEMORIES. AMANDA IS DESPERATE TO FIND HER DAUGHTER A HUSBAND, BUT WHEN THE LONG-AWAITED GENTLEMAN CALLER DOES ARRIVE, LAURA'S ROMANTIC ILLUSIONS ARE FINALLY CRUSHED. MIRRORING THE QUIET DESPAIR OF THE THIRTIES, THE GLASS MENAGERIE IN ITS NOSTALGIA FOR A PAST WORLD AND ITS EVOCATION OF LONELINESS AND LOST LOVE CELEBRATES, ABOVE ALL, THE HUMAN NEED TO DREAM.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217697 in Books
• Published on: 1988-02-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real(1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Night of the Iguana (1961), The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1963; revised 1964) and Small Craft Warnings (1972). He died in 1983.

Customer Reviews

Williams Most Autobiographical Work
There are few American playwrights who rank as highly in the Pantheon as Tennessee Williams. He is up there with O'Neill, Miller and Albee as amongst the quintessential dramatists of the 20th century. This is one of his earliest, and in some respects his most timeless, of his scripts. No one can argue that it his most autobiographical, as it portrays a cloyingly suffocating matriarch, Amanda, and a younger sister, Laura, who are both interchangable characters for Williams' own little St Louis family. Actually, in real life, the outcome was much more tragic, as Williams' mother had a frontal lobotomy performed on his actual sister. One can see how Williams may have harbored some deep resentments towards his mother, and he spends most of his time getting even with her in this Euripidean play.
Though recent adaptations of this play have emphasized the "touchy-feely" aspects of the relationship between brother and sister (Why does Treat Williams come to mind?), the actual script lends itself to a much darker, Medea-like interpretation, which I believe Williams originally intended. This is Williams way of getting back at the evil Witch of the West who dominated his youth and who would exert her influence upon him for the rest of his life. It doesn't take a Freud to untangle this thread

If you want to watch a great performnace of this play, try to track down the "Broadway Theater Archive" 1973 version with Katherine Hepburn as Amanda, Sam Waterston as Tom, Michael Moriarity as "The Gentleman Caller," and Joanna Miles as an unforgettably vulnerable and poignant Laura. The Paul Newman 1987 theatrical release had a strong cast as well, but can't compete.

plain and simple
The layout of the play is easy to read and make notes on. There are useful notes at the front of the book to help understand the performance of the play. A perfect version if you are studying the play in school.

great!!
another great drama by tennessee williams, showing the complexities of real life, and how one can live in an illusion to escape life