27 wagons full of cotton and other plays

Williams's intense awareness of himself might then have been less disturbing to his reader, and the seemingly fortuitous alterations Most of them, one feels, would have been more effective as short stories. Why most of these sketches were cast in dramatic mold is not easy to discover, yet the least dramatic of all ('The Lady of Larkspur Lotion') was included in the 'Best One-Act Plays of 1941' and the title play was similarly honored The effect is of a disembodied emotionalism. Williams's experiments inĬhronology, some are removed from time.

Only one play is versified, but all are removed from daily speech as, by Mr. Over his derelict children the cloak of a lyric style that shifts distressingly from bawdry to stilted elegance. 'What has become of compassion and understanding? Where have they all gone to? Where's God? Where's Christ?' Compassionate understanding is the response that Mr. 'Is there no mercy left in the world anymore?' cries an alcoholic young poet to a genteel prostitute, as he strides up and down her roach-filledīedroom. Saroyan's, and his concept of vice as innocent. Williams's love is as indiscriminate as Mr. If he is largely unsuccessful, it is because too few of these characters dwell, as Laura does, for Tom, within the boundaries of credibility and unfeigned sympathy. 'Sentimental' is better, for here, as in 'The Glass Menagerie,' revelation of the unutterable Yet to call these plays obscene would be a mistake. May not seem to them the ideal objects of compassion. Wife-sellers, adolescent tarts and vocal furniture-movers The magistrates of Boston were offended, in 1940, by 'Battle of Angels' they are unlikely to be more hospitable to plays whose properties include filthy pictures and a flagellant's whip. In most of the sketches, characters sit, talk, reveal their neuroses and rise from their chairs only to kill themselves or Impossible, all suffer ineffable woe from which they seek release in fantasy, liquor and death. Sin is joyless here, and passion hateful. Incest, murder, adultery and arson are the daily occurrence of a world whose manifest end is the mad-house or an unquiet grave. Williams' imagination is peopled in these plays (as in 'Battle of Angels') by schizoid virgins, nymphomaniacs and ApOne-Acts by Tennessee Williams By DENHAM SUTCLIFFEĢ7 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON AND OTHER ONE-ACT PLAYS

27 wagons full of cotton and other plays