Three Plays of Tennessee Williams

by Tennessee Williams

  [There is an ominous cracking sound in the sky.]

  JIM: Oh, just a girl. The girl I go steady with—

  [He smiles charmingly. The sky falls]

  AMANDA [a long-drawn exhalation]: Ohhhh... Is it a serious romance, Mr. O'Connor?

  JIM: We're going to be married the second Sunday in June.

  AMANDA: Ohhhh—how nice! Tom didn't mention that you were engaged to be married.

  JIM: The cat's not out of the bag at the warehouse yet. You know how they are. They call you Romeo and stuff like that.

  [He stops at the oval mirror to put on his hat. He carefully shapes the brim and the crown to give a discreetly dashing effect.]

  It's been a wonderful evening, Mrs. Wingfield. I guess this is what they mean by Southern hospitality.

  AMANDA: It really wasn't anything at all.

  JIM: I hope it don't seem like I'm rushing off. But I promised Betty I'd pick her up at the Wabash depot, an' by the time I get my jalopy down there her train'll be in. Some women are pretty upset if you keep 'em waiting.

  AMANDA: Yes, I know—The tyranny of women!

  [She extends her hand.]

  Good-bye, Mr. O'Connor. I wish you luck—and happiness—and success! All three of them, and so does Laura! Don't you, Laura?

  LAURA: Yes!

  JIM [taking her hand]: Good-bye, Laura. I'm certainly going to treasure that souvenir. And don't you forget the good advice I gave you.

  [Raises his voice to a cheery shout.]

  So long, Shakespeare! Thanks again, ladies.—Good night!

  [He grins and ducks jauntily out.]

  [Still bravely grimacing, Amanda closes the door on the gentleman caller. Then she turns back to the room with a puzzled expression. She and Laura don't dare face each other. Laura crouches beside the victrola to wind it.]

  AMANDA [faintly]: Things have a way of turning out so badly. I don't believe that I would play the victrola. Well, well—well! Our gentleman caller was engaged to be married! TOM!

  TOM [from back]: Yes, Mother?

  AMANDA: Come in here a minute. I want to tell you something awfully funny.

  TOM [enters with a macaroon and a glass of lemonade]: Has the gentleman caller gotten away already?

  AMANDA: The gentleman caller has made an early departure. What a wonderful joke you played on us!

  TOM: How do you mean?

  AMANDA: You didn't mention that he was engaged to be married.

  TOM: Jim? Engaged?

  AMANDA: That's what he just informed us.

  TOM: I'll be jiggered! I didn't know about that

  AMANDA: That seems very peculiar.

  TOM: 'What's peculiar about it?

  AMANDA: Didn't you call him your best friend down at the warehouse?

  TOM: He is, but how did I know?

  AMANDA: It seems extremely peculiar that you wouldn't know your best friend was going to be married!

  TOM: The warehouse is where I work, not where I know things about people!

  AMANDA: You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!

  [He crosses to door.]

  Where are you going?

  TOM: I'm going to the movies.

  AMANDA: That's right, now that you've had us make such fools of ourselves. The effort, the preparations, all the expense! The new floor lamp, the rug, the clothes for Laura! All for what? To entertain some other girl's fiancé! Go to the movies, go! Don't think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who's crippled and has no job! Don't let anything interfere with your selfish pleasure—I just—go, go, go—to the movies!

  TOM: All right, I will! The more you shout about my selfishness to me the quicker I'll go, and I won't go to the movies!

  AMANDA: Go, then! Then go to the moon—you selfish dreamer!

  [Tom smashes his glass on the floor. He plunges out on the fire-escape, slamming the door. Laura screams in fright..

  The Dance-hall music becomes louder.

  Tom goes to the rail and grips it desperately, lifting his face in the chill white moonlight penetrating narrow abyss of the alley.

  Tom's closing speech is timed with the interior pantomime.

  The interior scene is played as though viewed through soundproof glass. Amanda appears to be making a comforting speech to Laura who is huddled upon the sofa. Now that we cannot hear the mother's speech, her silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty.

  Laura's dark hair hides her face until at the end of the speech she lifts it to smile at her Mother. Amanda's gestures are slow and graceful, almost dancelike as she comforts the daughter. At the end of her speech she glances a moment at the father's picture—then withdraws through the portières. At the close of Tom's speech, Laura blows out the candles, ending the play.]

  TOM: I didn't go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between places. Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoebox.

  I left Saint Louis. I descended the step of this fire-escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space—I travelled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly coloured but torn away from the branches.

  I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of coloured glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colours, like bits of a shattered rainbow.

  Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes...

  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!

  [Laura bends over the candles.]

  —for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura—and so good-bye.

  [She blows the candles out.]

  THE SCENE DISSOLVES

  A Streetcar Named Desire

  By Tennessee Williams, 1947

  And so it was I entered the broken world

  To trace the visionary company of love, its voice

  An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)

  But not for long to hold each desperate choice

  HART CRANE

  The Broken Tower

  CONTENTS

  SCENE ONE

  SCENE TWO

  SCENE THREE

  SCENE FOUR

  SCENE FIVE

  SCENE SIX

  SCENE SEVEN

  SCENE EIGHT

  SCENE NINE

  SCENE TEN

  SCENE ELEVEN

  SCENE ONE

  The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river. The section is poor but, unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered gray, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both.

  It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee. A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a barroom around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner,
or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This "Blue Piano" expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here.

  Two women, one white and one colored, are taking the air on the steps of the building. The white woman is Eunice, who occupies the upstairs flat; the colored woman a neighbor, for New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town.

  Above the music of the "Blue Piano" the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping.

  [Two men come around the corner, Stanley Kowalski and Mitch. They are about twenty-eight or thirty years old, roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes. Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher's. They stop at the foot of the steps.]

  STANLEY [bellowing]: Hey, there! Stella, Baby!

  [Stella comes out on the first floor landing, a gentle young woman, about twenty-five, and of a background obviously quite different from her husband's.]

  STELLA [mildly]: Don't holler at me like that. Hi, Mitch.

  STANLEY: Catch!

  STELLA: What?

  STANLEY: Meat!

  [He heaves the package at her. She cries out in protest but manages to catch it; then she laughes breathlessly. Her husband and his companion have already started back around the corner.]

  STELLA [calling after him]: Stanley! Where are you going?

  STANLEY: Bowling!

  STELLA: Can I come watch?

  STANLEY: Come on.

  [He goes out.]

  STELLA: Be over soon.

  [To the white woman]

  Hello, Eunice. How are you?

  EUNICE: I'm all right. Tell Steve to get him a poor boy's sandwich 'cause nothing's left here.

  [They all laugh; the colored woman does not stop. Stella goes out.]

  COLORED WOMAN: What was that package he th'ew at 'er?

  [She rises from steps, laughing louder.]

  EUNICE: You hush, now!

  NEGRO WOMAN: Catch what!

  [She continues to laugh. Blanche comes around the corner, currying a valise. She looks at a slip of paper, then at the building, then again at the slip and again at the building. Her expression is one of shocked disbelief. Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. She is about five years older than Stella. Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggest a moth.]

  EUNICE [finally]: What's the matter, honey? Are you lost?

  BLANCHE [with faintly hysterical humor]: They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!

  EUNICE: That's where you are now.

  BLANCHE: At Elysian Fields?

  EUNICE: This here is Elysian Fields.

  BLANCHE: They mustn't have understood what number I wanted.

  EUNICE: What number you lookin' for?

  [Blanche wearily refers to the slip of paper.]

  BLANCHE: Six thirty-two.

  EUNICE: You don't have to look no further.

  BLANCHE [uncomprehendingly]: I'm looking for my sister, Stella DuBois. I mean—Mrs. Stanley Kowalski.

  EUNICE: That's the party.—You just did miss her, though.

  BLANCHE: This—can this be—her home?

  EUNICE: She's got the downstairs here and I got the up.

  BLANCHE: Oh. She's—out?

  EUNICE: You noticed that bowling alley around the corner?

  BLANCHE: I'm—not sure I did.

  EUNICE: Well, that's where she's at, watchin' her husband bowl.

  [There is a pause]

  You want to leave your suitcase here an' go find her?

  BLANCHE: No.

  NEGRO WOMAN: I'll go tell her you come.

  BLANCHE: Thanks.

  NEGRO WOMAN: You welcome.

  [She goes out.]

  EUNICE: She wasn't expecting you?

  BLANCHE: No. No, not tonight.

  EUNICE: Well, why don't you just go in and make yourself at home till they get back.

  BLANCHE: How could I—do that?

  EUNICE: We own this place so I can let you in.

  [She gets up and opens the downstairs door. A light goes on behind the blind, turning it light blue. Blanche slowly follows her into the downstairs flat. The surrounding areas dim out as the interior is lighted.]

  [Two rooms can be seen, not too clearly defined. The one first entered is primarily a kitchen but contains a folding bed to be used by Blanche. The room beyond this is a bedroom. Off this room is a narrow door to a bathroom.]

  EUNICE [defensively, noticing Blanche's look]: It's sort of messed up right now but when it's clean it's real sweet.

  BLANCHE: Is it?

  EUNICE: Uh, huh, I think so. So you're Stella's sister?

  BLANCHE: Yes.

  [Wanting to get rid of her]

  Thanks for letting me in.

  EUNICE: Por nada, as the Mexicans say, por nada! Stella spoke of you.

  BLANCHE: Yes?

  EUNICE: I think she said you taught school.

  BLANCHE: Yes.

  EUNICE: And you're from Mississippi, huh?

  BLANCHE: Yes.

  EUNICE: She showed me a picture of your home-place, the plantation.

  BLANCHE: Belle Reve?

  EUNICE: A great big place with white columns.

  BLANCHE: Yes...

  EUNICE: A place like that must be awful hard to keep up.

  BLANCHE: If you will excuse me. I'm just about to drop.

  EUNICE: Sure, honey. Why don't you set down?

  BLANCHE: What I meant was I'd like to be left alone.

  EUNICE: Aw. I'll make myself scarce, in that case.

  BLANCHE: I didn't mean to be rude, but—

  EUNICE: I'll drop by the bowling alley an' hustle her up.

  [She goes out the door.]

  [Blanche sits in a chair very stiffly with her shoulders slightly hunched and her legs pressed close together and her hands tightly clutching her purse as if she were quite cold. After a while the blind look goes out of her eyes and she begins to look slowly around. A cat screeches. She catches her breath with a startled gesture. Suddenly she notices something in a half-opened closet. She springs up and crosses to it, and removes a whiskey bottle. She pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down. She carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink. Then she resumes her seat in front of the table.]

  BLANCHE [faintly to herself]: I've got to keep hold of myself!

  [Stella comes quickly around the corner of the building and runs to the door of the downstairs flat.]

  STELLA [calling out joyfully]: Blanche!

  [For a moment they stare at each other. Then Blanche springs up and runs to her with a wild cry.]

  BLANCHE: Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!

  [She begins to speak with feverish vivacity as if she feared for either of them to stop and think. They catch each other in a spasmodic embrace.]

  BLANCHE: Now, then, let me look at you. But don't you look at me, Stella, no, no, no, not till later, not till I've bathed and rested! And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!

  [Stella laughs and complies]

  Come back here now! Oh, my baby! Stella! Stella for Star!

  [She embraces her again]

  I thought you would never come back to this horrible place! What am I saying? I didn't mean to say that. I meant to be nice about it and say—Oh, what a convenient location and such—Haa-ha! Precious lamb! You haven't said a word to me.

  STELLA: You haven't given me a chance to, honey!

  [She laughs, but her glance at Blanche is a little anxious.]

&nbs
p; BLANCHE: Well, now you talk. Open your pretty mouth and talk while I look around for some liquor! I know you must have some liquor on the place! Where could it be, I wonder? Oh, I spy, I spy!

  [She rushes to the closet and removes the bottle; she is shaking all over and panting for breath as she tries to laugh. The bottle nearly slips from her grasp.]

  STELLA [noticing]: Blanche, you sit down and let me pour the drinks. I don't know what we've got to mix with. Maybe a coke's in the icebox. Look'n see, honey, while I'm—