The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams

This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading scholars in the field. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors cover a healthy sampling of Williams’s works, from the early apprenticeship years in the 1930s through to his last play before his death in 1983, Something Cloudy, Something Clear. In addition to essays on such major plays as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, among others, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Companion also features a chapter on selected key productions as well as a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.

• Provides an accessible look at Tennessee Williams and his work and life • Tennessee Williams currently in vogue with recent filmisations of A Streetcar Named Desire (1995) starring Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange and John Goodman and Suddenly Last Summer (1993) starring Maggie Smith, Rob Lowe, Richard E. Grant, and Natasha Richardson • All essays newly commissioned for this Companion • A fresh look at a major twentieth-century dramatist • Offers a chronology and bibliographical essay on key research

List of illustrations and acknowledgements; Notes on contributors; Chronology; Introduction Matthew C. Roudané; 1. Early Williams: the making of a playwright Allean Hale; 2. Entering The Glass Menagerie C. W. E. Bigsby; 3. A streetcar running fifty years Felicia Hardison Londré; 4. Camino Real: Williams’s allegory about the fifties Jan Balakian; 5. Writing in ‘A Place of Stone’: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Albert J. Devlin; 6. Before the fall - and after: Summer and Smoke and The Night of the Iguana Thomas P. Adler; 7. The sacrificial stud and the fugitive female in Suddenly Last Summer, Orpheus Descending, and Sweet Bird of Youth John M. Clum; 8. Romantic textures in Tennessee Williams’s plays and short stories Nancy M. Tischler; 9. Seeking direction Brenda Murphy; 10. Hollywood in crisis: Tennessee Williams and the evolution of the adult film R. Barton Palmer; 11. Tennessee Williams: the last two decades Ruby Cohn; 12. Words on Williams: a bibliographical essay Jacqueline O’Connor; 13. The Strangest Kind of Romance: Tennessee Williams and his Broadway critics Jacqueline O’Connor; Index.

‘The addition of Tennessee Williams to the list of subjects in this distinguished series of critical essays confirms his international status among twentieth-century authors. In celebrating his achievement, the critics in this collection offer analysis rather than censure, place Williams’ plays in the context of critical thought and provide directors with a basis for mounting the plays afresh.’ Studies in Theatre Production