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The Various Texts of Tennessee Williams's Plays Author(S): Drewey Wayne Gunn Source: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol The Various Texts of Tennessee Williams's Plays Author(s): Drewey Wayne Gunn Source: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Oct., 1978), pp. 368-375 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3206541 . Accessed: 15/12/2013 13:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Educational Theatre Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:10:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DREWEYWAYNE GUNN The VariousTexts of TennesseeWilliams's Plays By now it should be no news that Tennessee Williams will present the textual editor of any definitive collection of his plays an enormous problem.' But after reading Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, a collection of essays by fifty-two critics edited by Jac Tharpe (Mississippi,U.P. 1977), and other recent articles, I conclude that far too few readers and viewers realize how many versions of many of Williams's plays exist. Of the forty-two plays he has published since 1941, twenty have appeared in differing versions; only three of his seventeen full-length published plays have not been revised at some point in print. Yet no adequate bibliography has ever appeared, and critical attention to the subject-save for that directed to the almost notorious cases of Battle of Angels/Orpheus Descending and the various third acts of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-has been almost nil. Most commenta- tors have simply accepted the New Directions texts of these three titles as the definitive texts. But the revisions published by Dramatists Play Service are often superior, and sometimes an earlier text published in a magazine still holds great interest and is, in at least one case, the superior version. The following is a list of the various texts of Williams's plays which had been published by the end of 1977. I also list the titles of twelve plays which have been produced but not yet published and note the existence of unpublished versions of printed plays when such were used for a production. (Actually I am not sure that three plays of the 1930s were ever produced, but I have included them since Williams felt they were important to his development as a playwright.) Most of these unpublished manuscripts are among Williams's papers at the University of Texas Humanities Research Center, which also holds some seventy-six other unproduced and unpublished plays and fragments of plays. I have not listed Gavin Lambert's screenplay The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), based on Williams's novel, or Lanford Wilson's television play "The Migrants" (1974), based on an idea by Williams; but I have noted seven screenplays, an opera, and a ballet which have been based on his plays. When a short story version by Williams preceded the play, it is also listed, as well as the eight screenplays (two of them published) Drewey Wayne Gunn is Associate Professor of English at Texas A&I University. 1 I wish to thank Donna Vogt and Sharon Grosge for reading this bibliography and making valuable suggestions. 368 This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:10:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 369 / VARIOUSTEXTS OF WILLIAMS'SPLAYS which he has written. Maurice Yacowar, in Tennessee Williams and Film (Frederick Ungar, 1977), has compared all film versions with the original plays. In listing entries I have observed the following principles: I have ignored British editions, which in general follow the first New Directions texts. Collections preceded by "In" indicate a multi-author anthology; otherwise the collection includes Wil- liams's work only. I have omitted the place of publication to avoid the problem of whether to list a New Directions text as having been published in New York City or in Norfolk, Connecticut. Finally, I have abbreviated New Directions as "ND" and Dramatists Play Service as "DPS," and I have shortened the titles of four collections of his plays. In full they are: American Blues: Five Short Plays (DPS, 1948); Dragon Country: A Book of Plays (ND, 1969); The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, 5 vols. (ND, 1971-1976); and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One-Act Plays (ND, 1945; 2nd ed., 1953). Williams's Plays and Screenplays,1935-1977 "AT LIBERTY" Another essay, "Reflections on a Revival of a Landscape with Figures: Two Mississippi Plays. Controversial Fantasy," New York Times, 15 May "At Liberty." In American Scenes. Ed. William 1960, sec. 2, pp. 1, 3, has never been reprinted. Kozlenko. John Day, 1941. Pp. 175-182. "CAIRO! SHANGHAI! BOMBAY!" (with Dorothy "AUTO-DA-FE" Shapiro) "Auto-Da-Fe':A Tragedy in One Act." 27 Wagons Unpublished comedy, 1935. Full of Cotton. ND, 1945. Pp. 105-120. CANDLES TO THE SUN BABY DOLL: see "The Long Stay Cut Short" and Unpublished social action melodrama, 1936. "27 Wagons Full of Cotton." "THE CASE OF THE CRUSHED PETUNIAS" BATTLE OF ANGELS: see Orpheus Descending. "The Case of the Crushed Petunias: A Lyrical Fan- BOOM!: see The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here tasy." American Blues. DPS, 1948. Pp. 22-32. Anymore. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF CAMINO REAL "Three Players of a Summer Game" (short story). "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real: A Fantasy." In New Yorker, 28 (1 November 1952), 27-36. American Blues. DPS, 1948. Pp. 43-77. Reprint: Hard Candy: A Book of Stories. ND, Unpublished full-length version, 1953. 1954. Pp. 9-44. Camino Real. ND, 1953. 161 pages. Unpublished dramatization of story, 1955. Reprints: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. ND, 1955. 197 pages. In Theatre Arts, 38 (August 1954), 35-65. Reprints: Three Plays. ND, 1964. Pp. 157-329. In Theatre Arts, 41 (June 1957), 33-71. Camino Real: A Play. DPS, 1965. 93 pages. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New American Library, Theatre, vol. 2. ND, 1971. Pp. 417-591. 1958. The shorter, DPS, version of the play was written Theatre, vol. 3, ND, 1971. Pp. 1-215. about 1945. Elia Kazan urged Williams to expand Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: A Play in Three Acts. it for a Broadway production in 1953. This un- DPS, 1958. 81 pages. published version was a failure, and Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. ND, 1975. 173 pages. revised the play further before allowing ND to The short story offers interesting insight into the publish it. Though much of the DPS material re- way Williams develops characters and ideas, but mained intact, much was omitted. In the revision it only distantly foreshadows Cat. Two studies are Williams was tougher and more pessimistic; the Tom S. Reck's "The First Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," dance-like rhythms of the earlier version changed University Review, 34 (1968), 187-192, and into wild flight. Charles E. May's "BrickPollitt as Homo Ludens," The foreword to the ND text appeared original- in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe, ly in the New York Times, 15 March 1953, sec. 2, op. cit., pp. 277-291. Williams's more direct pp. 1, 3; the afterword, for the first time in ND. dramatization of the story was produced in 1955. This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:10:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 370 / ETI, October 1978 As Williams has explained, Elia Kazan disliked ing relationship with Summer and Smoke, a the original third act of Cat and at his urging the somewhat stronger tie with Eccentricities. It should playwright rewrote it. Williams, however, was encourage the reader, however, to see that Alma's unhappy with this second version and published choice at the end of both versions of the play is a both act versions in ND (but only the second in positive one, not tragic as many critics have DPS). All critics who have looked at the ND text asserted. Williams published an essay on this sub- have examined the differences to some degree. ject, "Questions without Answers," in the New York William Peterson in particular has written Times, 3 October 1948, sec. 2, pp. 1, 3. It has not "Williams, Kazan, and the Two Cats," New been reprinted. Theatre Magazine, 7, No. 3 (1967), 14-20. He revised the ND text of Summer and Smoke for Williams's 'ND preface, "Person-to-Person," DPS, omitting the prologue and the lines in Scene 1 first appeared in the New York Times, 20 March about the microscope, shifting some material from 1955, sec. 2, pp. 1, 3. He did not work on the film one scene to another, and adding an entirely new version; the screenplay was prepared by James scene with Alma and the older doctor between Poe and Richard Brooks (1958). Scenes 1 and 2 (mentioning for the first time the aunt In 1975 Williams published a final version of the who figures so importantly in Eccentricities) and a third act, returning to the original structure but prayer at the beginning of Scene 8.
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