Form, Theme and Character

Abstract

Tennessee Williams is perhaps the only genuine writer in the history of the American theatre. He published two books of poetry, two novels, four books of short stories (one including a novella), a book of essays, and his Memoirs. During his lifetime, at least sixty-three of his plays and playlets (thirty-two are short, twenty-four full-length and seven mid-length) were published or given a major professional production or both. He wrote or collaborated upon seven of the fifteen film adaptations.

It is this continual rush of time, so violent that it appears to be screaming, that deprives our actual lives of so much dignity and meaning, and it is, perhaps more than anything else the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives to certain plays their feeling of depth and significance. (‘The Timeless World of a Play’)