Williams, Tennessee (Vol. 5) - Williams, Tennessee 1911–
Williams, Tennessee 1911–
Williams is a Southern American playwright, screenwriter, short story writer, and novelist. The Glass Menagerie is recognized as the prototype of the American theatrical trend to explore the vanished hopes of the dispossessed. Most of Williams' work is derived from his understanding of the impossibility of communication and what Signi Falk has called his "awareness of the appalling emptiness and cruelty in the hearts of many well-fed Americans." Williams, one of the world's most popular playwrights, is probably America's greatest living dramatist. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vol. 5-8, rev. ed.)
The plays that first thrust Tennessee Williams into the front rank have much in common besides their clear focus and economical construction. Both The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire transmute the base metal of reality into theatrical and, frequently, verbal poetry. Both supplement the...
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