Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton (Masterplots II: Drama, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Tennessee Williams
- First Published: 1945
- Type of Plot: Grotesque; tragicomedy
- Time of Work: The 1940’s
- Setting: Blue Mountain, Mississippi
- Principal Characters: Jake Meighan, Flora Meighan, Silva Vicarro
- Genres: Drama, Grotesque literature, Tragicomedy
- Subjects: Values, Sex or sexuality, South or Southerners, Marriage, 1940’s, Domestic violence, Adultery, Arson
- Locales: Mississippi, Blue Mountain, MS
The Play
Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton, a one-act play in three scenes, begins and ends on that most southern of domestic architectural features, the front porch. The setting is Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Tennessee Williams, through detailed staging, requires enough appurtenances so that “the effect is not unlike a doll’s house.”
The play opens in early evening. The audience first sees Jake Meighan, “a fat man of sixty,” scurrying offstage with a can of coal oil as dogs bark in the distance. As he drives away, his wife, Flora, emerges from the...
[The entire page is 2018 words long]
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