CATHERINE Suddenly Last summer

At a Mardi Gras ball some—some boy that took me to it got too drunk
to stand up! I wanted to go home. My coat was in the cloakroom, they
couldn’t find the check for it in his pockets. I said, “Oh hell, let it go!”—I
started for a taxi. Somebody took my arm and said, “I’ll drive you home.”
He took off his coat as we left the hotel and put it over my shoulders,
and then I looked at him and—I don’t think I’d ever even seem him
before then, really!—He took me home in his car but took me another
place first. We stopped near the Duelling Oaks at the end of Esplanade
Street...Stopped!—I said, “What for?”—He didn’t answer, just struck a
match in the car to light a cigarette in the car and I looked at him in the
car and I knew “what for”!—I think I got out of the car before he got out
of the car, and we walked through the wet grass to the great misty oaks
as if somebody was calling us for help there! He took me home and said
an awful thing to me. “We’d better forget it,” he said, “my wife’s
expecting a child and—.” I just entered the house and sat there thinking
a little and then I suddenly called a taxi and went right back to the
Roosevelt Hotel ballroom. The ball was still going on. I thought I’d gone
back to pick up my borrowed coat but that wasn’t what I’d gone back
for. I’d gone back to make a scene on the floor of the ballroom, yes, I
didn’t stop at the cloakroom to pick up Aunt Violet’s old mink stole, no, I
rushed into the ballroom and spotted him on the floor and ran up to him
and beat him as hard as I could in the face and chest with my fists ‘till—
Cousin Sebastian took me away.

AMANDA
(to Laura) I went to the typing instructor and introduced myself as your
mother. She didn’t know who you were. Wingfield, she said. We don’t have
any such student enrolled at the school! I assured her she did, that you had
been going to classes since early in January. ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if you
could be talking about that terribly shy little girl who dropped out of school
after only a few days’ attendance?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘Laura, my daughter, has
been going to school every day for the past six weeks!’ ‘Excuse me,’ she
said. She took the attendance book out and there was your name,
unmistakably printed, and all the dates you were absent until they decided
that you had dropped out of school. I still said, ‘No, there must have been
some mistake I There must have been some mix‐up in the records!’ And she
said, ‘No – I remember her perfectly now. Her hands shook so that she
couldn’t hit the right keys! The first time we gave a speed‐test, she broke
down completely ‐ was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into
the wash‐room! After that morning she never showed up any more. We
phoned the house but never got any answer’ – while I was working at
Famous and Barr, I suppose, demonstrating those – Oh! I felt so weak I
could barely keep on my feet! I had to sit down while they got me a glass of
water! Fifty dollars’ tuition, all of our plans – my hopes and ambition for
you – just gone up the spout, just gone up the spout like that.

So what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and watch
the parades go by? Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie, darling?
Eternally play those worn‐out phonograph records your father left as a
painful reminder of him? We won’t have a business career – we’ve given
that up because it gave us nervous indigestion! What is there left but
dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried
women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position. I’ve seen such pitiful
cases in the South – barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging
patronage of sister’s husband or brother’s wife! – stuck away in some
little mousetrap of a room – encouraged by one in‐law to visit another –
little birdlike women without any nest – eating the crust of humility all
their life! Is that the future that we’ve mapped out for ourselves? I swear
it’s the only alternative I can think of! It isn’t a very pleasant alternative,
is it? Of course – some girls do marry!
Tom:
I didn’t go to the moon. I went much further, for time is the longest
distance between two places. Not long after that I left St. Louis. I
descended the steps of our fire escape for the last time and from then
on I followed in my father’s footsteps attempting to find in motion what
was lost in space. I traveled around a great deal. The city swept
about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn
away from the branches. I would have stopped but I was pursued by
something that always came upon me unawares taking me all
together by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it
was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I’m walking along the
street at night in some strange city before I have found companions.
And I pass a lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold.
Windows filled with pieces of colored glass. Tiny transparent bottles
and delicate colors like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once
my sister touches my shoulder and I turn around and look into her
eyes. … Laura. Laura. I tried so hard to leave you behind me but I am
more faithful than I intended to be. I reach for a cigarette, I cross a
street, I run to the movies or to a bar. I buy a drink. I speak to the
nearest stranger. Anything that will blow your candles out. For
nowadays the world is lit by lightning. Blow out your candles
Laura. And so goodbye.

LAURA: Mom, I can’t do anything– No, Mom, please! I have to say this. I
can’t go outside these walls. There’s just too much pain! I can feel
everyone staring at me–staring at this. (She points to the braced leg.)
The noise it makes, it’s just so loud! That’s why I dropped out of high
school! I felt everyone’s eyes staring at me, heard all the giggles they
tried to suppress as I clomped and limped down the hall.

Especially when I would enter the choir room! Jim would never want to
be around me again. Sure, we talked sometimes, but he wouldn’t want to
be around me any more than those few occasions–not around the
limping girl who makes such a racket! Nobody would want to be near
me. So I tuned out from the rest of the world before it could cause me
any more pain than I have alreadysuffered.
And it seems that whatever crippled my leg– (Amanda opens her mouth
as if about to interject.) –yes, Mom, you might as well admit that I’m
crippled!–has crippled the rest of my being throughout time. It seems I
just got worse and worse at school. And then at business college, in that
confined typing room, that quick clacking of keyboards surrounded me
as I stumbled and fat-fingered all the letters. It felt
as if the professor was breathing down my neck, silently mocking me as
I continued to fail.
Until finally, all that pressure poured out of me–and into a toilet. Mom,
secluded from the world in this home listening to phonograph records
and dusting my glass collection–this is where I belong! I fail everywhere
else in the outside world. Here, there’s nothing to fail at! I’ll never
succeed at finding a husband or a job, so I
might as well give up trying now and just be content in my bubble with
at least having no additional failure for the rest of my life! I can’t see Jim!
(Tears are welling in her eyes.)
It would only result in the ultimate failure–rejection from the only
person I have ever loved! Mom, I can’t! Just have dinner without me.
Please, Mom.
Tom:
Tom: What do you think I’m at? Aren’t I supposed to have any patience to
reach the end of, Mother? You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You
think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to
spend fifty-five years down there in that celotex interior? With flourescent
tubes? Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my
brains than go back mornings. But I go. For sixty five dollars a month I give
up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self- self’s all I
ever think of. Why listen, if self is what I thought of Mother, I’d be where he
is, GONE! I’m going to the movies! I’m going to opium dens, yes, opium
dens, Mother. I’ve joined the Hogan Gang, I’m a hired assassin, I carry a
tommy gun in a violin case. I run a string of cat houses in the Valley. They
call me Killer, Killer Wingfield. I’m leading a double life: a simple, honest
warehouse worker by day, by night, a dynamic czar of the underworld,
Mother. On occasion they call me El Diablo. Oh I could tell you many
things to make you sleepless. My enemies plan to dynamite this place.
They’re going to blow us all sky high some night. I’ll be glad, very happy,
and so will you! You’ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with
seventeen gentleman callers. You ugly, babbling old witch
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Blanche recounts the tragic death of her late
husband. F. BLANCHE He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I
was sixteen, I made the discovery – love. All at once and much, much too completely.
It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been
half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me. But I was unlucky. Deluded.
There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and
tenderness which wasn’t like a man’s, although he wasn’t the least bit effeminate
looking – still – that thing was there ... He came to me for help. I didn’t know that. I
didn’t find out anything till after our marriage when we’d run away and come back
and all I knew was I’d failed him in some mysterious way and wasn’t able to give the
help he needed but couldn’t speak of! He was in the quicksands and clutching at me
– but I wasn’t holding him out, I was slipping in with him! I didn’t know that. I didn’t
know anything except I loved him unendurably but without being able to help him
or help myself. Then I found out. In the worst of all possible ways. By coming
suddenly into a room that I thought was empty ‐‐ which wasn’t empty, but had two
people in it ... the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for
years ...Afterward we pretended that nothing had been discovered. Yes, the three of
us drove out to Moon Lake Casino, very drunk and laughing all the way. We danced
the Varsouviana! Suddenly, in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke
away from me and ran out of the casino. A few moments later – a shot! I ran out – all
did! – all ran and gathered about the terrible thing at the edge of the lake! I couldnʼt
get near for the crowding. Then somebody caught my arm. “Donʼt go any closer!
Come back! You donʼt want to see!” See? See what! Then I heard voices say – Allan!
Allan! The Grey boy! Heʼd stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired – so that the
back of his head had been – blown away! It was because – on the dance floor –
unable to stop myself – Iʼd suddenly said – “I saw! I know! You disgust me ...” And
then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and
never for one moment since has there been any light thatʼs stronger than this –
kitchen – candle ...
Maggie
 Brick, y’know I’ve been so God damn disgustingly poor all my
life!- That’s the truth, Brick!
Always had to suck up to people I couldn’t stand because they had
money and I was poor as Job’s turkey. You don’t know what it’s
like. Well, I’ll tell you, it’s like you would feel a thousand miles
away from Echo Spring!- And had to get back to it on that broken
ankle… without a crutch!
That’s how it feels to be as poor as Job’s turkey and have to suck
up to relatives that you hated because they had money and all you
had was a bunch of hand-me-down clothes and a few old moldy
three per cent government bonds. My daddy loved his liquor, he
fell in love with his liquor the same way you’ve fallen in love with
Echo Spring!- And my poor Mama, having to maintain some
semblance of social position, to keep appearances up, on an
income of one hundred and fifty dollars a month on those old
government bonds!
When I came out, the year I made my debut, I had just two evening
dresses! One Mother made me from a pattern in Vogue, the other
a hand-me-down from a snotty rich cousin I hated! -The dress that
I married you in was my grandmother’s weddin’ gown… So that’s
why I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof!
You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it. You’ve got to be old
with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you’ve got to be one or the
other, either young or with money, you can’t be old and without it.- That’s the truth,
Brick…
 
GLASS
AMANDA
Possess your soul in patience – you will see!
Something I’ve resurrected from that old trunk! Styles haven’t changed so
terribly much after all.
[She parts the portières.]
Now just look at your mother!
[She wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She
carries a bunch of jonquils – the legend of her youth is nearly revived.]
[Feverishly]: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion, won the cakewalk
twice at Sunset Hill, wore one spring to the Governor’s ball in Jackson ! See
how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura?
[She raises her skirt and does a mincing step around the room.] I wore it on
Sundays for my gentlemen callers ! I had it on the day I met your father. I
had malaria fever all that spring. The change of climate from East
Tennessee to the Delta – weakened resistance I had a little temperature all
the time – not enough to be serious – just enough to make me restless and
giddy. Invitations poured in – parties all over the Delta! – ‘Stay in bed,’
said mother, ‘you have fever!’ – but I just wouldn’t. – I took quinine but
kept on going, going ! Evenings, dances ! 
Afternoons, long, long rides! Picnics. – lovely! – So lovely, that country in
May. – All lacy with dogwood, literally flooded with jonquils! – That was
the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute
obsession.
Mother said, ‘Honey, there’s no more room for jonquils.’ And still I kept on
bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I’d say,
“Stop ! Stop! I see jonquils ! I made the young men help me gather
the jonquils ! It was a joke, Amanda and her jonquils ! Finally there were
no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils.
No vases to hold them?
All right, I’ll hold them myself – And then I – [She stops in front of the
picture.] met your father ! Malaria fever and jonquils and then – this –
boy…. [She switches on the rose-coloured lamp.] I hope they get here
before it starts to rain.

BLANCHE
Suppose! You can't have forgotten that much of our bringing
up, Stella, that you just suppose that any part of a
gentleman's in his nature! Not one particle, no! Oh, if he was
just--ordinary! Just plain--but good and wholesome, but--
no. There's something downright--bestial--about him! You're
hating me saying this, aren't you?

He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one,

moves like one, talks like one! There's even something--sub-
human--something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!
Yes, something--ape-like about him, like one of those
pictures I've seen in--anthropological studies! Thousands
and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there
he is--Stanley Kowalski--survivor of the stone age! Bearing
the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you--
you here--waiting for him! Maybe he'll strike you ir maybe
grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered
yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in front of
the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and
hulking! HIs poker night!--you call it--this party of apes!
Somebody growls--some creature snatches at something--
the fight is on! God! Maybe we are a long way from being
made in God's image, but Stella--my sister--there has
been some progress since then! Such things as art--as
poetry and music--such kinds of new light have come into
the world since then! In some kinds of people tenderer
feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to
make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this  dark
march toward whatever it is we're approaching. . . . Don't--
don't hang back with the brutes!

Blanche from "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee

Williams

Quixote from "Camino Real" by Tennessee Williams

Big Daddy
What do you know about this mendacity thing? Hell! I could
write a book on it! Don't you know that? I could write a book
on it and still not cover the subject? Well, I could, I could
write a goddam book on it and still not cover the subject
anywhere near enough!!--Think of all the lies I got to put up
with!--Pretenses! Ain't that mendacity? Having to pretend
stuff you don't think or feel or have any idea of? Having for
instance to act like I care for Big Mama!--I haven't been able
to stand the sight, sound, or smell of that woman for forty
years now!--even when I laid her!--regular as a piston. . . .
Pretend to love that son of a bitch of a Gooper and his wife
Mae and those five same screechers out there like parrots in
a jungle? Jesus! Can't stand to look at 'em!
Church!--it bores the Bejesus out of me but I go!--I go an' sit
there and listen to the fool preacher!
Clubs!--Elks! Masons! Rotary!--crap!
(A spasm of pain makes him clutch his belly. He sinks into a
chair and his voice is softer and hoarser.)
You I do like for some reason, did always have some kind of
real feeling for--affection--respect--yes, always. . . .
You and being a success as a planter is all I ever had any
devotion to in my life!--and that's the truth. . . .
I don't know why, but it is!
I've lived with mendacity!--Why can't you live with it? Hell,
you got to live with it, there's nothing else to live with except
mendacity, is there?

JIM:

[abruptly]: You know what I judge to be the trouble with you?

Inferiority complex I Know what that is? That's what they call it when someone
low-rates himself !
I understand it because I had it, too. Although my caw was not so aggravated as
yours seems to be. I had it until I took up public speaking, developed my voice,
and learned that I had an aptitude for science. Before that time I never thought
of myself as being outstanding in any way whatsoever I
Now I've never made a regular study of it, but I have a friend who says I can
analyse people better than doctors that make a profession of it. I don't claim
that to be necessarily true, but I can sure guess a person's psychology, Laura I
[Takes out his gum] Excuse me, Laura. I always take it out when the flavour is
gone. I'll use this scrap of paper to wrap it in. I know how it is to get it stuck on
a shoe.
Yep - that's what I judge to be your principal trouble. A lack of amount of faith
in yourself as a person. You don't have the proper amount of faith in yourself.
I'm basing that fact on a number of your remarks and also on certain
observations I've made. For instance that clumping you thought was so awful in
high school. You say that you even dreaded to walk into class. You see what
you did? You dropped out of school, you gave up an education because of a
clump, which as far as I know was practically non-existent! A little physical
defect is what you have. Hardly noticeable even! Magnified thousands of times
by imagination !
You know what my strong advice to you is? Think of yourself as superior in
some way.
 Why, man alive, Laura! just look about you a little. What do you see? A world
full of common people! All of 'em born and all of 'em going to die !
Which of them has one-tenth of your good points I Or mine ! Or anyone else's,
as far as that goes - Gosh !
Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many !

BLANCHE.

I, I, I took the blows on my face and my body! All

those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard.
Father, Mother, Margaret that dreadful way. So big
with it, she couldn't be put in a coffin, but had
to be burned like rubbish! You came just in time
for funerals Stella. And funerals are pretty
compared to death. Funerals are quiet, but deaths
not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse,
sometimes it rattles, sometimes they cry out to
you, “Don’t let me go!” Even the old sometimes say
it- “Don’t let me go”. As if you could stop them!
Funerals are quiet, with pretty flowers. And oh,
what lovely boxes they pack you away in! Unless you
were there at the bed when they cried out “Hold me”
you’d never suspect there was struggle for breath
and bleeding. You didn’t dream, but I saw! Saw! And
now you sit there telling me with your eyes that I
let the place go. How in hell do you think all that
sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive
Miss Stella! And old Cousin Jessie, right after
Margaret’s, hers! The Grim Reaper put his tent up
on our doorstep! Stella, Belle Reve was his
headquarters. Honey, that’s how it slipped through
my fingers. Which of them left us a fortune? Which
of them left us a cent of insurance even? Only poor
Jessie- one hundred to pay for her coffin. That was
it Stella! And I with my pitiful salary at the
school! Yes, accuse me! Sit there and stare at me,
thinking I let the place go. I let the place go!
Where were you Stella? In bed with your Polack!

STANLEY: Lie Number One: All this squeamishness she puts on! You should just
know the line she's been feeding to Mitch--He thought she had never been more
than kissed by a fellow! But Sister Blanche is no lily! Our supply-man down at the
plant has been going through Laurel for years and he knows all about her and
everybody else in the town of Laurel knows all about her. She is as famous in Laurel
as if she was the President of the United States, only she is not respected by any
party! This supply-man stops at a hotel called the Flamingo. She’s stayed there too.
This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily white fingers! She moved to
the Flamingo! A second class hotel which has the advantage of not interfering in the
private social life of the personalities there! The Flamingo is used to all kinds of
goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame
Blanche! In fact they were so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to
turn in her room-key--for permanently! This happened a couple of weeks before she
showed here. Sure, I can see how you would be upset by this. She pulled the wool
over your eyes as much as Mitch's! Honey, I told you I thoroughly checked on these
stories! Now wait till I finish. The trouble with Dame Blanche was that she couldn't
put on her act any more in Laurel! They got wised up after two or three dates with
her and then they quit, and she goes on to another, the same old line, same old act,
same old hooey! But the town was too small for this to go on forever! And as time
went by she became a town character. Regarded as not just different but downright
loco--nuts. And for the last year or two she has been washed up like poison. That's
why she's here this summer, visiting royalty, putting on all this act--because she's
practically told by the mayor to get out of town! Yes, did you know there was an
army camp near Laurel and your sister's was one of the places called "Out-of-
Bounds"? Well, so much for her being such a refined and particular type of girl.
Which brings us to Lie Number Two. She didn't resign temporarily from the high
school because of her nerves! No, siree, Bob! She didn't. They locked her out of that
high school before the spring term ended--and I hate to tell you the reason that step
was taken! A seventeen-year-old boy--she'd gotten mixed up with! And when the
boy's dad learned about it and got in touch with the high school superintendent. Oh,
I'd like to have been in that office when Dame Blanche was called on the carpet! I'd
like to have seen her trying to squirm out of that one! But they had her on the hook
good and proper that time and she knew that the jig was all up! They told her she
better move on to some fresh territory. Yep, it was practically a town ordinance
passed against her!

LAURA.

I liked one once. I came across his picture a while ago, in the yearbook.
His name was Jim. Here he is in The Pirates of Penzance, the operetta
the senior class put on. He had a wonderful voice and we sat across the
aisle from each other Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the
auditorium. Here he is with the silver cup for debating! See his grin? He
used to call me – Blue Roses. When I had that attack of pleurosis – he
asked me what the matter was when I came back. I said pleurosis – he
thought I said Blue Roses! So that’s what he always called me after that.
Whenever he saw me, he’d holler, “Hello, Blue Roses!” I didn’t care for
the girl he went out with. Emily Meisenbach. Emily was the best-dressed
girl at Soldan. She never struck me, though, as being sincere…It said in
the personal section – they’re engaged. That was six years ago. They
must be married by now.