University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Philosophy English Language and Literature Department Contemporary American Drama Short Report Task I Comparison: The Glass Menagerie The Death of a Salesman Three Tall Women Professor/mentor: doc.dr. Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija Student: Enver Kazić Contents Time and Place Setting ................................................................................................................3 Characters and Identities .............................................................................................................4 Structure and Stage Lighting .......................................................................................................5 Instead of Conclusion ..................................................................................................................6 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................6 2 All the three plays, all surely unique and all assuredly different in various ways, and yet the two of those – The Glass Menagerie and The Death of a Salesman share a definite similarity noticeable on the basis level, that is, in years premiered. Both plays were premiered in the 40s; in 1944 Williams’s The Glass Menagerie was premiered in Chicago, while five years after, in 1949 Miller’s The Death of a Salesman was premiered on Broadway. On the other side, Albee’s Three Tall Women was premiered in 1991. However, the substantial differences between the three plays are all on the important levels and those serve as a foundation for a literal analysis specifically in the composition of the three plays, in the engagement and introduction of characters, characters themselves, in the time and place setting, and other relevant details such as stage lighting. The following pages will be devoted to further explanation and analysis of the mentioned points. Time and Place Setting Williams’s and Miller’s plays are both classified under Selective-Realism type; this means that those playwrights continued Realism tradition in a general way, but that is possible that they integrated some non-realistic elements in some concepts; however, both Williams and Miller are interested and concerned for the actual or real – defining life as it is, realistic setting that is usually carefully described, characters who could really exist or exist, theme and problems that everyday people can understand or even face. Williams’s play is even more realistic than Miller’s due the fact that it is autobiographical, and is, similarly to Miller’s placed in the specific period, social, cultural and/or political setting (the 40s in the U.S.). On the other side, Albee’s play is a contemporary American drama that, however, can contain certain realistic elements, but is mainly non-realistic, unspecified, outside the frames of our experiences, struggles or concerns. Albee’s play overcomes the usual (traditional) boundaries; it even contains absurd and metaphysical elements and it was written with a purpose to be puzzled and hardly understood. In order to back up this statement, I will explain the differences in time and place setting and characters impersonation in the three mentioned plays. In the Glass Menagerie, it is stated somewhere in the play that Wingfield family lives in the overcrowded urban center of St. Louis. Precise and detailed place descriptions (in their apartment or elsewhere) are usually introduced at the beginning of each scene (e.g. The Wingfield apartment is the rear of the building (…) the 3 apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire-scape…)1 , but this is not a general rule since they can occur through the play also (e.g. The church bell is heard striking six. At the sixth stroke the alarm goes off in Amanda’s room…)2. In the Death of a Salesman playwright introduces us to place setting even before the first act (The action takes place in Willy Loman’s house and yard and in various places he visits in the New York and Boston of today)3; place setting is even more highlighted and explained in the beginning of act one and generally through the whole play. Overall, we conclude that in both plays action mostly takes place in private houses/apartments which is something we can partially connect to Albee’s play too - the whole play is set in just one room of an unknown house or mansion (A “wealthy” bedroom, French in feeling. (…) Two light armchairs beautifully covered in silk. (…) Two doors…)4. The interesting difference is that we are not aware of a general place and time setting in Albee’s play while we surely are in Williams’s and Miller’s. We can, therefore, say that Albee’s play is rather utopian; we are not aware of the city or a country where the play takes place, and we are not familiar with the time setting at all. The playwright directly wants to divide reality and play (this is visible in an interesting stage direction line - whatever day it is in the reality - when one character asks another one which day it is.) This is one characteristic of contemporary drama; in first two plays, the whole universe opens in certain definite places, while in the third play the whole universe opens right from the just one room. Characters and Identities Similar occurrences happen in characters impersonations; Williams and Miller defined the characters by naming them, meaning that some sort of social and cultural identity is given to them. This identity is constantly being built and molded through the play and characters’ experiences. In this way, the reader or the watcher can really “meet” the characters by the end of the play. Miller’s and Williams’s characters are specifically determined individuals, they are named, explained and presented as real people are (Willy, Linda, Biff, Happy Loman, and others minor characters in the Death of a Salesman and Amanda, Laura, Tom Wingfield and Jim in the 1 Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays (Penguin Modern Classics): The Glass Menagerie. London: Penguin Classics, 2010. pg. 233 2 Same. pg. 255 3 Miller, Arthur. The Death of a Salesman. London: Penguin Classics, 2000. pg. 6 4 Albee, Edward. Three Tall Women. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1994. pg. 4 4 Glass Menagerie.) Williams introduces characters even more specifically by describing them in the preface of the play. Albee’s characters are not defined in the same way as Williams and Millers are; they are not defined at all. It seems that none identity is given to them. Three main characters are named by the alphabetical order (A, B, and C); while the minor character was defined in rather a general term the boy. In this way characters can be literally anyone or everyone, or as we see in the end of the play just one person with three possible alter-egos or in different life lap – young, adult, elder. It is important to mention that there is one undefined character in Miller’s play too; this is Willy’s mistresses (as we found out during the play), but her identity is never mentioned or determined. Similar to the boy character in Albee’s play, Willy’s mistresses is defined by a general term the woman. Structure and Stage Lighting Noticeable differences occur in structure between the three plays. The Glass Menagerie consists of 80 pages, The Death of a Salesman of 105 pages while Three Tall Women of 50 pages. This is measured together with stage directions; the length analysis proves the second play the longest one, while Albee’s is the shortest. It is worth noticing that Miller’s and Albee’s play is divided into two acts even though Miller’s play may be seen as a play with three parts since there is a special part in the end named Requiem. Williams’s play consists of seven acts making it the most traditional and the most reduced. Stage directions are more similar, however, in the first and the second play – both Williams and Miller pay a lot of attention to stage directions; these are quite long directions sometimes occupying almost two pages and sometimes implicating even monologues; stage directions are very detailed in those plays (e.g. the first and the second page in act one in the Death of Salesman). On the other side, Albee’s stage directions are short, precise, sometimes even sharp and blunt. (E.g. small sneer, quick smile, interested, imitation, laughs, etc.) Even in the beginning, the playwright leads the play with only four-lined introduction directions (At rise, A is in the left armchair, B is in the right one, C on the bed-foot bench. It is afternoon. Some silence)5. This makes dialogues and monologues in first two plays shorter and in the third one longer. Lighting and scene settings are also important to notice in these three plays. It seems that Williams and Miller give a great importance to the lighting in 5 Same. pg. 5 5 their plays; similarity is obvious since both playwrights use lighting not only to create a certain atmosphere or mood, highlight certain parts of the scene or focus characters, but the lighting in both plays rather serves a greater role. Both plays introduce present, past and/or memory time gaps (Albee’s play introduces exact time gaps too), and that is why lighting together with stage effects, can evoke those transmissions better and make the play easier to follow or read. On the other side, it seems that Albee does not pay much attention to light or stage effects as much as he pays attention to the importance of silence and dialogues pauses. Instead of Conclusion To conclude I will not highpoint anything about plays’ differences but rather find something that finally connect all three plays together – and these are potential themes of the plays that I concluded during the reading: family and/or family relations (mother-daughter, mother-son, father-son, etc.), the role of mother (Amanda, Linda, A, and B), depression, consumerism, unfulfilled dreams, popularity and success, life passage, etc. Bibliography Albee, Edward. Three Tall Women. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1994 Miller, Arthur. The Death of a Salesman. London: Penguin Classics, 2000 Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays (Penguin Modern Classics): The Glass Menagerie. London: Penguin Classics, 2010 6