This content is from Wikipedia. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it. GradeSaver also offers a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors.

Introduction

The Glass Menagerie is an evocative, four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. It was originally written as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted. Initial ideas stemmed from one of his short stories, and the screenplay originally went under the name of 'The Gentleman Caller'. The play premiered in Chicago in 1944, was championed by critic Claudia Cassidy there, and in 1945 went on to win the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Laurette Taylor originated the role of the all-too-loving mother, Amanda Wingfield, and many who witnessed it consider that performance to be an incomparable, defining moment for American acting. In the 2004 documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There, Broadway veterans nearly unanimously rank Taylor's performance as the most memorable of their entire lives. The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights.

The play was reworked from one of Williams's short stories "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" (written June 1943, published 1948)^[1]. The story is also written from the point of view of narrator Tom Wingfield, and many of his monologues from Glass Menagerie seem lifted straight from this original. Certain elements have clearly been omitted from the play, including the reasoning for Laura's fascination with Jim's freckles (linked to a book she owned about a one-armed orphan) and an area by the house known as "Death Valley" that Laura's room looks out on. Generally the story contains the same plot as the play, with certain sections given more emphasis, and character details edited (Jim originally calls Tom "Slim", not "Shakespeare"^[2]).

The Glass Menagerie is accounted by many to be an autobiographical play about Williams's life, the characters and story mimicking his own more closely than any of his other works. Williams (whose real name is Thomas) would be Tom, his Mother, Amanda, and his sickly and (supposedly) mentally ill sister Rose would be Laura (whose nickname in the play is "Blue Roses", a result of an unfortunate bout of Pleurosis as a high school student). It has been suggested as well that the character of Laura is based upon Williams himself, referencing his introvert nature and obsessive focus on one part of life (writing for Williams and glass animals in Laura's case.^[3]).