A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams - by Stephen Bottoms & Philip Kolin & Michael Hooper (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams provides the essential guide to Williams' most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on four of Williams' plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers are wanting a summary of the play, a commentary on the themes or characters, or a discussion of the work in performance, they can readily find what they need to develop their understanding and aid their appreciation of Williams' artistry.

A chronology of the writer's life and work helps to situate all his works in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of Williams' writing, its recurrent themes and concerns and how these are intertwined with his life and times. For each play the author provides a summary of the plot, followed by commentary on:
* The context
* Themes
* Characters
* Structure and language
* The play in production (both on stage and screen adaptations)
Questions for study, and notes on words and phrases in the text are also supplied to aid the reader.

The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Williams' work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Williams' greatest pla

Review Quotes

What Weiss has done here is sculpt a text that ... provides an in-depth primer to one of the United States' most decorated playwrights. Ultimately, A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams will be useful for students and professors who are searching for an easily navigable and digestible analysis of Williams and his early work.
Journal of American Drama and Theatre

Working chronologically through his plays, Murphy provides critical commentary for each, her own as well as commentaries from other leading scholars in the field ... From start to last, Murphy's summaries are generous without being overwritten; her explications insightful and accessible, the way in fact a really good teacher's are.
Text and Presentation

About the Author

Katherine Weiss is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Literature and Language, East Tennessee State University, USA.
Stephen Bottoms is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Manchester University, UK.
Philip Kolin is University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters and Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, USA.
Michael S. D. Hooper is the author of Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams: Desire Over Protest, and teaches English and Drama at St Margaret's Bushey, UK.