Blanche from "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams (2)

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?

STELLA (coldly)
Go on and say it all, Blanche.

BLANCHE
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

I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn't be put in a coffin! But had to be burned like rubbish! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths--not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you, "Don't let me go!" Even the old, sometimes, say, "Don't let me go." As if you were able to stop them! But funerals are quiet, with pretty flowers. And, oh, what gorgeous boxes they pack them away in! Unless you were there at the bed when they cried out, "Hold me!" you'd never suspect there was the struggle for breath and bleeding. You didn't dream, but I saw! 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's right after Margaret's, hers! Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent 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 a cent of insurance even? Only poor Jessie--one hundred to pay for her coffin. That was all, 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! In bed with your--Polack!

Quixote from "Camino Real" by Tennessee Williams

QUIXOTE (looking about the plaza): --Lonely . . .
(To his surprise the word is echoed softly by almost unseen figures huddled below the stairs and against the wall of the town. Quixote leans upon his lance and observes with a wry smile--)
--When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
(He shakes out a dusty blanket. Shadowy arms extend toward him and voices murmur.)
VOICE: Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
QUIXOTE (arranging his blanket): Yes, I'll sleep for a while, I'll sleep and dream for a while against the wall of this town . . .
(A mandolin or guitar plays "The Nightingale of France.")
--And my dream will be a pageant, a masque in which old meanings will be remembered and possibly new ones discovered, and when I wake from this sleep and this disturbing pageant of a dream, I'll choose on among its shadows to take along with me in the place of Sancho . . .
(He blows his nose between his fingers and wipes them on his shirttail.)
--For new companions are not as familiar as old ones but all the same--they're old ones with only slight differences of face and figure, which may or may not be improvements, and it would be selfish of me to be lonely alone . . .
(He stumbles down the incline into the Pit below the stairs where most of the Street People huddle beneath awnings of open stalls.
(The white cockatoo squawks.)
GUTMAN: Hush, Aurora.
QUIXOTE: And tomorrow at this same hour, which we call madrugada, the loveliest of all words, except the word alba, and that word also means daybreak--
--Yes, at daybreak tomorrow I will go on from here with a new companion and this old bit of blue ribbon to keep me in mind of distance that I have gone and distance I have yet to go, and also to keep me in mind of--

The Woman from "Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen . . ." by Tennessee Williams

WOMAN: I want to go away!
MAN: How?
WOMAN: Alone! (She returns to window)--I'll register under a made-up name at a little hotel on the coast . . .
MAN: What name?
WOMAN: Anna--Jones . . . The chambermaid will be a little old lady who has a grandson that she talks about . . . I''ll sit in the chair while the old lady makes the bed, my arms will hang over the--sides, and--her voice will be--peaceful . . . She'll tell me what her grandson had for supper!--tapioca and--cream . . . (The Woman sits by the window and sips the water.)--The room will be shadowy, cool, and filled with the murmur of--
MAN: Rain?
WOMAN: Yes. Rain.
MAN: And--?
WOMAN: Anxiety will--pass--over!
MAN: Yes . . .
WOMAN: After a while the little old woman will say, Your bed is made up, Miss, and I'll say--Thank you . . . Take a dollar out of my pocket book. The door will close. And I'll be alone again. The windows will be tall with long blue shutters and it will be a season of rain--rain--rain . . . My life will be like the room, cool--shadowy cool and--filled with the murmur of--
MAN: Rain . . .
WOMAN: I will receive a check in the mail every week that I can count on. The little old lady will cash the checks for me and get me books from a library and pick up--laundry . . . I'll always have clean things!--I'll dress in white. I'll never be very strong or have much energy left, but have enough after a while to walk on the--esplanade--to walk on the beach without effort . . . In the evening I'll walk on the esplanade along the beach. I'll have a certain beach where I go to sit, a little way from the pavilion where the band plays Victor Herbert selections while it gets dark . . . I'll have a big room with shutters on the windows. There will be a season of rain, rain, rain. And I will be so exhausted after my life in the city that I won't mind just listening to the rain. I'll be so quiet. The lines will disappear from my face. My eyes won't be inflamed at all any more. I'll have no friends. I'll have no acquaintances even. When I get sleepy, I'll walk slowly back to the little hotel. The clerk will say, Good evening, Miss Jones, and I'll just barely smile and take my key. I won't ever look at a newspaper or hear a radio; I won't have any idea of what's going on in the world. I will not be conscious of time passing at all . . . One day I will look in the mirror and I will see that my hair is  beginning to turn grey and for the first time I will realize that I have been living in this little hotel under a made-up name without any friends or acquaintances or any kind of connections for twenty-five years. It will surprise me a little but it won't bother me any. I will be glad that time has passed as easily as that. Once in a while I may go out to the movies. I will sit in the back row with all that darkness around me and figures sitting motionless on each side not conscious of me. Watching the screen. Imaginary people. People in stories. I will read long books and the journals of dead writers. I will feel closer to them that I ever felt to people I used to know before I withdrew from the world. It will be sweet and cool this friendship of mine with dead poets, for I won't have to touch them or answer their questions. They will talk to me and not expect me to answer. And I'll get sleepy listening to their voices explaining the mysteries to me. I'll fall asleep with the book still in my fingers, and it will rain. I'll wake up and hear the rain and go back to sleep. A season of rain, rain, rain . . . Then one day, when I have closed a book or come home alone from the movies at eleven o'clock at night--I will look in the mirror and see that my hair has turned white. White, absolutely white. As white as the foam on the waves. (She gets up and moves about the room as she continues--) I'll run my hands down my body, and feel how amazingly light and thin I have grown. Oh, my, how thin I will be. Almost transparent. Not hardly real any more. Then I will realize, I will know, sort of dimly, that I have been staying on here in this little hotel, without any--social connections, responsibilities, anxieties or disturbances of any kind--for just about fifty years. Half a century. Practically a lifetime. I won't even remember the names of the people I knew before i came here nor how it feels to be someone waiting for someone that--may not come . . . Then I will know--looking in the mirror--the first time has come for me to walk out alone once more on the esplanade with the strong wind beating on me, the white clean wind that blows from the edge of the world, from even further than that, from the cool outer edges of space, from even beyond whatever there is beyond the edges of space . . . (She sits down again unsteadily by the window.)--Then I'll go out and walk on the  esplanade. I'll walk alone and be blown thinner and thinner.
MAN: Baby. Come back to bed.
WOMAN: And thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner! (He crosses to her and raises her forcibly from the chair.)--Till finally I won't have any body at all, and the wind picks me up in its cool white arms forever, and takes me away!
MAN: (presses his mouth to her throat.) Come on back to bed with me!
WOMAN: I want to go away, I want to go away! (He releases her and she crosses to center of room sobbing uncontrollably. She sits down on the bed. He sighs and leans out the window, the light flickering beyond him, the rain coming down harder. The Woman shivers and crosses her arms against her breasts. Her sobbing dies out but she breathes with effort. Light flickers and wind whines coldly. The Man remains leaning out. A last she says to him softly--) Come back to bed. Come on back to bed, baby . . . (He turns his lost face to her as--)
The Curtain Falls

Grace from "Something Unspoken" by Tennessee Williams

GRACE: You say there's something unspoken. Maybe there is. I don't know. But I do know some things are better left unspoken. Also I know that when a silence between two people has gone on for a long time it's like a wall that's impenetrable between them! Maybe between us there is such a wall. One that's impenetrable. Or maybe you can break it. I know I can't. I can't even attempt to. You're the strong one of us two and surely you know it.--Both of us have turned grey!--But not the same kind of grey. In that velvet dressing-gown you look like the Emperor Tiberius!--In his imperial toga!--Your hair and your eyes are both the color of iron! Iron grey. Invincible looking! People nearby are all somewhat--frightened of you. They feel your force and they admire you for it. They come to you here for opinions on this or that. What plays are good on Broadway this season, what books are worth reading and what books are trash and what--what records are valuable and--what is the proper attitude toward--bills in Congress!--Oh, you're a fountain of wisdom!--And in addition to that, you have your--wealth! Yes, you have your--fortune!--All of your real-estate holdings, your blue-chip stocks, you--bonds, your--mansion on Edgewater Drive, you--shy little--secretary, your--fabulous gardens that Pilgrims cannot go into . . .
CORNELIA: Oh, yes, now you are speaking, now your are speaking at last! Go on, please go on speaking.
GRACE: I am--very--different!--Also turning grey but my grey is different. Not iron, like yours, not imperial, Cornelia, but grey, yes, grey, the--color of a . . . cobweb . . . (She starts the record again, very softly.)--Something white getting soiled, the grey of something forgotten. (The phone rings again. Neither of them seems to notice it.)--And that being the case, that being the difference between our two kinds of grey, yours and mine--  You mustn't expect me to give bold answers to questions that make the house shake with silence! To speak out things that are fifteen years unspoken!--That long a time can make a silence a wall that nothing less than dynamite could break through and-- (She picks up the phone.) I'm not strong enough, bold enough, I'm not--

Big Daddy from "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" by Tennessee Williams

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?

Byron from "Camino Real" by Tennessee Williams

That's very true, Senor. But a poet's vocation, which used to be my vocation, is to influence the heart in a gentler fashion than you have made your mark on that loaf of bread. He ought to purify it and lift it above its ordinary level. For what is the heart but a sort of--
(He makes a high, groping gesture in the air.)
--A sort of--instrument!--that translates noise into music, choas into--order . . .
(Abdullah ducks almost to the earth in an effort to stiffle his mirth. Gutman coughs to cover his own amusement.)
--a mysterious order!
(He raises his voice till it fills the plaza.)
--That was my vocation once upon a time, before it was obscured by vulgar plaudits!--Little by little it was lost among gondolas and palazzos!--masked balls, glittering salons, huge shadowy courts and torch-lit entrances!--Baroque facades, canopies and carpets, candelabra and gold plate among snowy damask, ladies with throats as slender as flower-stems, bending and breathing toward me their fragrant breath--
--Exposing their breasts to me!
Whispering, half-smiling!--And everywhere marble, the visible grandeur of marble, pink and gray marble, veined and tinted as flayed corrupting flesh,--and these provided agreeable distractions from the rather frightening solitude of a poet. Oh, I wrote many cantos in Venice and Constantinople and in Ravenna and Rome, on all of those Latin and Levantine excursions that my twisted foot led me into--but I wonder about them a little. They seem to improve as the wine in the bottle--dwindles . . . There is a passion for declivity in this world!
And lately I've found myself listening to hired musicians behind a row of artificial palm trees--instead of the single--pure-stringed instrument of my heart . . .
Well, then, it's time to leave here!
(He turns back to the stage.)
--There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go!
I'm going to look for one, now. I'm sailing to Athens. At least I can look up at the Acropolis, I can stand at the foot of it and look up at broken columns on the crest of a hill--if not purity, at least its recollection . . .
I can sit quietly looking for a long, long time in absolute silence, and possibly, yes, still possibly--
The old pure music will come to me again. Of course on the other hand I may hear only the little noise of insects in the grass . . .
But I am sailing to Athens! Make voyages!--Attempt them!--there's nothing else . . .

Marguerite from "Camino Real" by Tennessee Williams

Oh, Jacques, we're used to each other, we're a pair of captive hawks caught in the same cage, and so we've grown used to each other. That's what passes for love at this dim, shadowy end of the Camino Real . . .
What are we sure of? Not even of our existence, dear comforting friend! And whom can we ask the questions that torment us? "What is this place?" "Where are we?"--a fat old man who gives sly hints that only bewilder us more, a fake of a Gypsy squinting at cards and tea-leaves. What else are we offered? The never-broken procession of little events that assure us that we and strangers about us are still going on! Where? Why? And the perch that we hold is unstable! We're threatened with eviction, for this is a port of entry and departure, there are no permanent guests! And where have we to go when we leave here? Bide-a-While? "Ritz Men Only"? Or under that ominous arch into Terra Incognita? We're lonely. We're frightened. We hear the Streetcleaners' piping not far away. So now and then, although we've wounded each other time and again--we stretch out hands to each other in the dark that we can't escape from--we huddle together for some dim-communal comfort--and that's what passes for love on this terminal stretch of the road that used to be royal. What is it, this feeling between us? When you feel my exhausted weight against your shoulder--when I clasp your anxious old hawk's head to my breast, what is it we feel in whatever is left of our hearts? Something, yes, something--delicate, unreal, bloodless! The sort of violets that could grow on the moon, or in the crevices of those far away mountains, fertilized by the droppings of carrion birds. Those birds are familiar to us. Their shadows inhabit the plaza. I've heard them flapping their wings like old charwomen beating worn-out carpets with gray brooms . . .
But tenderness, the violets in the mountains--can't break the rocks!

Tom from "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams

Yes, movies! Look at them-- (A wave toward the marvels of Grand Avenue) All of those glamorous people--having adventures--hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves--Goody, goody!--It's our turn now, to go to the South Sea Island--to make a safari--to be exotic, far-off!--But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait until then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!

The Writer from "The Lady of Larkspur Lotion" by Tennessee Williams

(in a tired voice) Ah, well, now, what if I am? Suppose there is no 780-page masterpiece in existence. (He closes his eyes and touches his forehead.) Supposing there is in existence no masterpiece whatsoever! What of that, Mrs. Wire? But only a few, a very few--vain scribblings--in my old trunk-bottom. . . . Suppose I wanted to be a great artist but lacked the force and the power! Suppose my books fell short of the final chapter, even my verses languished uncompleted! Suppose the curtains of my exalted fancy rose on magnificent dramas--but the house-lights darkened before the curtain fell! Suppose all of these unfortunate things are true! And suppose that I--stumbling from bar to bar, from drink to drink, till I sprawl at last on the lice-infested mattress of this brothel--suppose that I, to make this nightmare bearable for as long as I must continue to be the helpless protagonist of it--suppose that I ornament, illuminate--glorify it! With dreams and fictions and fancies! Such as the existence of a 780-page masterpiece--impending Broadway productions--marvelous volumes of verse in the hands of publishers only waiting for signatures to release them! Suppose that I live in this world of pitiful fiction! What satisfaction can it give you, good woman, to tear it to pieces, to crush it--call it a lie? I tell you this--now listen! There are no lies but the lies that are stuffed in the mouth by the hard-knuckled hand of need, the cold iron fist of necessity, Mrs. Wire! So I am a liar, yes! But your world is built on a lie, your world is a hideous fabrication of lies! Lies! Lies! . . . Now I'm tired and I've said my say and I have no money to give you so get away and leave this woman is peace! Leave her alone. Go on, get out, get away!

Lawrence from "I Rise In Flame, Cried the Phoenix" by Tennessee Williams

LAWRENCE: Why did I want to write? Because I'm an artist . . . What is an artist? . . A man who loves life too intensely, a man who loves life till he hates her and has to strike out with his fist as I struck out at Frieda . . . To show her he knows her tricks, and he's still the master! (The smoky yellow light is beginning to dim.) Oh, Brett, oh, Frieda . . . I wanted to stretch out the long, sweet arms of my art and embrace the whole world! But it isn't enough to go out to the world with love. And so I doubled my fist and I struck and I struck. Words weren't enough . . . I had to have color, too. I took to paint and I painted the way that I wrote! Fiercely, without any shame! This is life, I told them, life is like this! Wonderful! Dark! Terrific! They banned my books and they wanted to burn my pictures! That's how it is . . . When first you look at the sun it strikes you blind. Life's . . . blinding . . . (He stirs and leans forward.) The sun's . . . going down. he's seduced by the harlot of darkness.

FRIEDA: Now he is going to say it . . . Stop up your ears!

LAWRENCE: Now she has got him, they're copulating together! The sun is exhausted, the harlot has taken his strength and now she will start to destroy him. She's eating him up . . . Oh, but he won't stay down. He climb back out of her belly and there will be light. In the end there will always be light. In the end there will always be light . . . And I am the prophet of it! (He rises with difficulty.)

Myra from "Battle of Angels" by Tennessee Williams

They say! They say! What of it? Ten thousand years from today we'll just be little tell-tale marks on the sides of rocks which people refer to as fossils. (There is the sound of slow tolling bells across the wide, rainy fields.) That's all will be left of our big tremendous adventures! (She smiles with amazement at this thought.) Teeny-weeny little pencil-scratches, things like pigeon tracks will be what's left of Mayra--what's left of Val! Then old Mr. Important Scientific Professor will pick up his microscope--"Humph!" he'll say, "This girl had remarkable legs." Or, "Goodness, this young man lost a rib somewhere." That will be all they'll ever find out about us! Were we in love? Were we happy? Did white moths fly in our windows? How do they know? They can't tell. History isn't written about little people. All that little people ever get to be is marks on rocks called fossils.

Eva from "Not About Nightingales" by Tennessee Williams

Oh, Jim I would have liked to live with you outside. We might have found a place where searchlights couldn't point their fingers at us when we kissed. I would have given you so much you've never had. Quick love is hard. It gives so little pleasure. We should have had long nights together with no walls. Or no stone walls-- I know the place! A tourist camp beside a highway, Jim, with all night long the great trucks rumbling by--but only making shadows through the blinds! I'd touch the stone you're made of, Jim, and make you warm, so warm, so terribly warm your love would burn a scar upon my body that no length of time could heal!--Oh, Jim. If we could meet like that, at some appointed time, some place decided now, where we could love in secret and be warm, protected, not afraid of things-- We could forget all this as something dreamed!--Where shall it be? When, Jim? Tell me before you go!

Butch from "Not About Nightingales" by Tennessee Williams

Cut the cackle all of yuz! That goes for you too, Mex. You got plenty of time for talking to Jesus when you git there! Lissen here now!--Anybody in Hall C that eats is gonna pay for his supper in Kangaroo Court. I'll assess the maximum fine, you know what!--You're scared of Klondike? I say let 'em throw us in Klondike!--Maybe some of you weak sisters will be melted down to grease-chunks. But not all twenty-five of us! Some of us are gonna beat Klondike! And Klondike's dere las' trump card, when you got that licked, you've licked everything they've got to offer in here! You got 'em over the barrel for good! So then what happens? They come up to us and they say, "You win! What is it you want?" We say, "Boss Whalen is out! Git us a new Warden! Git us decent  livin' conditions! No, more overcrowdin', no more bunkin' up wit' contajus diseasus; fresh air in the cell-blocks, fumigation, an' most of all--WE WANT SOME FOOD HAT'S FIT TO PUT IN OUR BELLIES! (Applause.) No more hamburger an' spaghetti an' beans, and beans an' hamburger an' spaghetti till you feel like the whole fucking world was made of nothin' else but hamburger an' beans an' spaghetti--(Applause.)--Maybe when we git through housecleaning this place'll be like the Industrial Reformatory they got at Chillicothe! A place where guys are learnt how to make a livin' after they get outa stir! Where they teach 'em trades an' improve their ejication! Not just lock 'em up in dirty holes an' hope to God they'll die so as to save the State some money!! (Fierce yammering.) Tonight we go to Klondike!--Dere's three compartments! One of 'em's little hell, one of 'em's middle-sized hell an' one of 'em's BIG HELL!--You know which one Butch O'Fallon is gonna be in!--So if I ain't yellow, boys, don't you be neither! That's all I got to say.

Jim from "Not About Nightingales" by Tennessee Williams

JIM: No. A guy can use his brain two ways. He can make it a wall to shut him in from the world or a great big door to let him out. (He continues musingly.) Intellectual emancipation!

OLLIE: Huh?

(Butch gives a long whistle.)

OLLIE: What's that?

JIM: Couple of words I came across in a book.

OLLIE: Sound like big words.

JIM: They are big words. So big that the world hangs on 'em. They can tell us what to read, what to say, what to do-- But they can't tell us what to think! And as long as man can think as he pleases he's never exactly locked up anywhere. He can think himself outside of all their walls and boundaries and make the world his place to live in-- It's a swell feeling, Ollie, when you've done that. It's like being alone on the top of a mountain at night with nothing around you but stars. Only you're not alone, though, cause you know that you're part of everything living and everything living is part of you. Then you get an idea of what God is. Not Mr. Santie Claus, Ollie, dropping answers to prayers down chimneys--

OLLIE: Naw?

JIM: No, not that. But something big and terrible as night is, and yet--

OLLIE: Huh?

JIM: And yet--as soft as a woman. Y'see what I mean?

Arthur from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (2)

ARTHUR: Why not? It would do you some good. You with your books, your anthologies, your metaphysical poets. William Blake and John Donne. They're dead, Hertha. All your lovers are dead and bound up in books. They can't touch you. They can't make love to you tonight. They've been in the ground too long. Don't you know that? (He turns out the suspended light above.) This is life and you're scared of it. You've never come up against it before. You haven't found it in any of your alphabetical files. It's taken you by surprise, Hertha, the way it took me when I came back from Europe and saw Heavenly Critchfield again, laughing at me the way that she used to. It hurts you. It's big and awful and crazy and makes you want to run and hise from it. But you can't Hertha. Hiding doesn't do any good. (He catches one of her hands which she holds before her in a defensive gesture.) You've got little hands--they're little candle-wax hands.

HERTHA (faintly): Let go of me, Arthur.

ARTHUR: No. I won't let go.

HERTHA: Please do.

ARTHUR: No.

HERTHA: If you don't I'll have to call Miss Schlagmann.

ARTHUR: Go ahead. Call her.--Haven't you ever been kissed? No. Only in books. By William Blake and John Donne. "Go, and catch a falling star,/Get with child a mandrake root."--Those are your lovers but they've got cold lips. They've been in the ground so long not even April can make them warm, again, Hertha. But I'm not cold. Heavenly thinks I am but she's mistaken. The whiskey's made me warm for a change. I'm hot inside. If I touched you with my lips you'd think you'd been scorched by fire. You'd crumple up like a little white moth that's flown into the candle flame, Hertha. That's what you'd do. (He pulls her against him.)

Arthur from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams

ARTHUR: Yes. I told her that I was in love with her, and she said that I should go out and get drunk because that was the only thing that would do me any good. So I got drunk. It's the first time I ever got drunk in my life and it was swell. Till I started thinking about her again making lov to Dick Miles.

HERTHA: Arthur! I'm sorry, I-- (She extends her hand towards him in a slight, pitying gesture.)

ARTHUR: I can forget all that with you, can't I? You're a girl, too. you could make love as well as she could. But not with Dick Miles. With me. (He moves toward her. Hertha steps back.) What are you backing away for? Are you scared? That's flatterineg. Nobody's ever been scared of me before. I was like you, Hertha. I hid behind books all the time because they used to call me a sissy when I was a kid in school. I never got over that. Not till tonight when I got drunk. God! I never knew it could be so good to get drunk and feel like a man inside. Literature and the arts. Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms. Concerts, matinees, recitals--what's all that? If I told you you'd blush. You don't like that kind of language. Sure, I sat through all of that stuff and thought it was great. Got my stuff published in those little magazines with the big cultural movements. Art for art's sake. Give America back to the Indians. I thought I was being highbrow. Intellectual. The hell with that stuff. Dick Miles's got the right idea. He was the one that she gave herself to, not me, not me.  The one that got drunk and had himself a good time, he was the one that got Heavenly, and me with me intellectual pretensions, my fancy education, and my father's money--what did I get? Pushed in the face! Thrown over for a boy that clerks in a drugstore because he knows how to make love and I don't! Well now I can, too. I can get drunk and act like the rest of them. How about it, Miss Neilson? Why don't you come out from behind those tortoise-shell glasses of yours? (He reaches across the table and plucks them off.)

Dick from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (3)

DICK: You don't want me to! Lissen, Heavenly!

HEAVENLY: No!

DICK: Have you ever spent a night on the river, honey?

HEAVENLY: Let go of me!

(He forces her down on the bench and holds her against him.)

DICK: Have you ever spent a night on a river barge, honey? That clean wet smell of the woods and maybe a hole in the roof you can see the stars through? Katydids hummin' an' bullfrogs off in the shadows. That dark warm smell of the water real close an' the sound that it makes that's so quiet it's sca'cely a sound, just a big, big blackness movin' around you, an' up on the deck a nigger pickin' a fiddle an' singin' an ole river song, an' that lazy soft rise an' fall of the water under the boat an' the lightnin' bugs blinkin' way off over there on the flat cotton fields or down in the cypress break an' that wild coon laughter all of a sudden comin' up out of the dark where they're makin' love on the levee--like cryin' almost--an' then not a thing anymore but that slow slappin'-slap of the water . . .

HEAVENLY: Dick--

DICK: I've spent nights like that on the river! By myself or with a bunch of fellows--but never with a girl I loved!

Dick from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (2)

No! I won't take it! (He catches her shoulders.) Honey, it takes a pair of boots and a flannel shirt to make me feel like a man. I'm sick of bath salts and spirits of ammonia. An' I wouldn't like cotton much better. Cotton's soft. It's fuzzy stuff that sticks to your fingers. I wouldn't like that. I want to get my hands on something hard and tough that fights back, like the river. When you're fighting a river you're fighting something your size. Don't you see? They've put out flood warnings up at Friar's Point. She's rose six feet since morning. Fifty-nine, that's flood stage, and God only knows when she'll stop. They'r fighting like crazy to hold her back but she keeps on coming, big an' yellow an' daring 'em all to try an' make her stay put. She'll win this time maybe. Push right through their sandbags an' run 'em out of the county, tearin' down sharecroppers' houses an' drownin' the stock. If the people are lucky they'll climb on top of their roofs an' we'll take 'em off in boats. But some of 'em won't be lucky. Ole Mammies with breakbone fever ain't good at roof climbing. The river'll catch 'em at night an' they won't have a chance. But maybe next time we'll win. we'll catch her an' tame her an' make her stay in her place. That's a big job, honey, the kind of job that I want!

Heavenly from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (2)

HEAVENLY: I know, I know! I'm a fool!--Look!

ARTHUR: What?

HEAVENLY (softly): It's the first lightnin' bug!

(Pause. Music is heard.)

HEAVENLY: Wonder what makes 'em go off and on like that?--Did you take any science courses at Oxfo'd? I took geology my third year at high.

ARTHUR (coldly): Did you really?

HEAVENLY: Yes. We used to go out on field expeditions they called 'em, collectin' fossils an' things.

ARTHUR: That must've been nice!

HEAVENLY: Yes, an' just think!--Someday we'll be fossils, too. They'll dig us up an' say, "Gosh, what long legs that girl had?"--or "Didn't he have nice ears!" --An' that's all they'll know about us, i suppose.

ARTHUR: I suppose so.

HEAVENLY: It won't matter who we got married to or whether we lived to be old or died young. They won't care; it won't make any difference to them. We'll just be little marks on a piece of rock. Or maybe not even that much.--Does it make you feel sad?