Tennessee Williams - The Glass Menagerie

AMANDA: What is the matter with you, you – big – big IDIOT!

TOM: Look!- I’ve got no thing, no single thing!

AMANDA: Lower Your Voice!

TOM: In my life here that I can call my OWN! Everything is –

AMANDA: Stop that shouting!

TOM: Yesterday you confiscated my books! You had the nerve to –

AMANDA: I took that horrible novel back to the library- yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence [7] Lawrence D.H. English novelist, poet and critic (1885-1930), some of whose works were assailed for sexual independency. . [ Tom laughs wildly .] I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them – [ Tom laughs still more wildly .] BUT I WON’T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! NO, no, no, no, no!

TOM: House, house! Who pays rent on it, who makes a slave of himself to –

AMANDA [ fairly screeching ]: Don’t you DARE to –

TOM: No, no, I mustn’t say things! I’ve got to just –

AMANDA: Let me tell you-

TOM: I don’t want to hear any more! [ He tears the portières open. The upstage area is lit with a turgid smoky red glow .]

[ AMANDA’s hair is in metal curlers and she wears a very old bathrobe much too large for her slight figure, a relic of the faithless Mr. Wingfield. An upright typewriter and a wild disarray of manuscripts are on the drop-leaf table. The quarrel was probably precipitated by his creative labour. A chair lying overthrown on the floor. Their gesticulating shadows are cast on the ceiling by the fiery glow. ]

AMANDA: You will hear more, you –

TOM: No, I won’t hear more, I’m going out!

AMANDA: You come right back in –

TOM: Out, out, out! Because I’m –

AMANDA: Come back here, Tom Wingfield! I’m not through talking to you!

TOM: Oh, go –

LAURA [ desperately ]: Tom!

AMANDA: You’re going to listen, and no more insolence from you! I’m at the end of my patience![ He comes back toward her .]

TOM: What do you think I’m at? Aren’t I supposed to have any patience to reach the end of, Mother? I know, I know. It seems unimportant to you, what I’m doing – what I want to do – having a little difference between them! You don’t think that –

AMANDA: I think you’ve been doing things that you’re ashamed of. That’s why you act like this. I don’t believe that you go every night to the movies. Nobody goes to the movies night after night. Nobody in their right mind goes to the movies as often as you pretend to. People don’t go to the movies at nearly midnight, and movies don’t let out at two a.m. Come in stumbling. Muttering to yourself like a maniac! You get three hours’ sleep and then go to work. Oh, I can picture the way you’re doing down there. Moping, doping, because you’re in no condition.

TOM [ wildly ]: No, I’m in no condition!

AMANDA: What right have you got to jeopardize your job – jeopardize the security of us all? How do you think we’d manage if you were –

TOM: Listen! You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? [ He bonds fiercely toward her slight figure .] 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 – fluorescent – tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings! I go !Every time you come in yelling……… that God damn “ Rise and Shine !” – “ Rise and Shine ”! I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are! But I get up. 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! [ Pointing to fathers picture. ] As far as the system of transportation reaches! [ He starts past her. She grabs his arm .] Don’t grab at me, Mother!

AMANDA: Where are you going?

TOM: I’m going to the movies!

AMANDA: I don’t believe that lie!

TOM [ crouching toward her, overtowering her tiny figure. She backs away, gasping ]: I’m going to opium dens! Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminals’ hang-outs, 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 tsar of the underworld, Mother. I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table! I wear a patch over one eye and a false moustache, sometimes I put on green whiskers. On those occasions they call me – El Diablo! Oh, I could tell you 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 gentlemen callers! You ugly – babbling old – witch. [ He goes through a series of violent, clumsy movements, seizing his overcoat, lunging to do door, pulling it fiercely open. The women watch him, aghast. His arm catches in the sleeve of the coat as he struggles to pull it on. For a moment he is pinioned by the bulky garment. With an outraged groan he tears the coat of again, splitting the shoulder of it, and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, there is a tinkle of shattering glass. LAURA cries out as if wounded .]

[ MUSIC. LEGEND: “THE GLASS MENAGERIE”. ]

LAURA [ shrilly ] : My glass! – menagerie… [ She covers her face and turns away. ]

[ But AMANDA is still stunned and stupefied by the “ugly witch” so that she barely notices this occurrence. Now she recovers her speech .]

AMANDA [ in an awful voice ]: I won’t speak to you – until you apologize! [ She crosses through portières and draws them together behind her. TOM is left with LAURA. LAURA Clings weakly to the mantel with her face averted. TOM stares at her stupidly for a moment. Then he crosses to shelf. Drops awkwardly on his knees to collect the fallen glass, glancing at LAURA as if he would speak but couldn’t. ]

[ ’The Glass Menagerie’ steals in as THE SCENE DIMS OUT ]

[ The interior is dark. Faint light in the alley. A deep-voiced bell in a church is tolling the hour of five as the scene commences. ]

[ Tom appears at the top of the alley. After each solemn boom of the bell in the tower, he shakes a little noise-maker or rattle as if to express the tiny spasm of man in contrast to the sustained power and dignity of the Almighty. This and the unsteadiness of his advance make it evident that he has been drinking. As he climbs Me few steps to the fire-escape landing light steals up inside. Laura appears in night-dress observing Tom’s empty bed in the front room. TOM fishes in his pockets for door-key removing a motley assortment of articles in the search, including a perfect shower of movie-ticket stubs and an empty bottle. At last he finds the key, but just as he is about to insert it, it slips from his fingers. He strikes a match and crouches below the door. ]

TOM [ bitterly ]: One crack – and it falls through!

[ LAURA opens the door. ]

LAURA: Tom! Tom, what are you doing?

TOM: Looking for a door-key.

LAURA: Where have you been all this time?

TOM: I have been to the movies.

LAURA: All this time at the movies?

TOM: There was a very long programme. There was a Garbo picture and a Mickey Mouse and a travelogue and a newsreel and a preview of coming attractions. And there was an organ solo and a collection for the milk-fund – simultaneously – which ended up in a terrible fight between a fat lady and an usher!