In the 1930s, the famous French theatre director Antonin Artaud had already posited a special relation between theatre and alchemy. The text’s quest for its own origins also explains the presence of the process through which it came into being, namely transmutation. The play’s other major component consists of a self-reflexive engagement with (dramatic) theatre and its constituent elements of text and performance as well as a contemplation of its genesis in different theatrical traditions. A reading of the text in terms of the esoteric helps to transcend some of the more straightforward autobiographical interpretations. Many critics had recourse to the author’s biography to make sense of the bewildering events that took place on stage, as had happened with Williams’s previous theatrical ventures. This is not surprising in that the play is deeply concerned with different esoteric traditions and a struggle for understanding or higher knowledge can be deemed one of their primary characteristics. As a result each of them withdraws into a private world of illusion where they find the comfort and meaning that the real world fails to offer.Įver since its initial productions, Tennessee Williams’s The Two-Character Play, also known as Out Cry, has baffled audiences and critics alike. All the characters are unable to accept and relate to this reality. The Oxford English Dictionary states memory as, ' to commemorate to preserve a record or memorial of to record, mention, ' But even though Tom is recollects ' that quaint period, the thirties ' to commemorate his family and their tragic existence, he does so with the ' appearance of truth ' and ' illusions ' that proves how fragile and deceitful memory can be. Although they find glimmers of hope throughout the story, each time is it extinguished like the candles at the end of the play. They look for it in their future, as they search for a way to find security and hope. ' In many ways this is exactly what the characters of The Glass Menagerie seek in the play – perfection. '-Oscar Wilde Matthew Arnold once suggested that, ' the pursuit of perfection is a pursuit of sweetness and light.

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.

The glass menagerie play script