The Books: “The Rose Tattoo” (Tennessee Williams)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next on my script shelf:

I’m in Tennessee Williams land now, and will be there for quite some time! I am having such a great time re-acquainting myself with all of his plays.

Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf (and again – I am attempting to go chronologically) is The Rose Tattoo, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume 2: Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real.

It premiered in 1950 – and Maureen Stapleton starred as Serafina, in a career-making performance. She apparently was marvelous. Eli Wallach was her co-star … Sal Mineo had a tiny part. He was just a kid. I love looking at the old cast lists … to see who shows up.

The Rose Tattoo, for me, stands out in Tennessee Williams’ line of plays … It has a light touch, there are some almost slapstick scenes (when Serafina and Alvaro both can’t stop crying, for example) – and also – it has a blatantly happy hopeful ending. Things work out.

Serafina is an Italian widow – who lives in a small town on the Gulf Coast, and is a dressmaker. She has a daughter. She maintains a fantasy of her dead husband in her mind – he was a truck driver – and she puts him on a pedestal. Everything about him was perfect, including his love for her. He had a rose tattoo on his chest. Anyway, she is distraught when he dies … and goes nearly mad from grief. She wears mourning for 3 years. She blatantly talks to the statue of the Madonna in her house, in a casual conversational tone. She is always looking for signs. She keeps the ashes of her dead husband in an urn on the mantel. Her daughter is 15 and is trying to break free of her mother’s clutches.

At the start of the play, two gossipy neighborhood women basically tell Serafina, out of malice, gleeful malice, that her husband was actually NOT faithful to her, and he had been having an affair all along with the town whore who worked at a casino.

This absolutely crushes Serafina’s heart, ruins her entire world … without the fantasy of her perfect husband, then what does her life add up to? She starts to lose her grip. She can’t leave her house. She cries uncontrollably. She prays in front of the Madonna statue for hours on end.

Into this environment comes Alvaro – a young truckdriver (Of course – the outsider) – whose truck breaks down. Eli Wallach played this part. You immediately love this guy. He is also Italian. He pretty much falls in love with the much older Serafina immediately. He begins to court her. Which is not an easy prospect, due to the fact that she lives in the past, pretty much, fantasizing about her dead husband and his rose tattoo. Serafina is middle-aged. Alvaro is in his early 20s.

Anyway – the play actually ends with the two of them together. They are mis-matched, but they recognize their own loneliness, and feel comfort when they are together. It’s quite hopeful and happy. Their love scenes together are delicious – beautifully written, long scenes – definitely a push-and-pull, like with all good love scenes – there has to be SOME obstacle to people getting what they want. Therein lies the drama.

The excerpt I’ll post is from a scene between Serafina and Father De Leo, her priest. Of course she is Catholic. Father De Leo has been trying to help Serafina move through her grief, he doesn’t approve of the urn on the mantel, he is shocked by how HUGE her sense of loss is … Anyway, he stops by early on in the play (before the arrival of Alvaro) because she called him, asking for him. I picked this scene because in it – in Tennessee’s very clever way – we get to know exactly who Serafina is. It’s all character exposition this scene – which can be so boring or clunky – but it never reads that way when Williams does it. It flows naturally. In this scene, Serafina ends up explaining herself and her emotions to us, the audience. It’s very helpful. It’s information we NEED to have.

EXCERPT FROM The Rose Tattoo, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume 2: Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real, by Tennessee Williams

FATHER DE LEO. Serafina?

SERAFINA. Che, che, che cosa vuole?

FATHER DE LEO. I am thirsty. Will you go in the house and get me some water?

SERAFINA. Go in. Get you some water. The faucet is working — I can’t go in the house.

FATHER DE LEO. Why can’t you go in the house?

SERAFINA. The house has a tin roof on it. I got to breathe.

FATHER DE LEO. You can breathe in the house.

SERAFINA. No, I can’t breathe in the house. The house has a tin roof on it and I …

[The Strega has been creeping through the canebrake pretending to search for a chicken]

THE STREGA. Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick? [She crouches to peer under the house]

SERAFINA. What’s that? Is that the …? Yes, the Strega! [She picks up a flower pot containing a dead plant and crosses the yard] Strega! Strega! [The Strega looks up, retreating a little] Yes, you, I mean you! You ain’t look for no chick! Getta hell out of my yard! [The Strega retreats, viciously muttering, back into the canebrake. Serafina makes the protective sign of the horns with her fingers. The goat bleats]

FATHER DE LEO. You have no friends, Serafina.

SERAFINA. I don’t want friends.

FATHER DE LEO. You are still a young woman. Eligible for — loving and — bearing again! I remember you dressed in pale blue silk at Mass one Easter morning, yes, like a lady wearing a — piece of the — weather! Oh, how proudly you walked, too proudly! — But now you crouch and shuffle about barefooted; you live like a convict, dressed in the rags of a convict. You have no companions; women you don’t mix with. You …

SERAFINA. No. I don’t mix with them women. [glaring at the women on the embankment] The dummies I got in my house, I mix with them better because they don’t make up no lies! — What kind of women are them? [mimicking fiercely] “Eee, Papa, eeee, baby, eee, me, me, me!” At thirty years old they got no more use for the letto matrimoniale, no. The big bed goes to the basement! They get little beds from Sears Roebuck and sleep on their bellies!

FATHER DE LEO. Attenzione!

SERAFINA. They make the life without glory. Instead of the heart they got the deep-freeze in the house. The men, they don’t feel no glory, not in the house with them women; they go to the bars, fight in them, get drunk, get fat, put horns on the women because the women don’t give them the love which is glory. — I did. I give him the glory. To me the big bed was beautiful like a religion. Now I lie on it with dreams, with memories only! But it is still beautiful to me and I don’t believe that the man in my heart gave me horns! [The women whisper] What, what are they saying? Does ev’rybody know something that I don’t know? — No, all I want is a sign, a sign from Our Lady, to tell me the lie is a lie! And then I … [The women laugh on the embankment. Serafina starts fiercely twoard them. They scatter] Squeak, squeak, squawk, squawk! Hens — like water thrown on them! [There is the sound of mocking laughter]

FATHER DE LEO. People are laughing at you on all the porches.

SERAFINA. I’m laughing, too. Listen to me. I’m laughing! [She breaks into loud, false laughter, first from the porch, then from the foot of the embankment, then crossing in front of the house.] Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Now ev’rybody is laughing! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

FATHER DE LEO. Zitto ora! — Think of your daughter.

SERAFINA. [Understanding the word “daughter] You, you think of my daughter! Today you give out the diplomas, today at the high school you give out the prizes, diplomas! You give to my daughter a set of books call the Digest of Knowledgge! What does she know? How to be cheap already? — Oh, yes, that is what to learn, how to be cheap and how to cheat! — You know what they do at this high school? They ruin the girls there! They give the spring dance because the girls are man-crazy. And there at that dance my daughter goes with a sailor that has in his ear a gold ring! And pants so tight that a woman ought not to look at him! This morning, this morning she cuts with a knife her wrist if I don’t let her go! — Now all of them gone to some island, they call it a picnic, all of them, gone in a — boat!

FATHER DE LEO. There was a school picnic, chaperoned by the teachers.

SERAFINA. Oh, lo so, lo so! The man-crazy old-maid teachers! — They all run wild on the island!

FATHER DE LEO. Serafina delle Rose! [He picks up the chair by the back and hauls it to the porch when she starts to resume her seat] I command you to go in the house.

SERAFINA. Go in the house? I will. I will go in the house if you will answer one question. — Will you answer one question?

FATHER DE LEO. I will if I know the answer.

SERAFINA. Aw, you know the answer! — You used to have the confession of my husband.

FATHER DE LEO. Yes, I heard his confessions …

SERAFINA. [with difficulty] Did he ever speak to you of a woman?

[A child cries out and races across in front of the house. Father De Leo picks up his panama hat. Serafina paces slowly toward him. He starts away from the house]

SERAFINA. [rushing after him] Aspettate! Aspettate un momento!

FATHER DE LEO. [fearfully, not looking at her] Che volete?

SERAFINA. Rispondetemi! [She strikes her breast] Did he speak of a woman to you?

FATHER DE LEO. You know better than to ask me such a question. I don’t break the Church laws. The secrets of the confessional are sacred to me. [He walks away]

SERAFINA. [pursuing and clutching his arm] I got to know. You could tell me.

FATHER DE LEO. Let go of me, Serafina!

SERAFINA. Not till you tell me, Father. Father, you tell me, please tell me! Or I will go mad! [in a fierce whisper] I will go back in the house and smash the urn with the ashes — if you don’t tell me! I will go mad with the doubt in my heart and I will smash the urn and scatter the ashes — of my husband’s body!

FATHER DE LEO. What could I tell you? If you would not believe the known facts about him …

SERAFINA. Known facts, who knows the known facts?

[The neighbor women have heard the argument and begin to crowd around, muttering in shocked whispers at Serafina’s lack of respect]

FATHER DE LEO. [frightened] Lasciatemi, lasciatemi stare! — Oh, Serafina, I am too old for this — please! — Everybody is …

SERAFINA. [in a fierce hissing whisper] Nobody knew my rose of the world but me and now they can lie because the rose ain’t living. They want the marble urn broken; they want me to smash it. They want the rose ashes scattered because I had too much glory. They don’t want glory like that in nobody’s heart. They want — mouse-squeaking! — known facts. — Who knows the known facts? You — padres — wear black because of the fact that the facts are known by nobody!

FATHER DE LEO. Oh, Serafine! There are people watching!

SERAFINA. Let them watch something. That will be a change for them. — It’s a long time I wanted to break out like this and now I …

FATHER DE LEO. I am too old a man; I am not strong enough. I am sixty-seven years old! Must I call for help, now?

SERAFINA. Yes, call! Call for help, but I won’t let you go till you tell me!

FATHER DE LEO. You’re not a respectable woman.

SERAFINA. No, I’m not a respectable; I’m a woman.

FATHER DE LEO. No, you are not a woman. You are an animal!

SERAFINA. Si, si, animale Sono animale! Animale. Tell them all, shout it all to them, up and down the whole block! The Widow Delle Rose is not respectable, she is not even a woman, she is an animal! She is attacking the priest! She will tear the black suit of him unless he tells her the whores in this town are lying to her!

[The neighbor women have been drawing closer as the argument progresses, and now they come to Father De Leo’s rescue and assist him to get away from Serafina, who is on the point of attacking him bodily. He cries out, “Officer! Officer!” but the women drag Serafina from him and lead him away with comforting murmurs]

SERAFINA. [striking her wrists together] Yes, it’s me, it’s me! Lock me up, lock me, lock me up! Or I will — smash! — the marble … [She throws her head far back and presses her fists to her eyes. Then she rushes crazily to the steps and falls across them]

ASSUNTA. Serafina! Figlia! Figlia! Andiamo a casa!

SERAFINA. Leave me alone, old woman.

[She returns slowly to the porch steps and sinks down on them, sitting like a tired man, her knees spread apart and her head cupped in her hands. The children steal back around the house. A little boy shoots a beanshooter at her. She starts up with a cry. The children scatter, shrieking. She sinks back down on the steps, then leans back, staring up at the sky, her body rocking]

SERAFINA. Oh, Lady, Lady, Lady, give me a sign!