Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
Next on the script shelf:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
This play was produced on Broadway in 1971, I think – early 1970s. Estelle Parsons was the star, she played Myrtle. There are seven scenes in the play – each one describing another level of “descent” for the main character of Myrtle. Again, any playwright who wants to learn about how to craft a play would do well to just study the works of Tennessee Williams. He just knows how to do it. He sets up the plot, he presents the characters, and then he just keeps turning up the fire. It’s all about keeping the pressure on, keeping the stakes high – every scene is between two people, battling for their lives. Or battling for their perspective on life to be paramount, to win. And to lose? Is unthinkable. These are all elements of great playwriting, in my opinion.
The plot here is this:
Myrtle, a blowsy ex-show girl with a loud obnoxious voice, has just married Lot – a man she has known for only 24 hours. Lot takes her home to his family place – which is now being run by Chicken, his half-brother who is suspected of being half-black. In the world Williams is describing – rural Mississippi in 1960 – this makes a huge difference in Chicken’s life. He is an outcast. Women spit on him when he tries to pick them up. Yadda yadda. But anyway. That’s a side issue. Lot takes Myrtle home to his family house – only he hasn’t warned her that Chicken lives there, that Chicken is determined to inherit the house when Lot dies – which will probably be soon. Lot only has one working lung, he is dying of TB, and should kick the bucket at any moment. Myrtle has been informed of NONE of this. She thinks her new husband just needs a rest. She doesn’t know anything about a half-brother with a claim on the family house.
More character stuff:
Lot’s mother recently died. And Lot is a frail boy with a big ol’ mother complex. He takes Myrtle into his house, and all he does is talk about his mother – how she washed the chandelier, how she knew about style and what to wear, etc etc. Myrtle is turned off by this grown man’s attachment to his dead mother. She assures him that she is NOT his mother, but his wife. And she will do the best she can to be the lady of the house, but she will NOT be his mother.
Lot is obviously gay. On their wedding night – just a couple hours earlier – he was impotent with Myrtle. Myrtle tries to reassure him that it’s okay, no big deal, they will try again … but Lot knows better. At the end of the play – Lot, in a ritualistic manner, slowly puts on all of his mother’s clothes while Myrtle is out of the room. He puts on her dress, her pumps, her little hat … he puts on lipstick … he picks up her old-lady purse with the mother-of-pearl clasp … and then basically falls down on the floor, and dies. A strange image … a strange ritual … Lot’s only love of his life was his mother.
But through the rest of the play, all Lot does is sit in a rocking chair, smoking cigarettes (using a long ivory cigarette holder) and smiling off into the distanct with a “Mona Lisa smile”. Myrtle is loud, brash, kind of common – immediately starts washing her underwear in the sink, and hanging up the undies to dry around the room – all stuff that kind of insults Lot’s very fey and delicate view of the world, and aesthetics, and how women should be. All women should be just like his mother – a woman who wore little hats with veils, and had purses with mother-of-pearl clasps, etc. But he married Myrtle – an earthly ex-show girl with a loud harsh voice.
You kind of fall in love with Myrtle, even though she is loud and a bit oblivious. She says at the end of the play that she has a “warm nature” and that is true. She wants to take care of Lot. She informs him that the “deepest chord” in her is the “maternal streak” she has. You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it is obviously true. She just wants to feed him right, and keep him warm, and make sure he gets better. She has no idea that he is about to die.
Chicken is the polar opposite of Lot. It is the two sides of masculinity – that Williams was always exploring. Lot isn’t just “gay”. He is a fairy. I don’t mean to be insulting – but that’s what Williams wrote. He is an ineffectual, impotent, cross-dressing, mother-dominated fairy. You kind of despise him, actually. Not for those reasons, really – but because he is dishonest, and cold. You understand why he is … the entire play is Lot sitting in a chair, contemplating the open door of death. He knows that’s where he must go, and he just needs to finish up his affairs in the “kingdom of earth” before he takes that first step. But I admit: There are some parts with Lot where I want to slap his face, slap the smirk off his face, and tell him to be a man. This is what Williams wants us to feel. We have sympathy for him – but – no. It’s more that we PITY him. We pity anyone who is at death’s door. Our sympathy, and our compassion, ALL go with Myrtle. We see the world through her eyes – and we see that a woman like her, a hot-blooded woman, needs a “real man” – even though she is afraid of the prospect, because she is afraid of losing control. The course of the play, the “seven descents of Myrtle” is her eventually relinquishing control. And it is THIS which allows her to be a “real woman”. This is another of Williams’ themes – that he explored to the fullest in Summer and Smoke. The image of femininity that Lot reveres in the memory of his dead mother is one of prissy refinement. A love of nice things, of beautiful accessories, of propriety. Tennessee Williams always saw that this was DEATH to a woman expressing her true nature – he saw it in his own domineering prissy mother, and he saw it in the downfall of his sister Rose – a warm-blooded warm-natured woman who had passionate feelings, and ended up being institutionalized and lobotomized because she had no legitimate outlet. You either become a priss or you become a whore. Williams saw that as the unfair choices women had to make – and was constantly trying to explore ways that women could integrate, could have BOTH and still be respectable members of society. In the world he grew up in, that was not a possibility. He saw that as a tragedy. All of this could be seen as an extended metaphor for his homosexuality – and sure, that’s part of it. But I prefer to not just see his plays as biographical explorations. I see them as works of art, with themes he found compelling and important. He loved women, and he loved men – big gruff rough men. He understood the helplessness and attraction women felt when confronted by a certain kind of man – the kind of man that cannot be dominated (the Stanley Kowalskis, the John Buchanans) – wild rough masculine men. In order to succumb to such a man – women, who were raised to be little prisses – had to abandon their senses of pride and propriety. That is what Stella had to do in order to accept her marriage to Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire
But in the end, we also realize that Lot had yet another secret up his sleeve – and that he’s actually a kind of hero. We don’t have to LIKE our heroes personally – but it certainly should be recognized that Lot IS a hero.
Lot’s brother Chicken is an outcast. He lives and works at the family farm – which has been left to him (because it was understood that Lot was not long for this earth). The family farm is all he has. Chicken lives like an animal. He is a big rough gruff working man – who wipes his dirty hands on his clothes – who eats with his mouth open – who has put nudie pictures all over the kitchen – and who despises his fairy brother. When Lot walks in the door with his brand-new wife, Chicken is merciless about it. He knows Lot isn’t a ‘real man’ – but what Chicken fears is that because Lot is now married – his claim on the house could be challenged if Lot dies. Maybe Myrtle will now become “the lady of the house” – and he would be kicked to the curb. So Chicken begins a course of intimidation and humiliation – to cut Myrtle down to size, to not let her get any funny ideas.
He is an uncivilized animal.
And yet … naturally … he is also a powerfully sexual magnetic guy … and Myrtle, living with her impotent TB-infected transvestite husband … is drawn to him. Yet she is also disgusted by him, and his filthy manners.
BUT – and here is Williams’ genius – Myrtle and Chicken are actually, when you get right down to it, kindred spirits. They are from the same world. Lot is already moving into the land of the spiritual, he is not of this earth. But Myrtle and Chicken are undeniably of this earth. Myrtle tries to maintain her dignity, tries to resist Chicken – but Chicken, from the first time he laid eyes on her, knows that she is “like him”. He goes after her. She is terrified of him.
Eventually, of course, she succumbs. While Lot sits upstairs, smoking, smiling off into the distance.
Now here is where Lot is a hero: He knew all along that he could never be a proper husband to Myrtle. He knew he was impotent, and he knew he did not have long for this earth.
But somewhere he also knew: that his hated half-brother Chicken needed a mate. So on some level – he has brought Myrtle back – as a present to his outcast brother.
Chicken (who you start out DESPISING and by the end of the play – you actually really like him) has a great monologue at the very end, where he explains himself:
I’ll tell you how I look at life in my life, or in any man’s life. There’s nothing in the world, in the whole kingdom of earth, that can compare with one thing, and that one thing is what’s able to happen between a man and a woman, just that thing, nothing more, is perfect. The rest is crap, all of the rest is almost nothing but crap. Just that one thing’s good, and if you never had nothing else but that, no property, no success in the world, but still had that, why, then I say this life would still be worth something, and you beteter believe it. Yes, you could come home to a house like a shack, in blazing heat, and look for water and find not a drop to drink, and look for food and find not a single crumb of it. But if on the bed you seen you a woman waiting, maybe not very young or good-looking even, and she looked up at you and said to you, “Daddy, I want it,” why, then I say you got a square deal out of life, and whoever don’t think so has just not had the right woman. That’s how I look at it, that’s how I see it now, in this kingdom of earth.
So Lot does die, but not before he presents Chicken with a mate. A woman who eventually gets over her fear of Chicken and realizes her immense attraction to him.
It’s a wonderful play. Oh, and just to add to the stakes: It is hurricane season, and the town is being flooded as the course of the play goes on. Everyone has evacuated – except for the 3 characters in the play. The play ends with Chicken and Myrtle running to climb up on the roof, because the levee has broken and the flood is now coming. Lot lies dead on the parlor floor, dressed in his mother’s clothes.
In the world of Tennessee Williams, this is a happy ending.
I’ll excerpt from the opening scene – when Lot and Myrtle arrive at the house. Chicken has locked himself in the kitchen. Myrtle doesn’t even know of his existence yet.
EXCERPT FROM Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
LOT. I want you to promise me something. If Chicken asks you, and when he gets drunk he will ask you —
MYRTLE. Chicken will ask me nothing that I won’t answer in aces and spades.
LOT. There’s something you mustn’t answer if he asks you.
MYRTLE. What thing is that, baby?
LOT. If I’m a —
MYRTLE. If you’re a what?
LOT. Strong lover. — Tell him I satisfy you.
MYRTLE. Oh, now, baby, there’d be no lie about that. Y’ know, they’s a lot more to this sex business than two people jumpin’ up an’ down on each other’s eggs. You know that, or you ought to.
LOT. I’m going to satisfy you when I get my strength back, and meanwhile — make out like I do. Completely. Already. I mean when talking to Chicken.
MYRTLE. Aw, Chicken again, a man that huffs like a dawg an’ hides in the kitchen, do you think I’d talk about us to him, about our love with each other? All I want from that man is that he opens the kitchen door so I can go in there and grab hold of that bell and ring the clapper off it for that girl that works here, that Clara. I’ll make her step, all right, and step quick, too. The first thing she’s gotta do is haul in all that electric equipment in the car, before it gits damp an’ rusts on me.
LOT. Myrtle, I told you that when there’s danger of flood, the colored help on a place cut out for high ground. Till the danger’s over.
MYRTLE. Then what’re we doin’ on low ground instid of high ground?
LOT. To protect our property from possible flood damage. This is your house, your home. Aren’t you concerned with protecting it for us?
MYRTLE. My house, my home! I never suspected, how much havin’ property of my own could mean to me will all of a sudden I have some. Home, home, land, a little dream of a parlor, elegant as you, refined as you are.
[During this talk, Chicken has his ear pressed to the kitchen door, fiercely muttering phrases from the talk]
LOT. — Chicken calls me a sissy.
MYRTLE. Well, he better not call you no sissy when Myrtle’s around. I’ll fix his wagon up good, I mean I WILL!
LOT. SHH! — Myrtle, you’ve got an uncontrollable voice. He’s listening to us. — You think you could handle Chicken?
MYRTLE. Want to make a bet on it? I’ve yet to meet the man that I couldn’t handle.
LOT. You ain’t met Chicken.
MYRTLE. I’m gonna meet him! — Whin he comes outa that kitchen …
LOT. He will, soon, now. It’s gettin’ dark outside, and I heard him set the jug down on the kitchen table.
MYRTLE. Awright, I’m ready for him, anytime he comes out, I’m ready to meet him, and one thing I want to git straight. Who’s going to be running this place, me or this Chicken?
LOT. This place is mine. You’re my wife.
MYRTLE. That’s what I wanted to know. Then I’m in charge here.
LOT. You’re taking the place of Miss Lottie. She ran the house and you’ll run it.
MYRTLE. Good. Then that’s understood.
LOT. It better be understood. Cause Chicken is not my brother, we’re just half brothers and the place went to me. It’s mine.
MYRTLE. Did you have diff’rent daddies?
LOT. No, we had diff’rent mothers. Very diff’rent mothers! [Chicken snorts like a wild horse] He’s coming out now! [Chicken emerges slowly from the kitchen and starts up the dark narrow hall]
MYRTLE. Let’s go meet him.
LOT. No. Wait here. Sit right. And remember that you’re the lady of the house.
[Chicken pauses, listening in the dim hall]
MYRTLE. It don’t seem natural to me. [Lot removes an ivory cigarette holder from a coat pocket, puts a cigarette in it and lights it. His hands are shaky. Myrtle says nervously:] — A parlor with gold chairs is like a dream!
LOT. — A woman in the house is like a dream.
Wow! I never saw or read this one. What an intense story. I love what you say about how Tennessee’s plays often focus on two people “battling for their perspective on life to be paramount . . . ” So well said. In story after story, it’s the characters that ultimately lose this battle who finally have the opportunity for happiness (or they die.go nut). At least they get a move-on from the doily-strewn world of the white ladylike South. Before, they’re so busy being a “lady” (i.e., delicate and mannerly and easily affronted), that they’re not true to their real motives. It’s like their self-view was irreparably tainted by the heady scent of magnolias and the scratchy feel of lace gloves.
So many of Tennessee’s women are lions dressed in petticoats. They spit their barbs from behind flowered fans and seem to take offense at animalistic behavior, but they’re not weak. Blanche’s outrage at Stanley’s beastly/manly behavior is a put-on – she’s no defenseless lamb to the slaughter, she’s as powerful and beastly as Stanley, only she’s wearing chiffon. She can’t admit to and exhibit her real strength (too “manly”) so she fights with a thousand little finger jabs against Stanley’s one-punch knockout.
Sounds like Myrtle gets a reprieve. I’m dying to read it.
Stevie – man, you get it. You really do. Yup. Being “ladylike” is what holds these women back from being “womanly”. It’s really quite amazing.
You should definitely see if you can read this play – it’s included in a compilation of his – Tennessee Williams: Volume 5. It’s a bright green book. Let me know if you can locate it!
Oh, there was an interesting interview Tennessee gave once where he described sitting in a cafe somewhere and a gaggle of women came up to him, wanting to talk about his plays. One of the women said something to him that struck him and really stayed with him. She asked, “Why are all your female characters so neurotic?”
He had no answer for that – mainly because he didn’t see it that way AT ALL. AT ALL.
He said emphatically that these women were survivors – and that he had never written a “neurotic” female character in his life. You can see actress after actress after actress make the mistake of judging this or that character as “neurotic” and playing it that way.
He said, about Miss Alma, “What is neurotic about Alma? What is neurotic about letting yourself love someone so deeply that it literally burns you alive? What is neurotic about loving someone so much that you can’t sleep and pace the floors and take long walks to deal with your passion? That’s not neurotic. That’s being alive!”
It’s a beautiful way to look at these women – not that they are “neurotic” and have something wrong with them – but that they are literally doing. the best. they can.
That’s phenomenal! Not neurotic, just passionate.
Sheila, did you ever see a movie called Woman Times Seven? Shirley MacLaine plays seven characters in seven vignettes. It’s pretty schlocky/funny in a European 60’s style, but I’m reminded of one of the stories: this ordinary woman’s husband is a writer whose female characters are full of romance and joi de vivre, completely different from his wife. So the wife (Shirley) goes about trying to be spontaneous and fanciful and ridiculous and romantic by doing these capricious things – you know, greeting him dressed in gauze and throwing flowers all around; laughing uproariously at sad things and sobbing at funny things; singing her part of conversations. The husband is more and more perplexed by his wife’s behavior until he has her thrust into a straight jacket. As she’s being carted off, Shirley screams, “I’m not crazy – I’m in love!”
I visited Atlanta once about 10 years ago for a week-long government conference – I would be organizing the next year’s conference so I went to observe the planners/executors. They were all women, support staff, naturally, who did all this work to put together a complex “show” for about 400 people. What really struck me (aside from all the places women could think of to attach lace to their power suits) was the effort made by these women to tear other women down: deprecating remarks, sly manipulations, baldfaced lying, nasty rumor mongering, all in the service of being ladylike and charming for my sake. I got the full sugary Southern attention from these ladies, as did practically every other man, while other women were tolerated at best and torn to shreds at worst. The remarks about female attorneys, particularly from the No-ath, were savage. This was Southern? Well, I think it was a side-effect of male subjugation – a Machiavellian display of divide and conquer. Their cattiness was labeled “ladylike” and therefore encouraged by males in service of maintaining the hierarchy.
The same kind of snarling behavior is seen among gays, more so in the “Boys in the Band” era, granted, but still an ugly part of gay life.
I think Tennessee realized how derailed these women were. They could have forged brilliant and successful lives for themselves if left unencumbered by male insistence on the formula masculinity=superiority=dominance; instead, they were trapped by default in a battle to be superfeminine. Of course, it’s easier to display the “feminine” trait of bitchiness in the parlor than it is to demonstrate needlepoint skill.
I just saw a performance of this play, ‘Kingdom of Earth’, here in Cape Town South Africa. It was outstanding and the actress who played Myrtle was brilliant – she really carried the play. I’m a HUGE fan of Tennessee Williams and directed one of his also seldom performed plays (A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur) last year and I’m always amazed at how well he can create female characters! They are all complex and so real! Also saw a brilliant performance of ‘The Milktrain doesn’t run here anymore’ this year – the female character in there is just as powerful and complex. Thanks for your blog – love reading your comments and extracts.
Judith – thank you for this! I am envious of your experience seeing Kingdom of Earth (I’ve never seen it done). “The Milktrain” – ahhhh, what a play. I LOVE it.
Some of these one-acts are as complex and gorgeous as the full-length plays – I never get tired of revisiting them.
Thank you for your comment, and thank you for the very kind words!!
I saw this play on Broadway when it opened in, I believe, 1968. With respect to your analysis I must point out two things. First, the published version of the script differs markedly from the staged version (is the published version the canonical one approved by Williams?). Second, words on paper are one thing but words as spoken and staged are another. The relationship between the three characters, as implied by the shadings the director, stage designers, and actors gave the play’s dialog, is very complex. For example, I remember a particular coup de theatre that completely shifts the viewer’s coloring of the Lot/Chicken relationship. The set was two stories high with a Gone With The Wind staircase descending from the upper floor down to the main entrance/parlor floor. Chicken is wearing thigh high boots and standing/leaning against a wall, legs akimbo (he is the earth/survival). He languidly turns his head and looks up to see Lot standing at the top of the staircase wearing a pink silk nightgown trimmed with pink marabou. All he says is, “kinda warm night for that….” The way that Harry Guardino pitched/phrased that line and Bedford’s downward responding gaze told you without further need for elaboration that Lot and Chicken’s relationship was far more intimate than the audience had until then been led to believe by the play’s action. All had to be reconsidered; as indeed would your analysis of the play. There were many other such moments in the play’s original staging as I have been told are versions of the play. Regardless, this was William’s last Broadway produced play and I consider myself fortunate in having seen it.
They’re staging this Off Broadway, for a limited run, starting in July. For more info, go to twobytennessee.com.
While most of Williams’ plays after 1961 are generally regarded as “inferior” or “non-literary”, I’ve found that I really enjoy studying “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore”, “Kingdom Of Earth”, “Vieux Carre”, and “Something Cloudy Something Clear”. I think there’s a pretty good bit of merit in all four of those, despite their having been dismissed upon their initial presentation and publication.