Next on the script shelf:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is I Rise in Flame Cried the Phoenix, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 7: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Other Plays
This is a one-act play Williams wrote in 1951. One of Williams’ artistic idols (if not THE artistic idol) was DH Lawrence. He actually ended up befriending Lawrence and his wife Frieda … and this was mainly because he pursued Lawrence like a maniac. He wanted to write a play about him, he wanted to write a play about his volatile marriage with Frieda. He wanted Lawrence’s involvement in the play. The three of them ended up traveling together a bit, across the American Southwest, planning out this project, talking about it ….
It ended up not happening. But Williams did write this one-act about DH Lawrence and Frieda Lawrence.
His small preface tells us of his feelings for the man:
Lawrence felt the mystery and power of sex, as the primal life urge, and was the life-long adversary of those who wanted to keep the subject locked away in the cellars of prudery. Much of his work is chaotic and distorted by tangent obsessions, such as his insistence upon woman’s subservience to the male, but all in all his work is probably the greatest modern monument to the dark roots of creation.
Williams explains the background of the play:
Not long before Lawrence’s death an exhibition was held of his paintings in London. Primitive in technique and boldly sensual in matter, this exhibition created a little tempest. The pictures were seized by the police and would have been burned if the authorities had not been restrained by an injunction.
Williams set the play in the French Riviera, directly following this exhibition – when Lawrence gets word of the calamitous response. The play is only 15 pages long. Lawrence is very ill, very frail, and is being taken care of by his robust wife Frieda. Bertha, the third character in the play, is a friend of the Lawrences and she returns to them from London, having been sent back there by Lawrence to report on the exhibition. Bertha completely idolizes DH Lawrence.
From I Rise in Flame Cried the Phoenix, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 7: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Other Plays
[Frieda returns with Bertha, a small, sprightly person, an English gentlewoman with the quick voice and eyes of a child]
FRIEDA. My God, he’s got up!
BERTHA. He shouldn’t?
FRIEDA. Another hemorrhage will kill him. The least exertioin is likely to bring one on. Lorenzo, where are you?
LAWRENCE. [from the rear] Quit clucking, you old wet hen. I’m fetching the tea.
BERTHA. Go back to him, make him stop!
FRIEDA. He wouldn’t.
BERTHA. Does he want to die?
FRIEDA. Oh, no, no, no! He has no lungs and yet he goes on breathing. The heart’s worn out and yet the heart keeps beating. It’s awful to watch, this struggle, I wish he would stop, I wish that he’d give it up and just let go!
BERTHA. Frieda!
FRIEDA. His body’s a house that’s made out of tissue paper and caught on fire. The walls are transparent, they’re all lit up with the flame! When people are dying the spirit ought to go out, it ought to die out slowly before the flesh, you shouldn’t be able to see it so terribly brightly consuming the walls that give it a place to inhabit!
BERTHA. I never have believed that Lorenzo could die. I don’t think he will even now.
FRIEDA. But can he do it? Live without body, I mean, be just a flame with nothing to feed itself on?
BERTHA. The Phoenix could do it.
FRIEDA. The Phoenix was legendary. Lorenzo’s a man.
BERTHA. He’s more than a man.
FRIEDA. I know you always thought so. But you’re mistaken.
BERTHA. You’d never admit that Lorenzo was a god.
FRIEDA. Having slept with him — no, I wouldn’t.
BERTHA. There’s more to be known of a person than carnal knowledge.
FRIEDA. But carnal knowledge comes first.
BERTHA. I disagree with you.
FRIEDA. And also with Lawrence, then. He always insisted you couldn’t know women until you had known their bodies.
BERTHA. Frieda, I think it is you who kept him so much in his body!
FRIEDA. Well, if I did he’s got that to thank me for.
BERTHA. I’m not sure it’s soemthing to be thankful for.
FRIEDA. What would you have done with him if ever you got your claws on him?
BERTHA. Claws? — Frieda!
FRIEDA. You would have plucked him out of his body. Where would he be? — In the air? — Ahhh, your deep understanding and my stupidity always!
BERTHA. Frieda!
FRIEDA. You just don’t know, the meaning of Lawrence escapes you! In all his work he celebrates the body! How he despises the prudery of people that want to hide it!
BERTHA. Oh, Frieda, the same old quarrel!
FRIEDA. Yes, let’s stop it! What’s left of Lorenzo, let’s not try to divide it!
BERTHA. What’s left of Lorenzo is something that can’t be divided!
FRIEDA. Shhh! — He’s coming.
BERTHA. [advancing a few steps to the door] Lorenzo!!
LAWRENCE. [out of sight] “Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?”
BERTHA. [her voice catching slightly] “I chased a little mouse — under a chair!”
[Laughing, he appears in the doorway, pushing a small teacart. Bertha stares aghast]
LAWRENCE. Yes, I know — I know …. I look an amateur’s job of embalming, don’t I?
BERTHA. [bravely] Lorenzo, you look very well.
LAWRENCE. It isn’t rouge, it’s the fever! I’m burning, burning, and still I never burn out. The doctors are all astonished. And disappointed. And as for that expectant widow of mine – she’s almost given up hope.
[Bertha moves to assist him with the table]
LAWRENCE. Don’t bother me, I can manage.
FRIEDA. He won’t be still, he won’t rest.
LAWRENCE. Cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck! You better watch out for the rooster, you old wet hen!
FRIEDA. A wonderful Chanticleer you make in that lavendar shawl!
LAWRENCE. Who put it on me? You, you bitch! [He flings it off] Rest was never any good for me, Brett.
BERTHA. Rest for a little while. Thenw e go sailing again.
LAWRENCE. We three go sailing again!
“Rub-adub-dub!
Three fools in a tub!
The Brett, the Frieda,
the old Fire-eater!”
BERTHA. [tugging at his beard] The old Fire-eater!
LAWRENCE. Watch out! Now I’ll have to comb it! [He takes out a little mirror and comb]
FRIEDA. So vain of his awful red whiskers!
LAWRENCE. [combing] She envies my beard. All women resent men’s whiskers. They can’t stand anything, Brett, that distinguishes men from women.
FRIEDA. Quite the contrary. [She pours the tea]
LAWRENCE. They take the male in their bodies — but only because they secretly hope that he won’t be able to get back out again, that he’ll be captured for good.
FRIEDA. What kind of talk for a maiden-lady to hear!
LAWRENCE. There she goes again, Brett — obscene old creature! Gloating over your celibacy!
FRIEDA. Gloating over it? Never! I tink how lucky she is that she doesn’t have to be told a hundred times every day that man is life and that woman is just a passive hunk of protoplasm.
LAWRENCE. I never said passive. I always said malignant. [He puts the comb away and stares in the mirror] Ain’t I the devil to look at?
Willliams never met D. H. Lawrence. TW was born in 1911, he was only 19 when Lawrence died. He met Frieda in 1940 and they had an acquaintanceship until her death in 1956. He wrote this play in 1940/1941, Frieda wrote the forword for its publication.