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Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is a one-act called Auto-Da-Fé<\/i>, included in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton And Other One-Act Plays<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0811202259\")
<\/i>. <\/p>\nA bizarre little play – but, in my opinion it is amazing how Williams can establish two distinct characters, with distinct voices, in 7 pages. The two characters created here are their own people – it doesn’t matter that it’s a little one-act, that it’s only 25 minutes long … They are fully fleshed out complex people. He doesn’t save all his good stuff for his full-length plays. The two characters in this play don’t, to my knowledge, show up in other versions of longer plays – the way some of his one-act characters do. These two seem very distinct.<\/p>\n
It is a mother and son who live in the Vieux Carré in New Orleans. The son is in his 30s. Williams writes, of the both of them: “Mother and son are both fanatics and their speech has something of the quality of poetic or religious incantation”.<\/p>\n
The son, Eloi (pronounced Ell-wah), is sickly. He is asthmatic, nervous, prone to colds, and a fanatical puritan. He finds living where he does to be nearly intolerable – surrounded by all that open SIN. He feels that the moral filth is actually in the air, like pollution.<\/p>\n
His mother, Mme. Duvenet, is a bit more laid-back about it – or, no – not laid-back. She runs a boarding house, she is a practical woman – she believes that the spirit can take care of itself wherever it is.<\/p>\n
Eloi spends most of his time ranting and raving about the evils around him, and about how the entire town should be razed. (Ouch.) He yearns for the purification of fire. He thinks burning down the French Quarter would be a good thing for mankind, in terms of redemption.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a week earlier he happened to come across a nudie picture – through various circumstances – and it has almost prompted him to have a nervous breakdown. He wants to prosecute the person who sent it through the mail, he begins his own investigation – Meanwhile, though, his moral outrage has become so acute that he is pretty much shattered, psychically. He’s like any fundamentalist. The rigidity is actually NOT a sign of strength and certainty. The rigidity makes the fundamentalist way more fragile. Trees that bend in the wind don’t crack during wind-storms. But more rigid trees snap when the wind picks up, snap and fall over. This is the perfect analogy for the fundamentalist. As long as there’s no wind, the fundamentalist will be fine. But look out – when there’s a windstorm, the fundie will SNAP!! Eloi has snapped. The play ends with him running into the house (the two of them have been sitting on the porch) – locking the door – so his mother can’t get in – and then setting fire to the place. With himself in it. He burns himself alive.<\/p>\n
The play is a comedy.<\/p>\n
No, just kidding.<\/p>\n
I’ll post a small excerpt from the beginning of the play. This is before Eloi tells his mother about the nudie picture that has shattered his entire world.<\/p>\n
\n ELOI. Even the air in this neighborhood is unclean.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. It is not as clean as it might be. I love clean window-curtains, I love white linen, I want immaculate, spotless things in a house.<\/p>\n ELOI. Then why don’t we move to the new part of town where it’s cleaner?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. The property in this block has lost all value. We couldn’t sell our place for what it cost us to put new paint on the walls.<\/p>\n ELOI. I don’t understand you, Mother. You harp on purity, purity all the time, and yet you’re willing to stay in the midst of corruption.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I harp on nothing. I stay here because I have to. And as for corruption, I’ve never allowed it to touch me.<\/p>\n ELOI. It does, it does. We can’t help breathing it here. It gets in our nostrils and even goes in our blood.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I think you’re the one that harps on things around here. You won’t talk quietly. You always fly off on some tangent and raise your voice and get us all stirred up for no good reason.<\/p>\n ELOI. I’ve had about all that I can put up with, Mother.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Then when do you want to do?<\/p>\n ELOI. Move, move. This asthma of mine, in a pure atmosphere uptown where the air is fresher, I know that I wouldn’t have it nearly so often.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I leave it entirely to you. If you can find someone to make an acceptable offer, I’m willing to move.<\/p>\n ELOI. You don’t have the power to move or the will to break from anything that you’re used to. You don’t know how much we’ve been affected already!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. By what, Eloi?<\/p>\n ELOI. This fetid old swamp we live in, the Vieux Carré! Every imaginable kind of degeneracy springs up here, not at arm’s length, but right in our presence!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Now I think you’re exaggerating a little.<\/p>\n ELOI. You read the papers, you hear people talk, you walk past open windows. You can’t be entirely unconscious of what goes on! A woman was horribly mutilated last night. A man smashed a bottle and twisted the jagged end of it in her face.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. They bring such things on themselves by their loose behavior.<\/p>\n ELOI. Night after night there are crimes taking place in the parks.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. The parks aren’t all in the Quarter.<\/p>\n ELOI. The parks aren’t all in the Quarter but decadence is. This is the primary lesion, the — focal infection, the — chancre! In medical language, it spreads by — metastasis! It creeps through the capillaries and into the main blood vessels. From there it is spread all through the surrounding tissue! Finally nothing is left outisde the decay!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Eloi, you are being unnecessarily violent in your speech.<\/p>\n ELOI. I feel that strongly about it.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You mustn’t allow yourself to sound like a fanatic.<\/p>\n ELOI. You take no stand against it?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You know the stand that I take.<\/p>\n ELOI. I know what ought to be done.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. There ought to be legislation to make for reforms.<\/p>\n ELOI. Not only reforms but action really drastic!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I favor that, too, within all practical bounds.<\/p>\n ELOI. Practical, practical. You can’t be practical, Mother, and wipe out evil! The town should be razed!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You mean this old section torn down?<\/p>\n ELOI. Condemned and demolished!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. That’s not a reasonable stand.<\/p>\n ELOI. It’s the stand I take.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Then I’m afraid you’re not a reasonable person.<\/p>\n ELOI. I have good precedence for it.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. What do you mean?<\/p>\n ELOI. All through the Scriptures are cases of cities destroyed by the justice of fire when they got to be nests of foulness!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Eloi, Eloi.<\/p>\n ELOI. Condemn it, I say, and purify it with fire!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You’re breathing hoarsely. That’s what brings on asthma, over-excitement, not just breathing bad air!<\/p>\n ELOI. [after a thoughtful pause<\/i>] I am<\/i> breathing hoarsely.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Sit down and try to relax.<\/p>\n ELOI. I can’t any more.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You’d better go in and take an amytal tablet.<\/p>\n ELOI. I don’t want to get to depending too much on drugs. I’m not very well, I’m never well any more.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You never will take the proper care of yourself.<\/p>\n ELOI. I can hardly remember the time when I really felt good.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You’ve never been quite as strong as I’d like you to be.<\/p>\n ELOI. I seem to have chronic fatigue.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. The Duvenet trouble has always been mostly with nerves.<\/p>\n ELOI. Look! I had a sinus infection! You call that nerves?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. No, but —<\/p>\n ELOI. Look! This asthma, this choking, this suffocation I have, do you call that nerves?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I never agreed with the doctor about that condition.<\/p>\n ELOI. You hate all doctors, you’re rabid on the subject!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I think all healing begins with faith in the spirit.<\/p>\n ELOI. How can I keep on going when I don’t sleep?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I think your insomnia’s caused by eating at night.<\/p>\n ELOI. It soothes my stomach.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Liquids would serve that purpose!<\/p>\n ELOI. Liquids don’t satisfy me.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Well, something digestible, then. A little hot cereal maybe with cocoa or Postum.<\/p>\n ELOI. All that kind of slop is nauseating to look at!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I notice at night you won’t keep the covers on you.<\/p>\n ELOI. I can’t stand covers in summer.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You’ve got to have something over your body at night.<\/p>\n ELOI. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Your body perspires and when it’s exposed, you catch cold!<\/p>\n ELOI. You’re rabid on the subject of catching cold.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Only because you’re unusally prone to colds.<\/p>\n ELOI. [with curious intensity<\/i>] It isn’t a cold! It is a sinus infection!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Sinus infection and all catarrhal conditions are caused by the same thing as colds!<\/p>\n ELOI. At ten every morning, as regular as clock-work, a headache commences and doesn’t let up till late in the afternoon.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Nasal congestion is often the cause of headache.<\/p>\n ELOI. Nasal congestion has nothing to do with this one!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. How do you know?<\/p>\n ELOI. It isn’t in that location!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Where is it, then?<\/p>\n ELOI. It’s here at the base of the skull. And it runs aorund here.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Around where?<\/p>\n ELOI. Around here!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. [touching his forehead<\/i>] Oh! There!<\/p>\n ELOI. No, no, are you blind? I said here<\/i>!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Oh, here!<\/p>\n ELOI. Yes! Here!<\/i><\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Well, that could be eye-strain.<\/p>\n ELOI. When I’ve just changed my glasses?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You read consistently in the wrong kind of light.<\/p>\n ELOI. You seem to think I’m a saboteur of myself.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You actually are.<\/p>\n ELOI. You just don’t know. [darkly<\/i>] There’s lots of things that you don’t know about, Mother.<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I’ve never pretended nor wished to know a great deal. [They fall into a silence, and Mme. Duvenet rocks slowly back and forth. The light is nearly gone. A distant juke-box can be heard playing “The New San Antonio Rose”. She speaks, finally, in a gentle liturgical tone.<\/i>] There are three simple rules I wish that you would observe. One: you should wear under-shirts whenever there’s changeable weather! Two: don’t sleep without covers, don’t kick them off in the night! Three: chew your food, don’t gulp it. Eat like a human being and not like a dog! In addition to those three very simple rules of common hygience, all that you need is faith in spiritual healing! [Eloi looks at her for a moment in weary desperation. Then he groans aloud and rises from the steps<\/i>] Why that look, and the groan?<\/p>\n ELOI. [intensely<\/i>] You — just — don’t — know<\/i>!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Know what?<\/p>\n ELOI. Your world is so simple, you live in a fool’s paradise!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Do I indeed?<\/p>\n ELOI. Yes, Mother, you do indeed! I stand in your presence a stranger, a person unknown! I live in a house where nobody knows my name!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You tire me, Eloi, when you become so excited!<\/p>\n ELOI. You just don’t know. You rock on the porch and talk about clean white curtains! While I’m all flame, all burning, and no bell rings, nobody gives an alarm!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. What are you talking about?<\/p>\n ELOI. Intolerable burden! The conscience of all dirty men!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. I don’t understand you.<\/p>\n ELOI. How can I speak any plainer?<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You go to confession!<\/p>\n ELOI. The priest is a cripple in skirts!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. How can you say that?<\/p>\n ELOI. Because I have seen his skirts and his crutches and heard his meaningless mumble through the wall!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Don’t speak like tha tin mym presence!<\/p>\n ELOI. It’s worn-out magic, it doesn’t burn any more!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. Burn any more? Why s hould it?<\/p>\n ELOI. Because there needs to be burning!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. For what?<\/p>\n ELOI. [leaning against the column<\/i>] For the sake of burning, for God, for the purification! Oh, God, oh, God. I can’t go back in the house, and I can’t stay out on the porch! I can’t even breathe very freely, I don’t know what is about to happen to me!<\/p>\n MME. DUVENET. You’re going to bring on an attack. Sit down!<\/p>\n \n
\nFrom Auto-Da-Fé<\/i>, by Tennessee Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n