A Tentative Stemma for Drafts and Revisions of Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

Abstract

Any attempt to sequence the manuscript evidence behind Suddenly Last Summer must be even more tentative than previous stemmata for The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof because not only are extra drafts for the play sure to surface in the next few years (as with the other plays), but the evidence for Suddenly Last Summer also presents problems of its own. Like the other three plays, Suddenly Last Summer shares the difficulties of Williams's obsessive rewriting and accretive mode of composition. His habit was to work by the intuitive "feel" of a situation rather than by a detailed outline, compulsively typing new drafts at great speed, then revising by hand, often independently, on the many working carbons or mimeograph copies he made for each draft; constantly fidgeting with details but, more characteristically, rewriting in larger scenes or whole acts, then fitting various sections of separate drafts together experimentally like mosaics. During rehearsals, tryouts and even Broadway performances he would continue vigorously "workshopping" his scripts in response to suggestions from his actors and director, often continuing to revise (as in this case) after a play had been favourably reviewed, was already in print, and had been released as a very successful movie. Moreover, he rarely dated drafts, frequently returned to material from superseded versions (so that there is never a simple, straight line of development to trace) and had a habit of mixing revised pages with pages from earlier drafts that needed no change, then collecting the various stages of discard together into large undifferentiated piles.