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Remembering Ibsen in Tennessee Williams

Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov have all been cited by critics as important influences on the drama of American playwright Tennessee Williams. While Harold Bloom argues that "Williams truly had one precursor only: Hart Crane," the critic acknowledges that Williams himself "asserted he had other precursors also: D. H. Lawrence, and Chekhov in the drama" (Introduction to Modern Critical Views: Tennessee Williams, ed. Harold Bloom [NY: Chelsea House, 1987], 2). According to Donald Spoto, when asked "which playwrights he thought most influenced his work, [Williams] usually replied Strindberg and Chekhov" (The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams [Boston: Little, Brown, 1985], 45). The influence of Chekhov on A Streetcar Named Desire is I think rendered obvious through conscious or deliberate allusion by Williams. Blanche Dubois explains the significance of her name to Mitch in scene 3 by asserting, "It's a French name. It means woods and Blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods. Like an orchard in spring!"([NY: Signet, 1972], 54-5). Blanche's delicate optimism here is undermined by the fact that "white woods" more readily recalls the image of a forest in the dead of winter. Yet her more appealing interpretation of her name also ironically heightens a sense of tragic decay, since "an orchard in spring" directly recalls Chekhov's A Cherry Orchard --that is, the answer to Anca Vlasopolos' query, "Was Williams thinking of Chekhov's ill-fated cherry orchard," is certainly yes ("Authorizing History: Victimization in A Streetcar Named Desire," Theatre Journal 38 [1986]: 334). Chekhov's play uses a seasonal progression from May to October that Williams mirrors in Streetcar, and depicts a similar deterioration of an agrarian "aristocracy" (or at least landed bourgeoisie). But if Williams alludes so obviously to Chekhov, it is rather surprising that critics have not noted that he also obviously, and directly, alludes to Ibsen in what has become probably the best-known line from any of his plays, so familiar that not only literary critics but the general (North American) public find it immediately recognizable: "Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers"(scene 11, 142). It is not that Ibsen's influence on Williams has been entirely ignored. Spoto describes the following incident during Williams' time at the University of Missouri in Columbia: Just when his literature professor was lecturing on the plays of Henrik Ibsen, a touring production of Ghosts, starring the legendary Alla Nazimova, came to campus. "It was so moving that I had to go and walk in the lobby during the last act," he remembered. "I'd stand in the [doorway] and look in, then I'd rush back to the lobby again. I suppose that play was one of the things that made me want to write for the theatre." (The Kindness of Strangers, 37-38) For Spoto, Williams' fascination with Ibsen was, at least at first, deeply personal: "He learned that the Norwegian poet and dramatist ... had a youth very like his own: an early dislocation from the comfortable and the familiar to inhospitable new residences; ... undistinguished academic performance and an attempt at journalism." Williams' moving response to Ghosts led to a term paper for his literature class asserting "that the central theme of [Ibsen's play] concerned much more than a social problem. Through the use of inherited venereal disease as a symbol, Ibsen established a drama of ideas in which he could reflect on the tragedy of those who cannot liberate themselves from a dead past" (38). …