Yael Nussbaum.
Comedy or Melodrama in the ROSE TATTOO.
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The first production of Tennessee William's The Rose Tattoo was described by the theater critic George Jean Nathan as a "sensational melodrama, pasted up with comedy relief.".It is quite understandable how he got these notions while watching this play. However in order to analyze and explain his criticism, one must first understand the meaning of melodrama. .
Webster's dictionary explanation of the word is: "dramatic entertainment, sensational and emotional play of romantic sentiment and situation". Usually a melodrama consists of conflictcomplication/ resolution, and enfolds maudlin excesses and unbelievable coincidences. In this lusty comedy, in which a mature widow after a long inner struggle rediscovers love, we see conflicts between sexuality, society and Christianity. All these compartments build this play into a melodramatic comedy. .
Tennessee Williams claimed that all of his major plays fit into the "Memory Play" format he described in his production notes for The Glass Menagerie. The "Memory play" is a three part structure: First, a character experiences something profound. Second, that experience causes what Williams terms an "arrest of time"- a situation in which time literally loops upon itself; and thirdly, the character must re-live that profound experience caught in a sort of loop of time until she or he makes sense of it. The overreaching theme for his plays, he claimed, was the negative impact the conventional society had upon the "sensitive non conformist individual". Tennessee himself was a non-conformist individual. He was a deeply closeted homosexual, and therefore projected on to his heroines the overreaching theme of loneliness which he had experienced in his personal life.
