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Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams that tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra del Lago (travelling incognito as Princess Kosmonopolis), whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. The main reason for his homecoming is ...
Sweet Bird of Youth, drama in three acts by Tennessee Williams, published and produced in 1959 as an expanded version of Williams’s one-act play The Enemy: Time (1959). An aging movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis, and her kept lover, Chance Wayne, travel to Chance’s Southern hometown to avoid what.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sweet Bird of Youth Summary. Next. Act One, Scene One. It is morning at the Royal Palms Hotel in St. Cloud, a town on the Gulf Coast. Chance Wayne wakes up next to the middle-aged woman with whom he has been traveling. Getting out of bed, he tries to cure his hangover while she goes on sleeping.
Sweet Bird of Youth is a three-act drama by Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Tennessee Williams. First performed in 1959, the play chronicles the relationship between shiftless gigolo Chance Wayne and alcoholic has-been movie star Alexandra Del Lago, a.k.a. Princess Kosmonopolis.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. He was the son of Cornelius Coffin and Edwina (maiden name, Dakin) Williams. Williams’s father, a traveling salesman, was rarely home. The children and their mother lived with her parents in Tennessee until 1918. That year, Cornelius Williams moved the family to S...
Act 1, scene 1
Sweet Bird of Youthopens in a hotel room in St. Cloud, Florida. In bed are Princess Kosmonopolis (the alias of aging actress Alexandra del Lago) and Chance Wayne, who has come back to his hometown. While the actress sleeps, Chance drinks coffee. George Scudder appears at the door, wanting to know why Chance has returned. When Chance informs him he wants to see his mother and his girlfriend, Heavenly Finley, Scudder tells Chance that his mother recently died and was buried, and that something...
Act 1, scene 2
The Princess signs traveler’s checks for Chance, but insists that she will go with him to cash them. She is afraid to be left alone. As she puts on makeup, Chance tells her his life story. He was popular here. Instead of going to college, he went to New York and was in the choruses of Broadway shows. Chance also made love to many rich women in New York, giving affection to the lonely. During the Korean War, Chance joined the Navy because the uniform looked good on him. He felt he was wasting...
Act 2, scene 1
At Boss Finley’s house, Heavenly’s father is angry that Chance has returned. He calls in his son, Tom Junior. Finley wants his son to throw Chance out of town because the last time he was here he gave Heavenly a sexually transmitted disease that required her to have a hysterectomy. As they talk, Tom Junior informs him that Chance Wayne has stopped outside and is talking with Aunt Nonnie. Tom Junior calls for Aunt Nonnie, who runs into the house. The Finleys question Nonnie. Though she says sh...
Bud
Bud is a St. Cloud local who used to be friendly with Chance. When Bud and friends see Chance in the hotel cocktail lounge, Bud is rather mean. Like others, he doubts much of what Chance says about himself. At the end of the play, Bud helps Tom Junior with Chance’s implied castration.
Charles
Charles is a servant in the Finley household.
Alexandra del Lago
SeePrincess Kosmonopolis.
Sex
Throughout Sweet Bird of Youth,the idea of sex and its consequences affects nearly every character’s life. Having failed to make it as an actor, Chance’s “career” consists of working as a gigolo, selling sex and/or companionship to rich, lonely, often older ladies. He met Princess Kosmonopolis while employed at a Palm Beach resort. Because of Chance’s liaisons with many women, he gave his girlfriend, Heavenly Finley, a venereal disease the last time they were together. The innocent Heavenly u...
Time, Youth, and Aging
Many characters in Sweet Bird of Youthare obsessed with aging and the ravages of time. Though Chance is twenty-nine years old with thinning hair, he is still handsome enough to attract women like the Princess. Yet the only woman Chance truly wants is Heavenly, who shared a romance with him beginning when she was fifteen years old. Several characters point out to him that she has changed. Because of the sexually transmitted disease Chance gave her, she has had a hysterectomy. Heavenly tells he...
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Compare and contrast the character and motivations of Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth with Val Xavier in Orpheus Descending(1956). What kinds of pressures are the young men under and how do they handle them? 2. Research racial politics in the South in this time period. Was the castration of an innocent African American in the play realistic? Would such a crime have been prosecuted? How has the political situation in the Southchanged since this time period? 3. Compare and contrast Sweet...
Setting
Sweet Bird of Youthis a drama set at the time the play was written in the late 1950s. All the action takes place in two settings over the course of one day, an Easter Sunday, in the Gulf Coast city of St. Cloud, Florida. A majority of the action occurs in the Royal Palms Hotel. All of acts 1 and 3 take place in one room in the hotel. The Princess and Chance Wayne occupy this room. Act 2, scene 2 occurs in the cocktail lounge and palm garden of the hotel. The other setting is the home of Boss...
Special Effects and Images
Throughout Sweet Bird of Youth,Williams calls for a cyclorama (a large wall placed at the back of a room or stage) on which to project images onto the stage behind the action. The images are not supposed to be realistic, but are intended to help set the mood of the play and underscore the setting. For most of the play, the image is a grove of palm trees blowing in the wind. The wind goes from soft to loud, depending on the action of the scene. When the wind is loud, it blends with the musical...
Symbolism
Sweet Bird of Youth is replete with symbolism. All the action takes place on Easter Sunday. The use of this symbolic day of rebirth has been interpreted in several different ways. Boss Finley claims he has been reborn during the rally. On Good Friday, his effigy was burned at a local university, yet he is still alive and in charge on Sunday, preaching on television. By his side is his daughter, Heavenly, who has just been publicly humiliated by the Heckler. The Heckler is severely beaten. But...
In 1959, the United States was on the verge of major transitions, primarily on the home front, though the ever-escalating Cold War between America and the U.S.S.R. was also a constant threat. The country was expanding. Two new states were admitted in 1959: Alaska and Hawaii. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower was near the end of his second t...
When Sweet Bird of Youth made its debut in 1959, it received a mixed reception. While some critics thought it was another example of Williams’s genius, others saw it as lesser Williams. Both sides, however, generally agreed that Williams’s command of language had not diminished, and the play was a box office success. Over time, Sweet Bird of Youthc...
Annette Petrusso
Petrusso is a freelance writer and editor living in Austin, Texas. In this essay, Petrusso argues that the character of Chance Wayne is focused on one thing—denying the reality of his life—and analyzes his futile quest. Reviewing the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth, Frank Aston of New York World-Telegram and The Sun pointed out, “He [Chance Wayne] is racing toward something he can never gain, while she [Princess Kosmonopolis] is fleeing the ruins of so...
Alice Griffin
In the following review, Griffin examines Sweet Bird of Youth as a ‘forceful’ and ‘compassionate’ drama that highlights Williams’ theme of ‘time as the enemy.’ Sweet Bird of Youthis Williams’s most eloquent expression of his recurrent theme that time is “the enemy.” In the face of time’s relentless advance, transient youth takes flight, deserting those who trusted it. In one of the finest examples of Williams’s plastic theater the theme pervades not only the characterization but also the word...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. Suddenly Last Summer, a play written by Williams in 1958, shares thematic and dramatic concerns with Sweet Bird of Youth. 2. The Little Foxes, a play written by Lillian Hellmanin 1939, concerns rivalries and disloyalties in a southern family. 3. Orpheus Descending, a play written by Williams in 1956, has themes and characters similar to Sweet Bird. 4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story,a novel by John Berendt published in 1994, also concerns sexual mores and eccentri...
Aston, Frank, “Bird of Youth Stormy Drama,” in New York World Telegram and The Sun,March 11, 1959. Atkinson, Brooks, “The Theatre: Portrait of Corruption,” in New York Times,March 11, 1959. Brustein, Robert, “Sweet Bird of Success,” in Encounter,June 1959, pp. 59-60. ______, “Williams’s Nebulous Nightmare,” in Hudson Review,Summer 1959, pp. 255-60....
Griffin, Alice, Understanding Tennessee Williams, University of South CarolinaPress, 1995. Nelson, Benjamin, Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work,Ivan Obolensky, Inc., 1961. Williams, Tennessee, Memoirs,Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975.
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by Tennessee Williams. The Play. PDF Cite Share. Sweet Bird of Youth opens on Easter morning in the bedroom of an old-fashioned grand hotel, the Royal Palms. Chance Wayne rises...
