| Summary: | I propose to look at laughter in the theater of Tennessee Williams between 1941 and 1948 through a close study of a single play, Summer and Smoke (1948), and two short stories written in parallel, "The Yellow Bird" (1941-1947) and "One Arm" (1942-1948). To a lesser extent, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) will also be discussed. The short stories will allow us to consider that these plays, and perhaps Williams’ theater in general, embrace an ambivalent but constructive sense of laughter. Laughter in Williams’ plays is almost invisible; still it sets action in motion, haunts the characters and roams like a doppelgänger between words and phrases to illuminate what is dark and demystify what is poignant. In this essay I contend that Williams’ plays are not what they appear to be: laughter endows the action with a salutary haunting authority stemming from autobiographic and perhaps traumatic material which eventually drains pathos offering wit instead.
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