The Rose Tattoo, written at a very special moment in the life of
Tennessee Williams, is a lyric paean to Dionysus and to love itself. To
serve his purpose, Williams has to create a number of characters who
have very little or nothing in common with his fugitives. The result is a
play which stands apart from the rest of his work. However, as though
in an attempt to counteract the optimistic vision of life which appears
in this play, as though he found it difficult to believe in happy endings,
Tennessee Williams wrote almost simultaneously his novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, in which he presents quite the other side of
the coin. Indeed, a comparison of parallel aspects in the play and the
novel reveals striking contrasts.
