A play in two acts written in 1980.
SYNOPSIS
The action takes place on the grounds of Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina.
Act 1, Scene 1
The time is late afternoon in early autumn. F. Scott Fitzgerald sits waiting for his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald.
As he waits he converses with Sister One and Sis-ter Two. Zelda enSis-ters wearing a tatSis-tered ballet cos-tume. Scott tries to be affectionate, but their exchange becomes tense and bitter. Zelda begins to hallucinate and Scott calls out for a doctor. Dr.
Zeller appears and speaks to Scott in German and English. Scott loses his temper and an Intern leads him into the asylum. Zelda approaches the front of the stage and speaks directly to the audience. A Nurse enters, pushing Boo-Boo in a wheelchair.
Zelda greets Boo-Boo and speaks directly to the audience again.
Act 1, Scene 2
A writer’s office is set downstage of the asylum facade. Scott tries to work at his desk. Zelda admires him from a distance. She calls him “pretty,”
and a discussion of his sexuality ensues. Scott becomes cross with Zelda’s interruption and she responds by acknowledging his perpetually inter-rupting her work as a writer. He insists she should be happy in her role as the wife of a successful writer. Zelda finds this role “too confining.” She announces she will study ballet and threatens to take a lover. A pair of dancers perform a pas de deux. Zelda returns, dressed in beach attire, fol-lowed by her lover, Edouard. Zelda and Edouard make arrangements for a romantic tryst as the dancers conclude their duet.
Act 2, Scene 1
The downstage area is set to resemble a small hotel room. Zelda and Edouard lie naked in a double bed.
They exchange tokens of remembrance, dress themselves, and leave the hotel room for an evening soirée. The upstage area has been dressed to resemble a gala lawn party at Gerald and Sara Murphy’s villa. Lively music is heard as assorted party guests mill about and dance. Zelda and Edouard enter from opposite sides of the stage, greet one another, and go to the dance floor. Scott enters from the asylum. He is distressed by the recent news of Joseph Conrad’s death. He attacks Gerald, Sara, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell for failing to grieve properly. Zelda and Edouard reappear, 66 Clothes for a Summer Hotel
dancing the tango. Scott is outraged by their behavior and calls for the doctor. Dr. Zeller praises Zelda’s gifts as a writer and proclaims her a better writer than Scott. Hadley and Ernest Hemingway arrive at the party. Scott and Hemingway discuss the “duality of gender” which they share. They also explore their reluctant, though mutual, attraction to each other and the homoerotic content of Hem-ingway’s works. Hemingway abruptly goes in search of Hadley, while Scott is left alone calling for Zelda.
Act 2, Scene 2
The setting and the time are the same as in act 1, scene 1. It is early evening and sunset approaches.
Scott once again waits for Zelda outside the asy-lum. She reappears in her distressed tutu. She and Scott address the “monumental error” that was their life together. Their confrontation concludes with Zelda’s resolve to release herself from Scott’s restraint. She leaves him begging her to maintain their “covenant with the past.”
COMMENTARY
Clothes for a Summer Hotel is loosely based on Hem-ingway’s epic novel A Moveable Feast. Some have characterized this retelling of Hemingway’s life and experiences in Europe with the Fitzgeralds as his
“crazy memories” of those times. In his play, Williams develops Hemingway’s “crazy memories”
and actualizes them in a dreamlike and episodic manner that is notably reminiscent of the erratic style of Zelda Fitzgerald’s paintings. The drama is, therefore, an incredible amalgamation of the styles and techniques of its famous characters.
The scholarly assessment of Clothes for a Summer Hotel has been surprisingly limited. Much of the commentary is focused on an oversimplified notion that Williams was writing about his sister, ROSE
WILLIAMS, in the guise of Zelda Fitzgerald. This superficial reading of the play illustrates a reluctance to engage Williams’s artistic license as a dramatist.
Williams defines the piece as a ghost play under-scored by dreamlike passages of time. Clothes for a Summer Hotel, as is SOMETHINGCLOUDY, SOMETHING
CLEAR, is a play about reliving past events. In both works time does not move chronologically: The past and the present coexist; the dead walk among the
living. As such, the play unavoidably fails when judged by conventional standards of theatrical real-ism. Critics who have read beyond the simplistic interpretation and have not judged the play in terms of realistic value have found quality in its content.
Alice Griffin finds the play’s dialogue to be “among Williams’s best” (Griffin, 12). Williams’s treatment of character, particularly that of Zelda Fitzgerald, also makes the play extraordinary. Although Zelda can be linked thematically to other “Tennesseean Ophelias” (Simon, 82) such as Alma Winemiller in THEECCENTRICITIES OF ANIGHTINGALE, she is more akin to Williams’s frustrated artist-heroes, such as Valentine Xavier in BATTLE OF ANGELS and Tom Wingfield in THE GLASS MENAGERIE. Through the character of Zelda, Williams explores the deteriora-tion of a stifled artist driven to madness by thwarted creative ambitions. The theme of the artist in tor-ment is prominent in Williams’s work.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
Clothes for a Summer Hotel was Williams’s last full-length play to be presented on Broadway during his lifetime. It premiered at the Cort Theatre in New York on March 26, 1980, and was directed by Jose Quintero. The production was a critical and com-mercial failure.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
Clothes for a Summer Hotel was published by Dramatists Play Service in 1981.
CHARACTERS
Becky Becky is a patient at the Highland Hospi-tal asylum along with Zelda Fitzgerald. She is delu-sional and raves about having been a celebrity hair stylist in Hollywood, California.
Black Male Singer He is a professional singer from the Moulin Rouge who performs at the party given by Sara and Gerald Murphy. One of the Mur-phy’s guests, F. Scott Fitzgerald, provokes the Singer by questioning his sexuality. The Singer responds by knocking Fitzgerald to the ground.
Boo-Boo Boo-Boo is a mental patient at the Highland Hospital asylum. She shares a room with Clothes for a Summer Hotel 67
Zelda Fitzgerald. A nurse wheels Boo-Boo on stage to chat with Zelda outside the asylum. Boo-Boo, who is in a catatonic state, does not speak to Zelda.
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick Historical figure and character in the play Clothes for a Summer Hotel.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell is a guest at a party given by Gerald and Sara Murphy. She is scandalized by the uncouth behavior of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
Edouard Edouard is Zelda Fitzgerald’s French lover. He and Zelda have a romantic tryst at a hotel and attend a party given by Gerald and Sara Mur-phy together. At the MurMur-phys’ party, Zelda’s hus-band, F. Scott Fitzgerald, watches the two lovers perform a tango. Edouard’s role is doubled with that of the Intern.
Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott (1896–1940) Histor-ical figure and character in the play Clothes for a Summer Hotel. As a novelist he was regarded as the chronicler of the Jazz Age. He was married to the writer, dancer, and painter Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.
His major works include Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender Is the Night (1934), and The Last Tycoon (1941).
In Clothes for a Summer Hotel Fitzgerald relives moments of his turbulent marriage with Zelda, such as her infidelity with Edouard and her repeated accusations that he stifled her creative ambitions.
Their marriage is depicted as strained and unfulfill-ing. Fitzgerald is more moved and engaged by the death of Joseph Conrad and his intimate conversa-tion with Ernest Hemingway than he is by Zelda.
Williams developed his portrait of Fitzgerald from a variety of sources, notably the collected letters of Ernest Hemingway and his epic novel A Moveable Feast. Williams was drawn to Fitzgerald, as he felt they shared “the experience of early fame” and “the humiliation that follows when you fall out of fash-ion” (Terkel, 146).
Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre (1900–1948) Historical figure and character in the play Clothes for a Summer Hotel. She was the wife of the renowned novelist F.
Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda was also a writer and penned
short stories, articles, a novel—Save Me the Waltz (1932)—and a play, Scandalabra (1932). She was a dancer and painter as well. She died in an asylum fire in 1948.
As the central character in Clothes for a Summer Hotel, she is depicted as an artist living in the shadow of her husband’s great fame. She feels sti-fled and trapped by her husband’s success and the limited role that success has created for her. She is not content to be merely a successful writer’s wife;
she has talents of her own, which her husband forces her to suppress. This torment drives her into infidelity and ultimately into madness. During the course of the play Zelda relives poignant moments in her marriage with Scott, such as her affair with Edouard, a French aviator, and her attempts to develop her talents as a dancer. Doctor Zeller praises Zelda’s writing and informs Scott that she is the better writer of the two, completely crushing Scott. Madness provides Zelda with the freedom to say and do whatever she pleases. Although she is the asylum patient, she appears far more sane and rational than Scott. Williams was drawn to the Fitzgeralds’ story as he felt he had “experienced all their problems” (Terkel, 146) and in Zelda’s mad-ness he saw the reflection of his sister’s repression and mental collapse. Because she was greatly over-shadowed by her husband and his success, Zelda Fitzgerald was largely undervalued as a writer.
Williams believed that her writing often possessed a
“brilliancy that Scott was unequal to” (Hicks, 322).
Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961) Historical fig-ure and character in the play Clothes for a Summer Hotel. Williams considered the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winning author to be one of the greatest American literary stylists and admired his “poet’s feeling for words.” Hemingway’s major works include The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), The Old Man and the Sea (1952), and A Moveable Feast (1964).
Williams met Hemingway in Havana, Cuba, in 1960. Hemingway is said to have been “delighted”
(Tynan, 138) to meet Williams. The two writers had a “friendly conversation” (Hicks, 321), and Hemingway gave Williams a letter of introduction 68 Clothes for a Summer Hotel
that enabled him to meet the Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In his letter to Castro, Hemingway charac-terized Williams as “the great American dramatist.”
Ultimately, the two writers did not develop a pro-found rapport, which Williams believed was the result of Hemingway’s timidity and not, as many scholars have claimed, a by-product of Heming-way’s supposed homophobia.
In Clothes for a Summer Hotel, Hemingway and his wife, Hadley Hemingway, are guests at a lavish party being given by Sara and Gerald Murphy. At the party, Hemingway is boisterous and intoxi-cated. He engages in an intimate conversation with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Scott and Hemingway discuss the duality of gender that they both possess. They also explore their reluctant, though mutual, attrac-tion to each other and the homoerotic content of Hemingway’s works. At the end of their conversa-tion, Hemingway abruptly goes in search of Hadley, leaving Scott alone and calling for Zelda. Williams drew extensively from Hemingway’s writing in his re-creation of the Fitzgeralds.
Hemingway, Hadley Historical figure and character in the play Clothes for a Summer Hotel.
She is the wife of Ernest Hemingway and attends Sara and Gerald Murphy’s party with him. At the party, Hadley confronts Ernest with the fact that he is going to leave her. Her frankness with Ernest parallels Zelda’s with Scott in her assessment of their marriage.
Intern He is a member of the staff at the High-land Hospital asylum. He comforts Zelda Fitzgerald when she becomes upset during her conversation with her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald. His role is doubled with Edouard.
Murphy, Gerald He is Sara Murphy’s husband and a close friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald. Gerald and Sara visit Zelda at the asylum at Highland Hospital before Scott arrives.
Gerald breaks the news to Scott that Zelda’s condi-tion has deteriorated.
Murphy, Sara Gerald Murphy’s wife. She is a close friend of Zelda Fitzgerald and her husband, F.
Scott Fitzgerald. Sara and Gerald host an evening party that is attended by the Fitzgeralds, Ernest Hemingway, and Hadley Hemingway. At the party Sara admonishes Zelda for her affair with Edouard.
Sister One She is one of a pair of nuns who stand guard outside the gates of Highland Hospital.
She and Sister Two converse with F. Scott Fitzger-ald while he waits to see his wife, Zelda FitzgerFitzger-ald.
Sister Two She is one of a pair of nuns who stand guard outside the gates of Highland Hospital.
She and Sister One converse with F. Scott Fitzger-ald while he waits to see his wife, Zelda FitzgerFitzger-ald.
Zeller, Dr. He is the German doctor who cares for Zelda Fitzgerald at Highland Hospital asylum. Dr.
Zeller upsets Zelda’s husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, by declaring that Zelda’s writing is better than his.
FURTHER READING
Dundy, Elaine. Life Itself! London: Virago Press, 2001.
Griffin, Alice. Understanding Tennessee Williams.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.
Hicks, John. “Bard of Duncan Street: Scene Four,” in Conversations with Tennessee Williams, edited by Albert Devlin. Jackson: University Press of Missis-sippi, 1986, pp. 318–324.
Simon, John. “Damsels Inducing Distress,” New York Times, April 7, 1980, pp. 82, 84.
Terkel, Studs. The Spectator: Talk about Movies and Plays with the People Who Make Them. New York:
New Press, 1999.
Tynan, Kenneth. “Papa and the Playwright.” Playboy 11, no. 5 (May 1964): 138–141.