A play in three acts written in 1939.
SYNOPSIS
The play is set in the rural town of Two Rivers County, Mississippi.
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Prologue
The action takes place in the Torrance Mercantile Store, a general goods store formerly owned and run by Jabe and Myra Torrance. The prologue pres-ents the store as it appears at the present time, one year after the tragic events and actual action of the play. The store is no longer functional. Eva and Blanch Temple have turned the store into a museum exhibiting various souvenirs of the tragic events that occurred in the store. The Conjure Man sleeps on a chair at the rear of the store. Eva and Blanch escort a pair of middle-aged tourists, Oliver and Woman, through the store with a com-mentary on the events that occurred there on Good Friday of the previous year.
Act 1
The scene is in the same location as the prologue;
however, the time frame is a year earlier, in early February. Dolly Bland and Beulah, two local towns-women, set up a buffet table in the store and dis-cuss the poor state of Jabe Torrance’s health.
Cassandra (Sandra) Whiteside visits the store in need of cartridges for her pistol, and she helps her-self to them. Vee Talbot arrives accompanied by Valentine Xavier, a handsome young stranger. Vee hopes that Myra will give Val a job in the store. Val is left alone in the store with Sandra, who makes suggestive advances toward him. Myra enters the store and admires the decorations and the food the women have prepared for Jabe’s return. Jabe sum-mons Myra upstairs by pounding on the floor above. Sandra persuades Val to have a look at her car, and they leave the store. Vee Talbot tries unsuccessfully to prevent Val from leaving with Sandra; the other women mock Vee’s attempt to keep Val away from Sandra. Vee attacks Dolly and Beulah for what she sees as their degraded practice of drinking and playing cards on Sundays. Dolly responds by calling Vee a “professional hypocrite,”
and the two women exchange more heated words until Vee flees upstairs to Myra. Blanch and Eva greedily gather the food left out for Jabe’s party to take away with them.
Val returns to the store. Myra enters from the upstairs living quarters and does not notice Val sit-ting at the counter as she goes to the telephone
box. She calls Mr. Dubinsky for sleeping pills. Val startles her, and she threatens to call the sheriff.
Myra offers Val food but says that there is no work available in the store. Val amuses Myra by recount-ing his recent episode with Cassandra Whiteside, during which he slapped her for making a sexual advance toward him. Myra laughs and offers Val a drink and a job.
Act 2, Scene 1
The time is roughly one week after act 1, in the same location, the Torrance Mercantile Store. Val works on his book and writes his ideas on the lid of a shoebox. Myra watches him curiously and teases him about his behavior and appearance. Three teenage girls enter the store to flirt with Val. They claim to be interested in purchasing a pair of shoes.
Eva Temple goes to the store and plays a similar game. Eva becomes a giddy, giggling coquette as Val handles her feet.
Cassandra Whiteside returns to the store in search of a pair of dress shoes to wear to the Delta Planters’ Cotillion. Dolly and Beulah enter the store discussing a card game that ended abruptly. They encourage Cassandra to share her recent exploits at the Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans. Cassan-dra’s enthusiasm prompts Myra to recount her own magical Mardi Gras experience many years ago.
Sandra informs Val she did not come to the store for a pair of shoes: She returned to Two Rivers County to see him. Sandra reveals her various neuroses and tells Val that he should have killed her instead of merely slapping her. This, she informs him, would save her the trouble of killing herself slowly. Sandra taunts him because he is afraid to kiss her. Val grabs Sandra and attempts to kiss her. Sandra responds by kneeing him in the groin and biting his hand. Myra becomes angry at Val’s potential interest in Sandra and begins to vent her frustrations by criticizing Val’s work in the store.
Val takes off his clerk’s jacket and offers his res-ignation. Myra apologizes and admits that she in fact has been very pleased with Val’s work in the store. Myra confesses that she is uncomfortable with Val’s interactions with the female customers, particularly Sandra Whiteside and the high school girls. Myra accuses Val of having a suggestive Battle of Angels 35
manner while dealing with female customers. Val shares his life story with Myra.
Act 2, Scene 2
This scene occurs several hours later in the after-noon of the same day as act 2, scene 1. Val admires a large Coca-Cola poster, which features a curvaceous young woman in a yellow swimsuit.
Myra’s former lover, David Anderson, enters the store to purchase cartridges for his shotgun and to speak with Myra. Myra and David speak privately.
She chastises David and informs him that her life is not over.
Vee Talbot enters the store with a painted can-vas. Val notices that Vee needs new shoes. He decides to toy with Vee and starts to rub her foot between his hands. Vee is flabbergasted and rushes quickly out of the store. Myra and Val engage in a playful shoe fitting session. Loon, a homeless black man, stops outside the store and begins to play his guitar. Initially he plays a very solemn tune, but then he changes to a lively waltz matching Myra’s transition and mood. Myra becomes enraptured by the music. She begins to sashay about the room and reminisces about her youth. Myra shares her heart-break with Val. Val acknowledges Myra’s unspoken desire to be rid of Jabe for good.
Act 2, Scene 3
The scene follows the previous scene immediately with no break in the music. There is a shift in light-ing to the outside of the store as Sheriff Talbot enters the scene. Sheriff Talbot accosts Loon and arrests him for vagrancy. Val intervenes and rescues Loon by giving him money and offering him a job.
Pee Wee Bland and the other members of the sher-iff’s posse, First Man and Second Man, verbally abuse Val for sympathizing with Loon. A Third man, referred to as Pinkie, joins the squabble and spits on Val’s shoes. Val responds by pushing him to the ground. Val confesses to Myra that he is a wanted man because a woman in Texas has accused him of rape. Myra asks Val to clarify what hap-pened and he shares his side of the events sur-rounding the charge. Val also confesses that he wants to touch Myra but is afraid of where it might lead. Val invites Myra to go into the back room with him.
Act 3
The time is two months later. It is a rainy spring day in the same location, the Torrance Mercantile Store.
It is Good Friday, two days before Easter Sunday.
The only significant alteration to the setting is that the confectionery area in the rear of the store has been completely redecorated to resemble a beautiful flower-filled orchard. Myra sings and chatters glee-fully as Val works on his book. He is stunned by her erratic behavior and inquires about its source. Myra is giddy and confides only that she has a secret.
Sonny, a small African-American boy, enters the store to purchase snuff for his grandmother. Bennie comes in and asks whether he may give Myra a credit note for some tobacco. Myra turns on the lights in the confectionery and enjoys the brilliant spring paradise before her. She feels herself glowing and realizes that she is pregnant. The Conjure Man slips silently into the store. Myra offers him money to wash her car. Dolly rushes into the store for safety because of fear that the Conjure Man will put a curse on her unborn child. Beulah runs in with news that Cassandra Whiteside is causing another distur-bance in Two Rivers County. Beulah teases Val and Myra, suggesting that they have a secret. The three women discuss Jabe’s poor state of health. Myra excuses herself to administer Jabe’s medicine.
Dolly and Beulah exchange knowing glances and giggle with each other. The Temple sisters rush into the store to share the news about Cassandra White-side’s arrival in town. Vee Talbot enters the store dressed in black for Good Friday. She announces that she has at last had a vision of Jesus Christ and has painted his picture. Beulah and Dolly dismiss Vee’s “vision” as a result of excessive fasting. Vee declares that the man in her vision relieved her of her torments by touching her. She illustrates his touch by placing her hand on her bosom. Dolly debases Vee’s experience and implies that the man in her vision was making a sexual advance. Blanch and Beulah ask to see the painting. Vee starts to unwrap the canvas as the women hear an outburst and the sound of breaking glass above them.
Vee is forced to compete with Myra and Jabe for the townswomen’s attention. Jabe loudly accuses Myra of trying to kill him. The townswomen react with disbelief and shock. As Vee reaches the dra-36 Battle of Angels
matic climax in her story, Myra bursts through the upstairs door screaming for Val to call Jabe’s doctor.
Val greets Vee Talbot as he crosses her path to get to the telephone. There is a new commotion in the store over Vee’s sudden hysteria. Vee orders the women to let her go, although no one is holding her. Dolly tries to examine Vee’s painting; Vee grabs it from her before she can see it. Myra rushes out to find Jabe’s doctor. Beulah grabs Vee’s canvas and shrieks with laughter as she reveals that Val is the man depicted in the painting. Dolly taunts Vee as she runs out of the store in tears.
The Conjure Man reenters from the confec-tionery and asks Val whether he may spend the night in the confectionery. In a flash of lightning, Cassan-dra enters the store. Her hair is wet, and her white satin evening gown is spattered with mud and grass stains. Cassandra warns Val that Myra will tie him down. Val orders her to leave, but Cassandra moves closer to him with her wet evening dress clinging to her body. She flings her arms around Val and kisses him. Myra attacks Cassandra and slaps her face forcefully. Cassandra nearly faints from the blow. Val carries Cassandra up the stairs to Myra’s bedroom.
Sheriff Talbot enters the store with Mrs. Regan, the woman from Waco, Texas, who is in pursuit of Val. Mrs. Regan immediately demands to see the male shop clerk who works in the store. Mrs. Regan recognizes Val from Vee Talbot’s painting. Myra for-mulates a plan of escape for Val, one that includes her. She shares her dreams of running away and see-ing the world with Val. Val immediately rejects this possibility and informs Myra that he must go alone.
Myra tells Val a parable about a barren fig tree her family owned. No one believed the little fig tree could produce fruit except Myra. When the tree came into bloom, Myra celebrated its triumph by decorating it with Christmas ornaments and tinsel.
Myra asks Val to place Christmas ornaments on her.
Val is stunned by Myra’s revelation and accuses her of feigning the pregnancy. Myra threatens that she, along with Mrs. Regan, will never let Val escape.
As the two lovers squabble, Jabe enters the upstairs landing. Myra introduces Jabe to Val. Myra and Val argue quietly as Jabe plays the pinball machine in the confectionery. Jabe threatens Myra with the news that he is going to live. She becomes
hysterical and announces that she is pregnant. Val runs to the cash register, rings it open, and starts taking money out of it. Myra races to the phone box and calls the sheriff. While she is still on the phone, Jabe shoots Myra in the abdomen. Val wrestles the gun out of Jabe’s hand. Jabe hobbles out of the store to get help. Myra is drawn to the “soft, spring-like radiance” of the confectionery and in her dying breath declares that the only things she ever wanted were David Anderson and “the orchard across from Moon Lake!” Myra collapses and the lights in the confectionery flicker out.
Val dashes out of the store through the confec-tionery. Mrs. Regan and Sheriff Talbot enter the store with a lynch mob bearing lit pine torches. The Conjure Man suddenly appears in the archway of the confectionery. He strikes a defiant pose by lift-ing Val’s jacket in the air above his head.
Epilogue
The scene is the same as that of the prologue. It is a Sunday afternoon, one year after the events of the Battle of Angels 37
Publicity portrait of Williams, 1959 (Photograph courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library)
play. Eva and Blanch Temple are completing their tour of the museum with the tourists. Eva orders the Conjure Man to go to the shelf and retrieve the Cas-sandra Whiteside objects for the tourists to see.
Blanch and Eva describe Cassandra’s death to the tourists. Blanch and Eva exhibit Val’s snakeskin jacket: The Conjure Man assumes his pose of act 3, with the jacket clenched in his uplifted fist. The Temple sisters report that Val was captured as he ran out of the store through the confectionery. He was stripped naked and lynched in the cottonwood tree.
To illustrate how Val was killed, Blanch takes a blowtorch from the wall. The female tourist cries out as Blanch causes the blowtorch to emit a sharp blue flame. The female tourist nearly faints and must be carried out of the store by the male tourist.
The Temple sisters quickly chase the tourists to obtain their admission fee. The Conjure Man returns Val’s jacket to its special place on the wall.
Treating it with the respect of a sacred relic, he bows to it slightly as the melody of a Negro spiritual is heard.
COMMENTARY
Battle of Angels was Williams’s first professionally produced dramatic work and his first full-length dramatic treatment of life in the Deep South. Set in the fictional town of Two Rivers County in rural Mississippi, the drama exposes the repression, cru-elty, hatred, hypocrisy, and brutality that lie beneath the surface of a small, upstanding South-ern community.
Battle of Angels is one of the most neglected works in the Williams canon. However, the emi-nent significance of this play to Williams’s develop-ment as a dramatist and to the Williams canon should not be overlooked. Battle of Angels served as an “important repository of images, symbols, themes, place-names, character types, and even bits of dialogue that Williams was to draw upon and develop more expertly throughout his dramatic career” (Thompson, 95–96). Themes and conflicts such as sexual repression versus sexual freedom and conformity versus nonconformity, the idea of the poet as outcast and fugitive, the insatiable quest for truth and beauty, and the image of the artist as prophet-hero permeate Battle of Angels.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
Battle of Angels premiered at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 30, 1940, under the direction of MARGARET WEBSTER with Miriam Hopkins as Myra and Wesley Addy as Val.
The opening night performance was a complete dis-aster. More troubling than the critical reaction to the play was the moral outrage that quickly followed.
The Boston City Council denounced the play and called its presentation in the city of Boston a crimi-nal act. The council ordered an official investigation and demanded that production be shut down. The police commissioner and the city censor recom-mended that the play be allowed to continue with the understanding that Williams would remove cer-tain lines from the text. None of the officials involved in the investigation had actually attended the performance. The city council based its accusa-tions on six complaints received from members of the audience. Changes to the text were made and the production was allowed to continue but closed only 17 days after its opening. At the tender age of 24, the young playwright had launched his career explosively. Williams was shocked and devastated by the audience’s reaction to the play.
Although the production proved to be his first great professional fiasco, Williams did not give up on Battle of Angels. He continued to develop the material, and the play was subsequently revised as ORPHEUS DESCENDINGand produced in New York under that title in 1957. The same material was revised as a screenplay retitled THEFUGITIVEKIND, which was produced in 1960. Starring MARLON
BRANDOand ANNAMAGNANI, it was the most suc-cessful incarnation of Battle of Angels.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
Battle of Angels was first published by Pharos in 1945.
CHARACTERS
Anderson, David David is a wealthy landowner in Two Rivers County, Mississippi. He is Myra Tor-rance’s former lover. He visits the Torrances’ store with the pretext of needing to purchase cartridges for his shotgun. He has actually gone there to see Myra and apologize for abandoning her many years ago.
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Bennie He is an African-American workman, who is a regular customer at Jabe and Myra Tor-rance’s general store.
Beulah She is a member of a group of gossiping townswomen who frequent Jabe and Myra Tor-rance’s store. This gaggle of women includes Vee Talbot, Eva Temple, Blanch Temple, and her best friend, Dolly Bland. Although they consider them-selves friends, they despise each other intensely.
They unite forces against common enemies, such as Cassandra Whiteside, but turn on each other at the slightest provocation.
Bland, Dolly Dolly is Pee Wee Bland’s wife. She is one of a group of gossiping townswomen who fre-quent Jabe and Myra Torrance’s store. Dolly also serves a symbolic function. As the mother of six children, expecting her seventh, she is a constant reminder to Myra Torrance that she is childless.
Bland, Pee Wee The husband of Dolly Bland, he is the manager of the cotton gin across the road
Bland, Pee Wee The husband of Dolly Bland, he is the manager of the cotton gin across the road