期刊名称：Cercles : Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone
电子版ISSN：1292-8968
出版年度：2004
期号：10
页码：3-32
出版社：Université de Rouen
摘要：When A Streetcar Named Desire opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on3.December 1947, it stirred up controversy overnight. The play met withrave reviews in the following morning's papers, like that from BrooksAtkinson who called it "a quietly woven study of intangibles" andTennessee Williams "a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge ofpeople is honest and thorough" [First Night, 42]. In the days ahead, JosephWood Krutch in Nation, Kappo Phelan in Commonweal, John Chapman in theNew York Daily News, John Mason Brown in The Saturday Review, and IrwinShaw in The New Republic all sounded similar praise for Williams and forStreetcar. The play was not impervious to negative reviews, however, asThomas Adler points out in his monograph The Moth and the Lantern,What criticisms the early reviewers did register centered on threeissues: the potentially shocking nature of Williams's material, theseemingly loose way in which he structured it, and the apparentlypessimistic stance he took toward human existence. [Adler, 11]
