Introduction & Overview of Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams

Sweet Bird of Youth Introduction

Though Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) was his biggest box office success since Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), the play came to be regarded as an example of the playwright in decline. It was his second-to-last big success. Even before it opened on March 10, 1959, at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway, Sweet Bird of Youth had $390,000 in advance sales. The original production closed January 30, 1960, after 375 performances.

When the play opened, the frank depictions of various corruptions were considered somewhat shocking. Touching on familiar themes for Williams (including lost youth and aging, loneliness, sex, and pretending to be what one is not), Sweet Bird of Youth was inspired in part by his own life, though not autobiographical. Williams had written at least eight versions of the play. One version was published in Esquire and another, with only two characters (Chance...
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