AMANDA: I think you’ve been doing things that you’re ashamed of. That’s why you act like this. I don’t believe that you go every night to the movies. Nobody goes to the movies night after night. Nobody in their right mind goes to the movies as often as you pretend to. People don’t go to the movies at nearly midnight, and movies don’t let out at two a.m. Come in stumbling. Muttering to yourself like a maniac! You get three hours’ sleep and then go to work. Oh, I can picture the way you’re doing down there. Moping, doping, because you’re in no condition.

TOM [wildly]: No, I’m in no condition!

AMANDA: What right have you got to jeopardize your job – jeopardize the security of us all? How do you think we’d manage if you were –

TOM: Listen! You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? [He bonds fiercely toward her slight figure.] You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that – celotex interior! with – fluorescent – tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings! Igo!Every time you come in yelling……… that God damn “Rise and Shine!” – “Rise and Shine”! I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self – self’s all I ever think of. Why, listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I’d be where he is – GONE! [Pointing to fathers picture.] As far as the system of transportation reaches! [He starts past her. She grabs his arm.] Don’t grab at me, Mother!

AMANDA: Where are you going?

TOM: I’m going to the movies!

AMANDA: I don’t believe that lie!

TOM [crouching toward her, overtowering her tiny figure. She backs away, gasping]: I’m going to opium dens! Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminals’ hang-outs, Mother. I’ve joined the Hogan gang, I’m a hired assassin, I carry a tommy-gun in a violin case! I run a string of cat-houses in the Valley! They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield, I’m leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night a dynamic tsar of the underworld, Mother. I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table! I wear a patch over one eye and a false moustache, sometimes I put on green whiskers. On those occasions they call me – El Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They’re going to blow us all sky-high some night! I’ll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You’ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You ugly – babbling old – witch. [He goes through a series of violent, clumsy movements, seizing his overcoat, lunging to do door, pulling it fiercely open. The women watch him, aghast. His arm catches in the sleeve of the coat as he struggles to pull it on. For a moment he is pinioned by the bulky garment. With an outraged groan he tears the coat of again, splitting the shoulder of it, and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, there is a tinkle of shattering glass. LAURA cries out as if wounded.]

[MUSIC. LEGEND: “THE GLASS MENAGERIE”.]

LAURA [shrilly] : My glass! – menagerie… [She covers her face and turns away.]

[But AMANDA is still stunned and stupefied by the “ugly witch” so that she barely notices this occurrence. Now she recovers her speech.]

AMANDA [in an awful voice]: I won’t speak to you – until you apologize! [She crosses through portières and draws them together behind her. TOM is left with LAURA. LAURA Clings weakly to the mantel with her face averted. TOM stares at her stupidly for a moment. Then he crosses to shelf. Drops awkwardly on his knees to collect the fallen glass, glancing at LAURA as if he would speak but couldn’t.]

[’The Glass Menagerie’ steals in as THE SCENE DIMS OUT]

[The interior is dark. Faint light in the alley. A deep-voiced bell in a church is tolling the hour of five as the scene commences.]

[Tom appears at the top of the alley. After each solemn boom of the bell in the tower, he shakes a little noise-maker or rattle as if to express the tiny spasm of man in contrast to the sustained power and dignity of the Almighty. This and the unsteadiness of his advance make it evident that he has been drinking. As he climbs Me few steps to the fire-escape landing light steals up inside. Laura appears in night-dress observing Tom’s empty bed in the front room. TOM fishes in his pockets for door-key removing a motley assortment of articles in the search, including a perfect shower of movie-ticket stubs and an empty bottle. At last he finds the key, but just as he is about to insert it, it slips from his fingers. He strikes a match and crouches below the door.]

TOM [bitterly]: One crack – and it falls through!

[LAURA opens the door.]

LAURA: Tom! Tom, what are you doing?

TOM: Looking for a door-key.

LAURA: Where have you been all this time?

TOM: I have been to the movies.

LAURA: All this time at the movies?

TOM: There was a very long programme. There was a Garbo picture and a Mickey Mouse and a travelogue and a newsreel and a preview of coming attractions. And there was an organ solo and a collection for the milk-fund – simultaneously – which ended up in a terrible fight between a fat lady and an usher!

LAURA [innocently]: Did you have to stay through everything?

TOM: Of course! And, oh, I forgot! There was a big stage show! The headliner on this stage show was Malvolio the Magician. He performed wonderful tricks, many of them, such as pouring water back and forth between pitchers. First it turned to wine and then it turned to beer and then it turned to whisky. I knew it was whisky it finally turned into because he needed somebody to come up out of the audience to help him, and I came up – both shows! It was Kentucky Straight Bourbon. A very generous fellow, he gave souvenirs. (He pulls from his back pocket a shimmering rainbow-coloured scarf.) He gave me this. This is his magic scarf. You can have it, Laura. You wave it over a canary cage and you get a bowl of goldfish. You wave it over the gold-fish bowl and they fly away canaries… But the wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick. We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin without removing one nail, [He has come inside.] There is a trick that would come in handy for me – get me out of this 2 by 4 situation! [Flops on to a bed and starts removing shoes.]

LAURA: Tom? Shhh’!

TOM: What’re you shushing me for?

LAURA: You’ll wake up mother.

TOM: Goody, goody! Pay ‘er back for all those “Rise an’ Shines”. [Lies down, groaning.] You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?

[As if in answer, the father’s grinning photograph lights up.]

[SCENE DIMS OUT.]

[Immediately following: The church bell is heard striking six. At the sixth stroke the alarm clock goes off in AMANDA’s room, and after a few moments we hear her calling "Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine! Laura, go tell your brother to rise and shine!’]

TOM [sitting up slowly]: I’ll rise – but I won’t shine

[The light increases.]

AMANDA: Laura, tell your brother his coffee is ready.

[LAURA slips into front room.]

LAURA: Tom!- It’s nearly seven. Don’t make mother nervous. [He stares at her stupidly. Beseechingly.] Tom, speak to mother this morning. Make up with her, apologize, speak to her!