The Vengeance of Nitocris
"The Vengeance of Nitocris" is a short story by Tennessee Williams, written when Williams was 16 years old. It was published in Weird Tales in its August, 1928 issue, under the byline "Thomas Lanier Williams", the writer's actual given name.[1] The story is a "surprisingly lurid"[2][3] tale of loosely historical fiction, based on the account of the semi-legendary female pharaoh Nitocris found in Herodotus.[4] Williams was paid $35 (more than $500 in 2020 money) for the story by Weird Tales; it was his first piece of stand-alone published fiction.[2] Robert E. Howard's "Red Shadows", the story that introduced Solomon Kane, was the cover story.[5]
Plot
Nitocris is the sister of an unnamed pharaoh. When a bridge the pharaoh built across the Nile collapses, the pharaoh extinguishes the sacred fires of Osiris, defiles a temple with hyena sacrifices, and as a result dies at the hands of an angry mob of priests and citizens. Nitocris, now the empress, takes revenge for the execution of her brother for sacrilege by inviting his judges to a banquet in a magnificent temple she has constructed, feigning only a desire to atone for his offenses. In fact, the new temple is an elaborate death trap. Once they have gathered, she opens a sluice gate and allows the water of the Nile to drown them all, and takes a great deal of pleasure in their demise. Then, realizing that she cannot escape retribution, she has her "boudoir" filled with hot ashes and commits suicide by asphyxiation.[1][6][3]
Themes
Williams remarked about the story in a New York Times interview, that " I was sixteen when I wrote ["The Vengeance of Nitocris"], but already a confirmed writer, having entered upon this vocation at the age of fourteen, and, if you're well acquainted with my writings since then, I don't have to tell you that it set the keynote for most of the work that has followed."[3] Despite the story's somewhat florid prose ("Hushed were the streets of many peopled Thebes. Those few who passed through them moved with the shadowy fleetness of bats near dawn, and bent their faces from the sky as if fearful of seeing what in their fancies might be hovering there..."),[1][2][7] the story prefigures themes found in Williams's later plays. The tale features a strong female protagonist, possibly affected by madness;[7] and a brother-sister relationship is central to its plot.[6] A psychic bond of reciprocity between brother and sister, in that Nitocris expresses the belief that "even he[8] must have considered his avenging adequate", is a theme that appears in several of Williams's later works, including The Two Character Play, Out Cry, and to some extent even The Glass Menagerie.[3]
The story also reflects Williams's longstanding interest in Shakespeare; Williams noted that when he was ten years old, he had been "interested in blood and guts Shakespeare", and that his favorite Shakespeare play was Titus Andronicus, the revenge tragedy.[3] Williams's Nitocris has been called the first of a long series of Cleopatra figures appearing in his works, the result of his early reading of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra; these figures go on to include Blanche DuBois.[9]
References
- ^ a b c Thomas Lanier Williams, "The Vengeance of Nitocris" (Weird Tales, August 1928)
- ^ a b c Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Da Capo Press, 1997: ISBN 0-306-80805-6, ISBN 978-0-306-80805-0), p. 24
- ^ a b c d e Francesca M. Hitchcock, "Tennessee Williams's Vengeance of Nitocris: The Keynote to Future Works" (The Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 48, 1995)
- ^ Herodotus, History: Book 2
- ^ Replica issue from the Vintage Library. Accessed Feb. 13, 2009.
- ^ a b Matthew Charles Roudané, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams (Cambridge: ISBN 0-521-49883-X, ISBN 978-0-521-49883-8), p. 2
- ^ a b Jacqueline O'Connor, Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams (Popular Press, 1997: ISBN 0-87972-742-X, ISBN 978-0-87972-742-0), p. 2
- ^ i.e., her pharaoh brother
- ^ Philip C. Kolin, "Cleopatra of the Nile and Blanche DuBois of the French Quarter: Antony and Cleopatra and A Streetcar Named Desire," Shakespeare Bulletin, 10 (1993), 25; Brown, p. 269.
- v
- t
- e
- Candles to the Sun (1936)
- Spring Storm (1937)
- Fugitive Kind (1937)
- Not About Nightingales (1938)
- Battle of Angels (1940)
- Auto-da-Fé (1941)
- The Glass Menagerie (1944)
- You Touched Me! (1945)
- Stairs to the Roof (1947)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
- Summer and Smoke (1948)
- The Rose Tattoo (1951)
- Camino Real (1953)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
- Orpheus Descending (1957)
- Suddenly Last Summer (1958)
- Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
- Period of Adjustment (1960)
- The Night of the Iguana (1961)
- The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
- The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968)
- In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)
- Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969)
- Out Cry (1971)
- Small Craft Warnings (1972)
- The Two-Character Play (1973)
- The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975)
- This Is (An Entertainment) (1976)
- Vieux Carré (1977)
- A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)
- Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)
- The Notebook of Trigorin (1981)
- Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981)
- A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)
- In Masks Outrageous and Austere (1983)
- The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950)
- Moise and the World of Reason (1975)
collections
- Hard Candy: A Book of Stories (1954)
- Three Players of a Summer Game and Other Stories (1960)
- The Knightly Quest: a Novella and Four Short Stories (1966)
- One Arm and Other Stories (1967)
- Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed: a Book of Stories (1974)
- The Glass Menagerie (1950)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- The Rose Tattoo (1955)
- Baby Doll (1956)
- Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
- The Fugitive Kind (1959)
- Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966)
- Boom! (1968)
- The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (1957, filmed 2008)
- "The Catastrophe of Success" (1947)
- "A Streetcar Named Success" (1947)
- In the Winter of Cities (1956)
- Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977)
- The Glass Menagerie (1950)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- The Rose Tattoo (1955)
- Baby Doll (1956)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
- Suddenly Last Summer (1959)
- The Fugitive Kind (1960)
- Summer and Smoke (1961)
- The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961)
- Period of Adjustment (1962)
- Sweet Bird of Yourth (1962)
- The Night of the Iguana (1964)
- This Property Is Condemned (1966)
- Boom! (1968)
- Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)
- The Glass Menagerie (1987)
- The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008)
- Three by Tennessee (1958)
- The Glass Menagerie (1966)
- Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966)
- The Glass Menagerie (1973)
- The Migrants (1974)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1984)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1984)
- Sweet Bird of Youth (1989)
- Orpheus Descending (1990)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1995)
- The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003)