Q 01/05

What was Tennessee Williams's real first name?

A) Timothy

B) Theodore

C) Thomas

D) Terrence

Answer · why

C) Thomas

Thomas Lanier Williams III was Tom to his family, and he gave that name to the narrator of The Glass Menagerie, the restless son who stands in for Wil...

Q 02/05

Despite his pen name, the playwright Tennessee Williams was born in which state?

A) Mississippi

B) Missouri

C) Louisiana

D) Alabama

Answer · why

A) Mississippi

Mississippi is where he was born and spent his first years, in his grandparents' home; Tennessee was his father's side of the family, and the state wh...

Q 03/05

What was the job of Tennessee Williams's father during the playwright's early childhood?

A) Small-town cotton broker

B) Traveling shoe salesman

C) Riverboat pilot

D) Railroad station agent

Answer · why

B) Traveling shoe salesman

Traveling shoe salesman Cornelius Williams was so rarely home, and drank so heavily, that his wife and children spent the playwright's first years liv...

Q 04/05

Which childhood illness nearly killed Tennessee Williams and kept him housebound through a long recovery?

A) Diphtheria

B) Scarlet fever

C) Tuberculosis

D) Polio

Answer · why

A) Diphtheria

Diphtheria left the once-sturdy boy frail and kept him indoors, where his mother and grandparents read to him by the hour; he came out of it bookish a...

Q 05/05

When Tennessee Williams was a boy, his family left the South for which city?

A) Detroit

B) St. Louis

C) Cincinnati

D) Kansas City

Answer · why

B) St. Louis

St. Louis ended a small-town childhood he remembered as happy; he hated the city, turned inward and began to write there, and later set The Glass Mena...