Amanda nostalgically recalls her youth as a Southern belle, when she was courted by numerous gentlemen callers. Her obsessive memory of this romantic past contrasts painfully with her present circumstances.
Scene 2 of the play. Amanda has just returned from the DAR meeting where she discovered that Laura has not been attending Rubicam's Business College — Laura dropped out weeks ago and has been spending her days walking in the park and visiting the zoo's tropical flower house. Amanda's plans for her daughter's economic salvation have collapsed. After the confrontation, Amanda's focus shifts: if Laura cannot have a career, she must have a husband, and Amanda begins, almost involuntarily, to fall into reminiscence about her own girlhood in Blue Mountain, Mississippi — the seventeen gentleman callers, the planters' sons, the spring she carried so many jonquils she had to be given more vases. Laura sits with her, listening, as she has heard this story many times before.
Amanda is not delusional; she is selectively curating. What she wants from Laura in this moment is for Laura to inherit, by transmission, the social momentum Amanda once possessed — to believe that gentleman callers are a real category of being that will arrive at the door if one prepares properly. Underneath the reminiscence is terror: Amanda has just discovered that her daughter has been lying to her for weeks, that the family's economic plan has evaporated, and that she does not know what to do. The jonquils speech is partly self-soothing, partly instruction, partly a sales pitch for a version of femininity that Amanda half-knows no longer exists in 1937 St Louis. The actor's job is to play the genuine pleasure of the memory and the genuine fear underneath simultaneously. Amanda is not a monster; she is a woman improvising survival.
The trap is southern-belle pastiche. Amanda is not a cartoon; she is a specific woman from a specific Delta town who has been displaced and is using her own past as currency. Make the jonquils literal — see the colour, smell them, count the vases. The speech works on accumulation: jonquils, jonquils, more jonquils, until the room is full of them. Find the rhythm of someone narrating a small triumph she has narrated many times; the phrasing is grooved. Mark the moment she remembers her father saying "where on earth are we going to put all these jonquils?" — that is a real voice from the dead, and it should briefly stop her. Tempo should be lyrical but interruptible; Laura's silence is part of the scene. Do not weep. Amanda does not know yet that she is sad. The accent should be placed — Mississippi, not generalised southern — and consistent with whatever you established earlier in the play. Williams's stage directions about lighting and music are suggestions; the actor's job is to make the speech float without the score doing the work.
One of the great American audition pieces for women aged roughly forty to sixty, and extremely well-known in audition rooms. Useful for regional theatre seasons announcing Williams, American classical companies, MFA programmes, and any audition assessing language, period, and emotional layering. Demonstrates accent specificity, lyrical text handling, and the ability to play subtext (fear, sales) under text (nostalgia). Very over-used; expect the panel to have heard it that morning. Bring it only if you have a specific take that is not "faded southern belle." Strong if you can find the humour — Amanda is funny, and most actors play her too tragically. Less useful for screen comedy, contemporary naturalism, or musical theatre rooms. A good companion piece is Amanda's telephone speech selling magazine subscriptions, which is fresher and shows a different gear.
One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain—your mother received—seventeen!—gentleman callers! Why, sometimes there weren't chairs enough to accommodate them all. We had to send the colored man over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house. That was the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute obsession. Mother said, "Honey, there's no more room for jonquils." And still I kept bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I'd say, "Stop! Stop! I see jonquils!" I made the young men help me gather the jonquils! It was a joke, Amanda and her jonquils! Finally there were no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils. No vases to hold them? All right, I'll hold them myself! And then I—met your father! Malaria fever and jonquils and then—this—boy...
I hope they don't arrive at once. I'll be in a state if they come all at once! I'll need somebody to help me open the door. We'll have to have seating arrangements! We'll put the sofa in the living-room and move the armchairs into the dining-room! No, the dining-room isn't big enough! We'll have to use the back porch!