I had no idea that Mar­lon Bran­do was much of a writer, but this 1955 let­ter to Ten­nessee Williams is superb. Per­haps I just can’t help iden­ti­fy­ing him with Stan­ley Kowal­s­ki of the “Napoleon­ic code,” Stel­la!” and “Hoity-toity, describ­in’ me like a ape.” Espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing is his atti­tude towards suc­cess. (Note some of the lan­guage is a lit­tle strong/racy):

I have been afraid for you some­times, because suc­cess sings a dead­ly lul­la­by to most peo­ple. Suc­cess is a real and sub­tle whore, who would like noth­ing bet­ter than to catch you sleep­ing and bite your cock off. You have been as brave as any­body I’ve known, and it is com­fort­ing to think about it. You prob­a­bly don’t think of your­self as brave because nobody who real­ly has courage does, but I know you are and I get food from that.

This pas­sage echoes Williams’ own views on suc­cess, espe­cial­ly his beau­ti­ful (and iron­i­cal­ly inspir­ing) essay On a Street­car Named Suc­cess, writ­ten eight years ear­li­er:

It is nev­er alto­geth­er too late, unless you embrace the Bitch God­dess, as William James called her, with both arms and find in her smoth­er­ing caress­es exact­ly what the home­sick lit­tle boy in you always want­ed, absolute pro­tec­tion and utter effort­less­ness. Secu­ri­ty is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of roy­al­ty checks beside a kid­ney-shaped pool in Bev­er­ly Hills or any­where at all that is removed from the con­di­tions that made you an artist, if that’s what you are or were intend­ed to be. Ask any­one who has expe­ri­enced the kind of suc­cess I am talk­ing about–What good is it? Per­haps to get an hon­est answer you will have to give him a shot of truth-serum but the word he will final­ly groan is unprint­able in gen­teel pub­li­ca­tions.

You’ll find the rest of Bran­do’s let­ter (includ­ing an image of the orig­i­nal) — which includes reflec­tions on actors Anna Mag­nani and Burt Lan­cast­er — here.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

Thanks to PBS, you can watch online Ian McK­ellen star­ring in King Lear, one of Shake­se­peare’s finest tragedies. McK­ellen per­formed the play first in Eng­land (2007), then on a world­wide tour, before film­ing the pro­duc­tion for pub­lic tele­vi­sion. You can watch it all right here, and if you want to fol­low the orig­i­nal text, you can get it from MIT’s Shake­speare web site, which hous­es Shake­speare’s com­plete works online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like?

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

Shake­speare and the Uses of Polit­i­cal Pow­er

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