The article is devoted to the study of silence in the plays of T. Williams “Orpheus Descending”, and also includes plays containing elements of the Orphic plot.
A comparison is made between the semantics of silence in early 20th century playwrights and that of T. Williams in order to determine possible influence. Several purposes of using silence in the play were identified, in connection with which the subject under study was divided into absolute silence and silence filled with music. It is determined that the first type of silence is associated with death and comes from characters who personify Hades and the inhabitants of the kingdom of the dead, while the second type is associated with inner freedom, kinship of souls, the search for answers to questions about the structure of life and comes from characters who are metaphorical Orpheus and Eurydice. The image of a bird is studied as a symbolic image accompanying silence filled with music. The author reaches the following conclusions: the ability to sing as one of the distinctive functions of birds distinguishes the protagonists from other characters and gives them some inner strength that allows them to fight life's difficulties, while the loss of the ability to sing or the refusal of this ability leads to spiritual and physical death.
For citation: Kosheva A.A. The semantics of silence in the orphic plays of T. Williams, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2025, iss. 3, pp. 37—46.