SOURCE: Williams, Philip Middleton. “Talley's Folly: The ‘Virtually Perfect’ Play,” and “A Tale Told and Talley & Son: The Last of the Talleys?” In A Comfortable House: Lanford Wilson, Marshall W. Mason and the Circle Repertory Theatre, pp. 73-103. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1993.

In the following essay, Williams explores the origin and development of the second and third Talley plays: Talley's Folly and A Tale Told (revised as Talley & Son.)

In a sense, Marshall W. Mason was responsible for Talley's Folly. It was his rehearsal technique of improvisation and character exploration that led Lanford Wilson to create the tale of the wooing of young Sally Talley by her suitor, Matt Friedman.

When the work [5th of July] was in rehearsal, in order to help Helen Stenborg play her role as the widowed Sally Talley Friedman, he made up a biography for her deceased husband, Matt, “a history for...