Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and again in the 1974 version. The ways in which humans deal with death are also at the focus of this play, as are the futility and nihilism some encounter when confronted with imminent mortality. Similar ideas are found in Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", which Williams excerpted and added as an epigraph to his 1974 version. These lines are appropriate, as Thomas wrote the poem to his own dying father. Additionally, in one of his many drafts, in a footnote on Big Daddy's action in the third act, Williams deems "Cat on a Hot
Dylan Thomas Paul Ferris describes as "unusually blunt"; the ribald "Lament" and an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father "Do not go gentle into that good night". Despite a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures including the likes of T. S. Eliot. Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if Thomas had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work