MEG - 17

American Drama
Indira Gandhi National Open University
School of Humanities

Block

5
ABSURD DRAMA
UNIT 17
The Idea of the Absurd Drama 231
UNIT 18
Absurd Drama: Technique 244
UNIT 19
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf: Contextualizing The Text 256
UNIT 20
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf as an Absurd Drama 273
BLOCK 5: ABSURD DRAMA
This block deals with the following issues related to American drama:
●● the beginnings of drama as a genre (From Greek Drama to the
Twentieth Century Drama)
●● the idea of the Absurd Theatre in historical context
●● the origins of Absurd Theatre
●● the elements of Absurd Theatre and its connection with existentialism
●● the famous works in the Theatre of the Absurd
●● the importance of the absurd plays in contemporary times

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The material (pictures and passages) we have used is purely for educational
purposes. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of
material reproduced in this book. Should any infringement have occurred,
the publishers and editors apologize and will be pleased to make the
necessary corrections in future editions of this book.
UNIT 17: THE IDEA OF THE ABSURD
DRAMA
Structure
17.0 Objectives
17.1 Introduction
17.1.1 Beginnings of Drama
17.1.2 Growth of Western Drama
17.1.2.1 Greek Tragedies
17.1.2.2 The Holy Trinity: Aeschylus, Euripides And Sophocles
17.1.2.3 Decline of Greek Drama
17.1.2.4 Roman Drama
17.1.2.5 Decline of Roman Drama And The Rise of The Church
17.1.2.6 From Reformation to the Twentieth Century Drama
17.1.3 Precursors of Absurd Drama
17.2 Theatre of The Absurd
17.2.1 From Existentialism to Absurdism
17.2.2 Few Examples of Absurd Plays
17.2.3 Legacy
17.3 Conclusion
17.4 Check Your Progress: Possible Questions
17.5 Bibliography
17.5.1 Primary Sources
17.5.2 Secondary Sources

17.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you will be able to
●● Understand the beginnings of drama as a genre (From Greek Drama
to the Twentieth Century Drama)
●● Locate the idea of the Absurd Theatre in historical context
●● Know about the origins of Absurd Theatre
●● Comprehend the elements of Absurd Theatre and its connection with
existentialism
●● Know about the famous works in the Theatre of the Absurd
●● Scrutinise the importance of the absurd plays in contemporary times

17.1 INTRODUCTION
17.1.1 Beginnings of Drama
To get an idea of the “Absurd drama” first let us know what ‘drama’ is and
also the history of drama in various periods. Drama is an art form that tells
a story through the speech and actions of the characters in the story. Most
drama is performed by actors who impersonate the characters before an
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Absurd Drama audience in a theatre or before television cameras for an audience in their
homes.
Although drama is a form of literature, it differs from other literary forms
in the way it is presented. For instance, a novel also tells a story involving
characters. But a novel narrates a story through a combination of dialogues
and is complete on the printed page. Most drama achieves its greatest effect
when it is performed. Some critics believe that a written script is not really
a play until it has been acted before an audience.
Drama probably gets most of its effectiveness from its ability to give order
and clarity to human experience. The basic elements of drama: feelings,
desires, conflicts, and reconciliations are the major ingredients of human
experience. In real life, these emotional experiences often seem to be a
jumble of unrelated impressions. In drama, however, the playwright can
organize these experiences into understandable patterns. The audience
watches the material of real life with the presented one in a meaningful form
i.e. with the unimportant omitted and the significant emphasized.
Drama is a universal art. Nearly every civilization has had some form of it.
Drama is also an ancient art. Staged performances using actors took place as
long ago as 500 B.C. and probably occurred even earlier. But scholars have
insufficient evidence to state definitely when drama first began. Nor do they
know for certain what led to the creation of dramas. However, they propose
a number of theories. One theory suggests that drama may have originated
from ancient religious ceremonies that were performed to win favour from
gods. In these ceremonies, priests often impersonated supernatural beings
or animals and sometimes imitated such actions as hunting. Stories grew up
around some rites and lasted after the rites themselves had died out. These
myths may have formed the basis of drama.
Another theory suggests that drama originated in choral hymns of praises
sung at the tomb of a dead hero. At some point, a speaker separated from the
chorus and began to act out deeds in the hero’s life. This acted part gradually
became more elaborate and the role of the chorus diminished. Eventually,
the stories were performed as plays, their origins forgotten.
According to a third theory, drama grew out of a natural love of storytelling.
Stories told around campfires re-created victories in the hunt or in battle or
the feats of dead heroes. These stories developed into dramatic retellings of
the events.
17.1.2 Growth of Western Drama
17.1.2.1 Greek Tragedies
Now let us see the growth of western drama. It was born in ancient
Greece. By the 600 B.C. the Greeks were giving choral performances of
dancing and singing at festivals honouring Dionysus, their god of wine and
fertility. Later, they held drama contests to honour Dionysus. The earliest
record of Greek drama dates from 534 B.C. when a contest for tragedy
was established in Athens. The most important period in ancient Greek
drama was from 400 B.C onwards. Tragedies were performed as part of an
important, yearly religious and civic celebration called the City Dionysia.
This festival, which lasted several days offered hotly contested prizes for
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the best tragedy, comedy, acting, and choral singing. Greek tragedy, perhaps The Idea of the Absurd
because it originally was associated with religious celebrations was solemn, Drama
poetic, and philosophic. Nearly all the surviving tragedies were based on
myths. Typically, the main character was an admirable, but not perfect
person confronted with a difficult moral choice. This character’s struggle
against hostile forces ended in defeat and in most Greek tragedies, his or her
death. These tragedies consisted of a series of dramatic episodes separated
by choral odes. The episodes were performed by a few actors, never more
than three on stage at one time during the 400 B.C. The actors wore masks
to indicate the nature of the characters they played. The poetic language and
the idealized characters suggest that Greek acting was dignified and formal.
17.1.2.2 The Holy Trinity: Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles
Of the hundreds of Greek tragedies written, fewer than 35 survive. All but
one was written by three dramatists: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Aeschylus, the earliest of the three, won 13 contests for tragedy. His plays
are noted for their lofty tone and majestic language. He was the master
of trilogy, a dramatic form consisting of three tragedies that focuses on
different phases of the same story. His Oresteia, the only surviving Greek
trilogy, tells how Clytemnestra killed her husband, Agamemnon, and was
then killed by their son Orestes. This trilogy traces the development of the
idea of justice from primitive vengeance to an enlightened and impersonal
justice administered by the state. This development is portrayed in a
powerful story of murder, revenge, remorse, and divine mercy. The chorus
is important in Aeschylus’ plays.
Sophocles is the playwright whose work served as the primary model
for Aristotle’s writing on tragedy. His plays have much of Aeschylus’
philosophic concern but his characters are more fully drawn and his plots
are better constructed. He was also more skilful in building climaxes and
developing episodes. Aeschylus used only two characters on stage at a
time until Sophocles introduced a third actor. This technique increased
the dramatic complexity of Greek drama. Sophocles also reduced the
importance of chorus. His most famous play Oedipus Rex is a masterpiece
of suspenseful storytelling and perhaps the greatest Greek tragedy.
Euripides was not widely appreciated in his own day, but later, his plays
became extremely popular. He is often praised for his realism. His treatment
of traditional gods and myths shows considerable doubt about religion and
he questioned the moral standards of his time. He also showed his interest
in psychology in his many understanding portraits of women. His Medea
describes how a mother kills her children to gain revenge against their father.
The satyr play, a short comic parody of a Greek myth, served as a kind of
humorous afterpiece to the tragedies of a contestant at the City Dionysia. It
may be even older than tragedy. The satyr play used a chorus performing as
satyrs (mythical creatures that were half human and half animal). The actors
and chorus in the tragedies also appeared in the satyr play. Only one satyr
play still exists i.e. Euripides’ Cyclops. It is a parody of Odysseus’ encounter
with the monster Cyclops. The satyr play was a regular part of the Athenian
theatre during the 4th century B.C. But this form of play disappeared when
Greek drama declined after the 2nd century B.C.
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Absurd Drama 17.1.2.3 Decline of Greek Drama
The Greeks did not mix tragedy and comedy in the same play. Greek Old
Comedy, as the comic plays of the 4th century are called, was outspoken
and bawdy. The word comedy comes from the Greek word komoidia which
means merrymaking. The only surviving examples of Old Comedy are by
Aristophanes. He combined social and political satire with fantasy, robust
farce, obscenity, personal abuse, and beautiful lyric poetry. Aristophanes
was a conservative who objected to the social, moral, and political changes
occurring in the Athenian society. In each of his plays, he ridiculed and
criticized some aspect of the communal life of his day.
Tragedy declined after 400 B.C. but comedy remained vigorous. Comedy
changed so drastically however that most comedies written after 338 B.C.
are called New Comedy. Despite their popularity, only numerous fragments
and a single play by the name of The Grouch has survived. The play was
written by Menander, a popular playwright. Most New Comedy dealt with
the domestic affairs of middle-class Athenians. Private intrigues replaced
the political and social satire and fantasy of Old Comedy. In New Comedy,
most plots depended on concealed identities, coincidences, and recognitions.
The chorus provided little more than interludes between episodes.
17.1.2.4 Roman Drama
Post 200 B.C. Greek drama declined and leadership in the art began to pass
to Rome. Today, Greek drama is much more highly regarded than Roman
drama, which for the most part imitated Greek models. Roman drama is
important chiefly because it influenced later playwrights, particularly during
the Renaissance. William Shakespeare and the other dramatists of his day
knew Greek drama almost entirely through Latin imitations of it.
In Rome, tragedy was not as popular as comedy, short farces, pantomime,
and non-dramatic spectacles like battle between gladiators. Roman
theatres were adaptations of Greek theatres. The government supported
theatrical performances as part of the many Roman religious festivals and
wealthy citizens also financed some performances. Admission to theatrical
performances was freehand and thus, the audiences were unruly in the
holiday atmosphere.
It was Livius Andronicus who introduced tragedy in Rome in 240 B.C.
But the dramatic works of Roman tragedian, Lucius Annaeus Seneca still
exist. Though Seneca’s plays were not performed in his lifetime, they were
extremely influential during the Renaissance. Later, Western dramatists
borrowed a number of techniques from Seneca. These techniques included
the five-act form, the use of flowery language, the theme of revenge, the
use of magic rites and ghosts, and the device of the confidant, a trusted
companion in whom the leading character confides.
Plautus and Terence were the forerunners of Roman comedies. Their
plays were just the adaptations of Greek New Comedy. Both these writers
eliminated the chorus from their plays but they added many songs and much
musical accompaniment. Plautus’ humour was robust and his plays were
filled with farcical comic action. Terence’s comedies were more sentimental
and more sophisticated and his humour more thoughtful. His six plays had
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a strong influence on later comic playwrights, especially Moliere in France The Idea of the Absurd
in the 1700’s. Drama

17.1.2.5 Decline of Roman Drama and the Rise of the Church

The Roman theatre gradually declined after the empire replaced the republic
in 27 B.C. After 400 A.D. actors were excommunicated. The rising power
of the church combined with invasions by barbaric tribes brought an end
to the Roman theatre. The last known performances in ancient Rome took
place in A.D.533. Medieval drama flourished from the 900’s to the 1500’s.
The brief playlets were acted by priests as part of the liturgy of the church.
The Resurrection was the first event to receive dramatic treatment. A large
body of plays also grew up around the Christmas story and a smaller number
around other Biblical events. In the church, the plays were performed in
Latin by priests and choirboys.
These plays written in verse taught the Christian doctrine by presenting
Biblical characters as if they lived in the medieval times. Many mystery
plays were rich with comedy. Miracle plays and morality plays were also
popular during the Middle Ages. Miracle plays dramatized the events
from the lives of saints or the Virgin Mary. The action in most of these
plays reached a climax in a miracle performed by the saint. Morality plays
used allegorical characters to teach moral lessons. Purely secular drama
achieved its greatest development in two short forms of drama: the farce
and the interludes. Farces were almost entirely comic and many were based
on folktales. Interludes were originally entertaining skits, probably acted
between courses, during banquets or at other events. The interlude was
especially associated with the coming of professional actors who became
regular parts of many noble household.
17.1.2.6 From Reformation to the Twentieth Century Drama
The Reformation directly affected the history of drama by promoting the
use of national languages other than Latin. The use of these languages led
to the development of national drama. The first such drama to reach a high
level of excellence appeared in England between the years 580 and 1642.
Elizabethan drama was written mainly during the last half of the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I, from about 1580 to 1603. Jacobean drama was written
during the reign of King James I (1603-1625). William Shakespeare, the
greatest dramatist of the age, bridged the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods,
but he is generally considered as an Elizabethan playwright. Caroline drama
was written in the reign of King Charles I (1625-1649).
Elizabethan plays developed from the interludes performed by wandering
actors and the classically inspired plays of schools and universities. These
two traditions merged in the 1580’s when a new group of playwrights, many
of them university educated, began writing for professional actors of the
public theatre. Thomas Kyd brought classical influence to popular drama.
He wrote the most popular play of the1500’s, The Spanish Tragedy (1580’s).
It moved freely in place and time as did medieval drama. It showed the
influence of Seneca in its use of a ghost, the revenge theme, the chorus, the
lofty poetic style, and the division of the play into five acts. Kyd wrote this
play in blank verse and established this poetic form as the style for English
tragedy.
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Absurd Drama Christopher Marlowe perfected blank verse in the English tragedy. He wrote
a series of tragedies that centred on a strong protagonist. His work was
filled with sensationalism and cruelty but it included splendid poetry and
scenes of sweeping passion. John Lyly wrote many pastoral comedies. He
mixed classical mythology with English subjects and wrote in a refined and
artificial style. Robert Greene also wrote pastoral and romantic comedies.
His Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589?) and James IV (1591?) combined
love stories and rural adventures with historical incidents. By 1590, several
dramatists had bridged the gap between the learned and popular audiences.
Their blending of classical and medieval devices with absorbing stories
established the foundation upon which Shakespeare built.
William Shakespeare, like other writers of his time, borrowed from fiction,
histories, myths, and earlier plays. But he developed the dramatic techniques
of earlier writers. His dramatic poetry is unequalled and he had a genius
for probing character, producing emotion, and relating human experience
to broad philosophical issues. Another major playwright of this period
was Ben Jonson. He popularised the comedy of humours. He also wrote
two tragedies on classical subjects and many elaborate spectacles called
masques. Besides Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, several other playwrights
also bridged the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Those were: George
Chapman, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and John Marston.
About 1610, English drama began to change significantly. The tragicomedy,
a serious play with a happy ending, increased in popularity. The obsession
of Jacobean and Caroline tragedy with violence, dishonesty, and horror has
appalled many critics. But these plays have also been greatly admired for
their magnificent poetry, their dramatic power, and their unflinching view
of human nature and the human condition. Important Jacobean playwrights
included Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, Cyril
Tourneur, and John Webster. Philip Massinger and John Ford were some
of the Caroline playwrights. After Charles I was deposed in the 1640’s and
the Puritans gained control of the Parliament, theatrical performances were
prohibited. The Puritan government closed the theatres in 1642, ending the
richest and most varied era of English drama.
In 1660’s, the Restoration ended the Puritan government. Charles II ascended
the throne. Once again, theatre became legal in England. The Restoration
period is known for comedy of manners and the heroic drama. The former
was identified with the Restoration and it satirized the upper-class society.
The comedy of manners originated largely in the plays of George Etherege
and was perfected in the plays of William Congreve. His play The Way of
the World is often called the finest example of the form. In the works of
William Wycherley, the tone was coarser and the humour more robust.
The heroic play flourished from about 1660 to 1680. It was written in
rhymed couplets and dealt with the conflict between love and honour.
A more vital strain of tragedy developed alongside heroic drama. These
tragedies were written in blank verse imitating Shakespeare. John Dryden’s
All for Love (1677) reshaped the story of Antony and Cleopatra. In 1700’s
the sentimental comedy showed its way and found its full expression in
The Conscious Lovers by Richard Steele. Besides this, two writers started
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writing plays which avoided sentimentality; Oliver Goldsmith and Richard The Idea of the Absurd
Brinsley Sheridan. Drama

Before World War II, there emerged various forms of drama. One among
them was the realistic drama. Henrik Ibsen, Norway’s dramatist, who
is often called “the founder of modern drama”, portrayed realism in his
characters and environment (World Book p. 298). His plays A Doll’s House
(1879) and Ghosts (1882) were explosive attacks against the conventional
morality of his time. George Bernard Shaw supported Ibsen greatly and was
responsible for the spread of his social and artistic ideals in England and he
wrote comedy of ideas in which he used the theatre as a forum for social,
political, and moral criticism.
Symbolism in drama developed in France during the 1880’s. The symbolists
believed that appearance is only a minor aspect of reality. They believed that
reality could be found in mysterious, unknowable forces that control human
destiny. They argued that truth could not be portrayed by logical thought
but could only be suggested by symbols. The most celebrated symbolist
dramatist was Maurice Maeterlinck.
Drama of expressionism was another type of drama that became popular in
Germany between 1910 and 1925. Most German expressionists believed
that the human spirit was the basic shaper of reality. Surface appearance
was important as it reflected an inner vision. To portray this view, the
dramatists of this model used distorted sets, lighting, and costumes, short
jerky speeches, and machine-like movements. The dramatic techniques of
expressionism owed much to the Swedish playwright August Strindberg.
His important plays are A Dream Play (1901) and The Ghost Sonata (1908).
The discontent of the post-World War I appeared in the drama of 1920’s
and 1930’s. The most fruitful attempt to focus the attention on political,
economic, and social realities was epic theatre, developed by the German
dramatist Bertolt Brecht. He exhibited his talent in the famous plays, Mother
Courage and Her Children (1941) and Life of Galileo (1943).
17.1.3 Precursors of ‘Absurd drama’
The mode of ‘absurdist’ plays is tragicomedy. As Nell utters in Endgame:
“nothing is funnier than unhappiness...it is the most comical in the world
(p.14). Esslin cites Shakespeare as an influence on the aspect on the ‘absurd
drama’. Shakespeare’s influence is acknowledged directly in titles of
Ionesco’s Macbeth and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Friedrich Durrenmatt remarks in his essay “Problems of the Theatre” that
we can achieve the tragic out of comedy. He also adds that Shakespeare’s
comedies are already comedies out of which the tragic arises. Esslin cites
film comedians and music hall artists like Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone
Cops, and Buster Keatonas as direct influences (p.20).
As an experimental form of theatre, many ‘absurd playwrights’ employ
techniques borrowed from earlier innovators. Writers of techniques
frequently mentioned in ‘Theatre of Absurd’ include nineteenth century
poets like Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, the Polish playwright Stanislaw
Ignacy Wilkiewicz, the Russian writer Nikolai Erdman, Bertolt Brecht with
distancing techniques in his ‘Epic theatre’, and August Strindberg through
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Absurd Drama his ‘dream plays’. Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author
makes use of ‘meta theatre’, role playing, plays within plays, and a flexible
sense of the limits of stage and illusion. Another influential playwright was
Guillaume Apollinaire whose The Breasts of Tiresias was the first work to
be called ‘Surreal’.
Likewise, the concept of ‘Pataphysics’ - “science of imaginary solutions”
was also one of the significant precursors of ‘Absurd theatre’. Jarry’s Gester
“Et opinions du docteur Faustroll” (Exploits and Opinion of Dr. Faustroll,
pataphysician) was inspirational to many later absurd playwrights, some
of whom joined the College de ‘Pataphysique which was founded in
honour of Jarry in 1948. Eugene Ionesco, Alfred Arrabal, and Vian were
given the title Transcendent Sartrape of the college de ‘pataphysique’.
The Alfred Jarry Theatre, founded by Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac
housed several ‘absurd plays’ including the ones by Ionesco and Adamov.
Artaud was a ‘surrealist ‘and many other members of the ‘surrealist group’
were significant influences on the ‘absurd playwrights’. Absurdism is also
frequently compared to surrealism’s predecessor, Dadaism. Many of the
‘absurdists’ had direct connections with the ‘Dadaists’ and ‘Surrealists’.
Ionesco, Adamov and Arrabal were friends with Surrealists and Beckett
translated many ‘Surrealist’ poems by Breton and others from French into
English.

17.2 THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

Many countries were dramatically changed during World War II (1939-
1945) and the years that followed. These changes affected drama greatly.
Experimental and alternative theatre developed new structures for drama,
challenging traditions in dramatic form and in social values. ‘Theatre of
the absurd’, which emerged in France during the 1950’s, was probably the
most influential new movement in drama after the end of World War II. It
rejected the traditional notions of plot, character, dialogue, and logic. The
‘absurdists’ hoped to express the disorientation of living in a universe they
saw as unfriendly, irrational, and meaningless, and therefore absurd.
17.2.1 From Existentialism to Absurdism
The most important influence on ‘absurd drama’ was the theory of
‘existentialism’. To know about it one needs to have an idea of the philosophy
given by Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. The critic Martin Esslin coined
the term ‘absurd’ in his 1960 essay “Theatre of the Absurd”. He related
these plays based on a broad theme of the absurd, similar to the way Albert
Camus uses the term in the 1942 essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus” (p.301).
Let us apprehend what Camus states about the ‘absurd’. In his seminal
contribution to the world of’ philosophy of the absurd’, he asks the most
difficult question: why man, sensing the absurdity of his existence, unable
to come to terms with the universe, does not commit suicide? He himself
answers the question with a moving acceptance of the human condition
on its proper terms of revolt, liberty, and passion. He believes that man
selects reason to seek clarity for the incongruities in life which fail him
miserably and the outer universe remains to be mute, unintelligible, and
mysterious. Therefore, he finds absurdity in three opposites: 1) between an
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individual’s desire for a unified self and the inexpugnably dual nature, 2) The Idea of the Absurd
between his passion for understanding and the unreasonable silence of the Drama
world and 3) between man’s aspiration for eternity and his subordination to
temporality. He adds that the sole obstacle, the sole deficiency to be made
good is constituted by premature death. Thus it has no depth, no emotion,
no passion, and no sacrifice and could render equal in the eyes of the absurd
man a conscious life of forty years and lucidity spread over sixty years.
Madness and death are his irreparables. Man does not choose. The absurd
and the extra life it involves therefore do not depend on man’s will, but on
its contrary, which is death. Hence it is altogether a question of luck.
Before analysing the absurd plays it is essential to have an idea of Jean
Paul Sartre’s idea of ‘existentialism’. According to him existence precedes
essence. It means that, first of all man exists, turns up, appears on the scene,
and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives
him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will
he be something and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there
is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. “Indeed, everything
is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result, man is forlorn, because
neither within him not without does he find anything to cling to”. (Jean Paul
Sartre, Translation by Bernard Frechtman- p.276).
The absurd plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently
without meaning and man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible
outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some
characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar
to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in
hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue
full of clichés, wordplay and nonsense, plots that are cyclical or absurdly
expansive, either parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the
“well-made play. Playwrights commonly associated with The “Theatre
of the Absurd” include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov,
Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Miguet
Mithura, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fernando Arrabal, Vaclav Havel, and
Edward Albee.
17.2.2 Few examples of Absurd Plays
Samuel Beckett portrays only a few characters in his plays. There are four
major characters in his play Waiting for Godot: Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo,
Lucky and Boy, who just appears twice in each act. Vladimir and Estragon
occupy the maximum length in the play while Pozzo and Lucky as outsiders
come to their world as outsiders and remain for some time. Both Vladimir
and Estragon are tied up to an appointment with some Godot of their
knowledge. Beckett makes reasonable attempt at presenting the dramatic
moments in their act of waiting and enabling the reader to accept the
portrayal of the two boys in their life as a process in continuation. Estragon
and Vladimir, in order to continue with the tedium of time, talk on different
subjects and remain absorbed in futile acts till it is night and the same thing
is repeated in the next act. Pozzo and Lucky enter into the dramatic world
as passersby and exchange views with them. The small Boy, who acts as a
messenger, prefers to deliver the message from his master Godot and talks
something about it to them. In the second act, the Boy reappears and enacts
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Absurd Drama the same thing. The drama ends with the assumption that their waiting will
continue till they meet Godot.
Another significant playwright belonging to the ‘absurd’ tradition is
Eugene Ionesco, a playwright of Rumanian origin. Ionesco and Beckett are
contemporary playwrights inhabiting the same country, France. If the play
Waiting for Godot deals with the theme of the impossibility of possession
of love and friendship, a mere illusion, Ionesco’s play The Chairs speaks
about the impossibility of communication. Ionesco seems to multiply
objects while Beckett seems to rarify them. Jacques Dubois compares them
both and adds that “man is crushed by the presence or absence of material
goods” (Urmila Devi’s p.75). There are two miserable characters in this
play: a husband and a wife. An old man, the husband has accumulated vast
knowledge and wants to impart a message before his final departure. He has
invited some important persons to hear his message. The guests are invisible.
They keep on arriving until finally the stage is filled with chairs. The orator
in the play has been entrusted with the task of speaking on his behalf. When
the invisible guests have arrived and all is ready, the old couple jump to
their death, confident that their mission of life has been fulfilled. The orator
mumbles inarticulately. He is deaf and dumb. The play is about our illusion
and the way we waste our lives. We long for self-justification. We can’t face
facts. We waste our time, look for meanings that are non-existent. The search
for meaning and desire for justification are characteristics of the drama of
the ‘absurd’. Here, Ionesco is successful in achieving the breaking-up of
conventional theatrical forms, a distinct and forceful contribution to the
philosophy of the’ absurd’. Nothing is more unbearable than the orator’s
impotence. Life according to the playwright “is imprisoned in man’s own
separate sound-proof cubicle” as remarked by E.Wellworth (p.59). The play
satirises “the emptiness of polite conversation” according to Esslin (p.148).
The plot repeats the message of hope in Waiting for Godot. The professional
orator represents the reality of life in the sense of being deaf and dumb. Unable
to speak, the orator attempts to express himself by writing on the blackboard.
But what he writes is merely a jumble of scribbling. The meaningless letter,
unable to convey any sense presents a good dramatization of the difficulty
of communication. Similarly, the multiplication of the chairs, all empty, is
a depiction of hollowness and emptiness of life and the human condition. It
also offers a neat picture of the incapability of human beings and the logic
they use.
Another significant French ‘absurd’ playwright is Arthur Adamov. The
general atmosphere prevailing in the works of Adamov is that of anxiety
and futility. Anxiety, the gift of the present age and the futility of human
existence recently being realised, became the themes of his writings. Like
all other comrades of ‘absurd theatre’ Adamov has a thoroughly passionate
outlook on life. The themes he has explored are mainly isolation, alienation,
and failure to face an opposition. Professor Taranne is one of the four
significant plays written in the tradition of the ‘absurd’. The play deals with
Professor Taranne, a distinguished scholar who has been invited to lecture
in Belgium. It is supposed that the notebook he has contains the points for
his lecture. But in reality, the notebook consists mostly of empty pages,
although the Professor insists that he had used it up entirely. A roll of paper
is delivered to him. It is the seating plan of the dining room of an ocean
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liner, with his place marked Taranne, at the table of honour. Jean, a woman The Idea of the Absurd
relative or secretary brings a letter that has arrived for the Professor. It is Drama
from Belgium, from the rector of the University. This will confirm Taranne’s
claims. But, in fact, it is an angry refusal to invite him again. His lectures
have been found to be plagiarisms of those of the famous Professor Menard.
The play Professor Taranne is significant since it expresses the hollowness,
the meaninglessness, and the blankness of the world. It verifies further the
belief that nothing is real and everything in this land is delusive. The professor
is pathetically left alone and his loneliness becomes so intolerable that he
begins to undress himself in an indecent way. This indecent undressing
and losing of balance are not merely absurd but intolerably pathetic too.
It is nothing but the nightmare of man trying to hold onto his identity and
unable to establish conclusive proof of it. This play confirms that activity
is futile and all claims lead to nothingness because death will blot out all
achievements.
Adamov is grouped with the writers of ‘absurd plays’ mainly because of
his technique of paradox. His plays do not present a protest theme but they
lean towards following the technique of paradox as is clear from the play
Professor Taranne. The hero of this play, “Professor Taranne is an active
scholar and a fraud, a responsible citizen, and an exhibitionist, an optimistic
hard-working paragon and a self-destructive slothful pessimistic person”
(Esslin, p.106).
Edward Albee, an American playwright had the capacity to combine the
two “intellectually incompatible” elements of the American cultural force
and the European Absurd tradition (Henry Knepler, p.275). The Americans
believe in the success stories of Horatio Algers which are the stories of the
American Dream. But the “absurd playwrights “ attempt to make man face
up to the human condition as it really is and free him from illusions that
are bound to cause him disappointments as Esslin states in The Theatre
of the Absurd “the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its
senselessness” (p.238). Albee uses the themes of all ‘absurd playwrights’ of
Europe to portray the human conditions of isolation, alienation, loneliness,
truth, and illusion with an exclusive American idiom.
The Europeans believe that man’s attempt to snatch dignity and stature
results in his becoming more absurd. But through his sacrificial death of
Jerry in the play The Zoo Story, Albee proclaimed to the world that dignity
could be attained. He informed to the world that if communication was
difficult and pointless as in “absurd drama” it was not from “the absurdity of
existence but rather from man’s failure to face the horror of his metaphysical
situation”. Further, he sees man’s impotence and absurdity resulting from
his own making and hence, “no external forces could be made scapegoat”
(Bigsby, p.xviii). Another difference is that he ends in hope and affirmation
which is unimaginable to the European absurdists. In Waiting for Godot
no one comes, nothing happens, and it is terrible. In Ionesco’s The Chairs
the old couple commit suicide leaving a “message” to be delivered by the
deaf and dumb speaker to the invisible listeners; bleak world with no hope
for modern man. But Albee ends his plays with a note of affirmation and
hope to fall in line with America’s cultural tradition. In his play Who is
afraid of Virginia Woolf after the utter disillusionment of her riotous and
debaucherous life, Martha pins her hope on her “Just...us” and in turn,
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Absurd Drama George puts his hand gently on her shoulder (Collected Plays of Albee
p.170). To cater to his optimistic American audience Albee ended his play
American Dream through the senior character Grandma “So, let’s leave
things as they are right now...while everybody’s happy...while everybody’s
got what he wants...Goodnight, dears” (Collected Plays of Albee p.148).
17.2.3 Legacy
Elements of “The Theatre of the Absurd” can be viewed in later playwrights,
from more avant-garde or experimental playwrights like Suzan Lori Parks
in The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World and The
American Play and realistic playwrights like David Mamet in Glengarry
Glen Ross, which Mamet dedicated to Harold Pinter. Irish playwright
Martin Mc Donagh in his play Pillowman addresses some of the themes
and uses some of the techniques of ‘absurdism’, especially reminiscent of
Beckett and Pinter.

17.3 CONCLUSION
What then has become of the wonderful new theatre, this movement that
produced some of the most exciting and original dramatic works of the
20th century? Conventional wisdom, perhaps, suggests that the “theatre of
the absurd” was a production of a very specific point in time and because
that time has passed, it has gone the way of the dinosaur. One can agree
with Martin Esslin and add that every artistic movement that has genuine
content contributes to an enlargement of human perception, creates new
movements of human expression, opens up new areas of experience and it
is “bound to be absorbed into the mainstream of development” (p.78). And
this is what happened with the Theatre of the Absurd, which apart from
having been in fashion, undoubtedly, was a genuine contribution to the
permanent vocabulary of dramatic expression. It was also absorbed into the
mainstream of the tradition from which it had never been entirely absent.
The playwrights of post-absurdist era have at their disposal, a uniquely
enriched vocabulary of dramatic technique.

17.4 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. What do you know about the writers and their techniques that inspired
the Absurd drama?
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
2. Write a note on the dramatists who carried on the themes and
techniques of Absurd Theatre.
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
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3. What is Absurd Theatre? Elucidate with some examples. The Idea of the Absurd
Drama
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………

17.5 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

17.5.1 Primary Sources
1. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Pr, 1958.
2. Beckett, Samuel. Endgame: A Play in One Act. Followed by Act
without Words. NewYork: Grove Pr., 1958. Print.
3. Edward Albee. The Collected Plays of Edward Albee. Vol. 1. 1958-65.
New York: The Overlook P, 2004.
17.5.2 Secondary Sources
1. Bigsby, C.W.E. Confrontation and Commitment_ A Critical
Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama. Vol. 2. London:
Cambridge UP, 1984.
2. Camus, Albert. Absurd Freedom. Translation. V.Spanos. New York:
Thomas Y Cromwell Companion P, 1834.
3. Culik, Dr.John. Ionesco. Theatre of the Absurd. Jerome P.Crabb.
Google.com, Sep 3, 2006.
4. Dubois, Alex. Beckett and Ionesco. Modern Drama. Vol. IX. 3 (Dec
1966): 285
5. E.Wellworth, George. The Theatre of Protest and Paradox. New
York: UP, 1961. p.59.
6. Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Doubleday,
1961.
7. Knepler, Henry. Edward Albee: Conflict of Tradition. Modern Drama
X. 3 (Dec 1967): 274.
8. Paolucci, Anne. Albee and Restructuring of the Modern Stage. Studies
in American Drama (1986): 14-15.
9. C.Roudane, Matthew. Understanding Edward Albee. Columbia:
University of South Carolina P, 1987.
10. Who is afraid?: Toward the marrow. Cambridge Companion to
Edward Albee. ed. Stephen Bottoms. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2005. p.39-57.
11. The World Book Encyclopaedia Vol. 5.
12. Cornwall, Neil. The Absurd in Literature Manchester: Manchester
UP, 2006.
13. Durrenmtt, Friedrich. Problems of the Theatre. The Problems of Mr.
Mississippi. New York: GroveP, 2006.
14. Devi, Urmila. Contemporary American Drama with special reference
to Edward Albee, Arthur Kopit, Jack Gelbert, and Jack Richardson.
812.5409 ASRC Library.
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 UNIT 18: ABSURD DRAMA: TECHNIQUE
Structure
18.0 Objectives
18.1 Introduction
18.1.1 Forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus and Sartre
18.1.2 Roots
18.2 Theatrical Features
18.2.1 Structure
18.2.2 Plot
18.2.3 Characters
18.2.4 Dialogue
18.3 Myth And Allegory
18.4 Decline
18.5 Check Your Progress: Possible Questions
18.6 Selected Bibliography
18.6.1 Primary Sources
18.6.2 Secondary Sources

18.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit you will be able to
●● Understand the beginnings of the Theatre of the Absurd through
Camus and Sartre
●● Comprehend the distinctive features of the Theatre of The Absurd
(Plot, Structure, Characters, Dialogue)
●● Know about the creation of myth and allegory in Absurd plays and
its decline

18.1 INTRODUCTION
Though no formal Absurdist movement existed as such, Samuel Beckett,
Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter, and a few
others, shared a pessimistic vision of humanity struggling vainly to find
a purpose and to control its fate. Humankind in this vision is left feeling
hopeless, bewildered, and anxious.
18.1.1 Forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus
and Sartre
Before analysing the Absurd Theatre, it is useful to be aware about Albert
Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, the forerunners of absurdity and existentialism.
Albert Camus’ (1913-60) work, Myth of Sisyphus is a seminal contribution
to the world of philosophy of the absurd. In this great work he insists on
death. According to Sartre, the sole obstacle, the sole deficiency to be made
good is constituted by premature death. Thus no depth, no emotion, no
passion and no sacrifice can render equal in the eyes of the absurd man a
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conscious life of 40 years and a lucidity spread over 60 years. Madness and Absurd Drama: Technique
death are spread over as irreparable conditions. Man does not choose. The
absurd and the extra life it involves, therefore, do not depend on man’s will
but on the contrary, death. It is altogether a question of luck. One just has to
be able to consent to this.
Further in his work, he also asks the most difficult of all questions: why
man, sensing the absurdity of his existence and unable to come to terms
with the universe, does not commit suicide? He also answers his questions
with a moving acceptance of the human condition in its proper terms of
revolt, liberty, and passion. He believes that man selects reason to seek
clarity for the incongruities in life which fail him miserably and the outer
universe remains mute, unintelligible, and mysterious. Therefore he finds
absurdity in three opposites:
1) Between an individual’s desire for a unified self and the inexpungeable
duality of his nature;
2) Between his passion for understanding and the unreasonable silence
of the world; and
3) Between man’s aspiration for eternity and his subordination to
temporality.
Jean Paul Sartre in his writing on “Atheistic Existentialism” states that if
god does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes
essence, a being that exists before he can be defined by any concept. That
this being is man or human reality is pointed out by Heidegger, a German
philosopher. What is meant by “existence precedes essence”? It means that,
first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards,
defines himself (Casebook Series 276). If man, as the existentialist conceives
him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will
he be something and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there
is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it. Not only is man
what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to
be after being thrust towards existence.
As the existentialist does not believe in the existence of god, all possibility
of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him.
Dostoevsky remarked, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible”
(Existentialism 297). That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed,
everything is permissible if god does not exist and as a result man is forlorn
because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling onto.
18.1.2 Roots
Although the Theatre of the Absurd is often traced back to avant-garde
experiments of 1920’s and 1930’s, its roots actually date back much further.
Absurd elements first made their appearance shortly after the rise of Greek
drama in the wild humour and buffoonery of Old Comedy and the plays
of Aristophanes in particular. They were further developed during the late
classical period by Lucian, Petronius, and Apuleis in Menippean satire, a
tradition of Carnivalistic literature depicting “a world upside down”. The
morality plays of the Middle Ages may be considered as precursor to
the Theatre of Absurd depicting everyman-type characters dealing with
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Absurd Drama allegorical and sometimes, existential problems. This tradition would
carry over into the Baroque allegorical drama of Elizabethan times when
dramatists like John Webster, Cyril Turner, Jakob Biedeman and Calderon
would depict the world through mythological archetypes. During the 19th
century, absurd elements may be noted in certain plays of Ibsen and more
obviously, Strindberg. But the acknowledged predecessor of the Theatre
of the Absurd is Jarry’s “monstrous puppet play” Ubu Roi (1896) which
presents a mythical, grotesque figure set amidst a world of archetypal
images.
Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal nature of man
and his cruelty. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, the surrealists expanded on
Jarry’s experiments basing much of their artistic theory on the teachings
of Freud and his emphasis on the role of subconscious mind which they
acknowledged as a great and positive healing force. Their intention was to
do away with art as mere imitation of surface reality. Instead, they focused
on demanding that art deal with essences rather than appearances. Theatre
of the Absurd was also anticipated in the dream novels of James Joyce and
Franz Kafka who created archetypes by delving into their own obsessions.
Silent film and comedy as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in the
early sound films of Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers
world also contributed to the development of the Theatre of the Absurd
as did the verbal nonsense of Francois Rabelais, Lewis Carroll, Edward
Lear, and Christian Margemstem. But it took a catastrophic world event to
actually bring about the birth of the new movement.
World War II was the catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of the Absurd
to life. The global nature of this conflict and the resulting trauma of living
under threat of nuclear annihilation put into stark perspective the essential
precariousness of human life. Suddenly, one did not need to be an abstract
thinker in order to reflect upon absurdity: the experience of absurdity
became a part of the average person’s daily existence. During this period,
a ‘prophet’ of the absurd appeared. Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) rejected
realism in the theatre, calling for a return to myth and magic and to the
exposure of the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded
a theatre that would produce collective archetypes and create a modern
mythology. It was no longer possible, he insisted, to keep a traditional art
form’s standards that had ceased to be convincing and lost their validity.
Although he would not live to see its development, the Theatre of the Absurd
is precisely the new theatre that Artaud was dreaming of. It openly rebelled
against the conventional theatre. It was Ionesco who called it “anti-theatre”.
It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. The dialogue often seemed
to be complete gibberish and not surprisingly, the public’s first reaction to
this theatre was incomprehension and rejection.

18.2 THEATRICAL FEATURES

Plays in this group are absurd because they focus not on logical acts,
realistic occurrences, or traditional character development but instead they
focus on human beings trapped in an incomprehensible world subject to
any occurrence, no matter how illogical. The theme of incomprehensibility
is coupled with the inadequacy of language to form meaningful human
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connections. According to Esslin, Absurdism is “the inevitable devaluation Absurd Drama: Technique
of ideals, purity of purpose” (113). Absurdist drama asks its viewers to
“draw his own conclusions, make his own errors” (114). Although Theatre
of the Absurd can be seen as nonsense, they have something to say and
can be understood (115). Esslin makes a distinction between the dictionary
definition of ‘absurd’ (“out of harmony” in the musical sense) and drama’s
understanding of the absurd. “Absurd” is that which is devoid of purpose:
“cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is
lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless” (118).
18.2.1 Structure
Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically
impossible. According to Sigmund Freud, “there is a freedom we can enjoy
when we are able to abandon the straitjacket of logic” (Crabb, Theatre of
the Absurd). As Dr. Culik points out that while the language of rationalism
deals with the superficial aspects of things, nonsense on the other hand
“opens up a glimpse of the infinite” (Crabb, Theatre of the Absurd). Absurd
playwrights did away with most of the logical structure of traditional theatre.
There is little dramatic action as conventionally understood. However
frantically the characters perform, their business serves to underscore that
nothing happens to change their existence. In Waiting for Godot (1952),
the plot is eliminated and a circular quality emerges as two lost creatures,
usually played as tramps, spend their days waiting but without any certainty
of whom they are waiting for or whether he or it will ever come.
18.2.2 Plot
The Aristotelian concept of plot envisages the connection of different
episodes in a play causally in order to present a total viewpoint. But the
canon of Beckett’s work negates this view by not establishing any connection
between the episodes and thereby working as a safe way toward justifying
the essential sameness and feeble nature of every occurrence. Referring to
the essential logic of Beckett’s plays, Esslin writes that Beckett himself has
pointed out in his essay on Joyce’s Work in Progress that the form, structure,
and mode of an artistic statement cannot be separated from its meaning or
its conceptual content since “the work of art as a whole is its meaning, what
is said in it is indissolubly linked with the manner in which it is said and
cannot be said in any other way” (30).
Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in the Theatre of the
Absurd. Often, there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery
in Pinter’s play The Birthday Party. For example, Goldberg and McCann
confront Stanley, torture him with absurd questions, and drag him off at
the end, but it is never revealed why. In Pinter’s later plays such as The
Caretaker and The Homecoming the menace is no longer entering from
outside but exists within the confined space. Other Absurdists use this kind
of plot, as in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. Harry and Edna take
refuge in the home of their friends Agnes and Tobias because they suddenly
become frightened. They have difficulty in explaining what has frightened
them:
Edna: We ...were...terrified.
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Absurd Drama Harry: We were scared. It was like being lost very young again, with the
dark, and lost. There was no...thing...to be ...frightened of...but
Edna: WE WERE FRIGHTENED...AND THERE WAS NOTHING (p. 31).
Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central
features in many Absurdist plots. For instance, in the play The Chairs, an
old couple welcomes a large number of guests inside their home, but these
guests are invisible. So all we see are empty chairs, a presentation of their
absence. Likewise, the action of Waiting for Godot is centred around the
absence of a man named Godot for whom the characters perpetually wait.
In many of Beckett’s later plays most features are stripped away and what
is left is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in
Footfalls or only a piece junk on stage with sounds of breathing heard in
Breath.
The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a
supernatural change, or a shift in the laws of physics. For example, in
Ionesco’s play Amedee or How to Get Rid of It? a couple must deal with a
corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger. Ionesco never fully reveals
the identity of the corpse or how this person died or why it is growing
continually. But the corpse ultimately floats away, and again without
explanation.
Like Pirandello, many Absurdists use metatheatrical techniques to express
role fulfilment, fate, and theatricality of theatre. This is true for many of
Genet’s plays. For example in The Maids, two maids pretend to be their
mistresses. In The Balcony, brothel patrons take on elevated positions in
role-playing games but the line between theatre and reality starts to blur.
Another complex example of this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead. It is a play about two minor characters in Hamlet. These characters, in
turn, have various encounters with the artists who perform The Mouse Trap,
the play within the play in Hamlet. In Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, James
Joyce and Tristan slip in and out of the plot of the play The Importance of
Being Earnest. Edward Albee’s The Sandbox depicts much hilarious meta-
theatrical technique in grandma’s words in enacting the death scene, “Don’t
put the lights up yet...I’m not ready; I’m not quite ready. (Silence) All right
dear...I’m about done (92).
Plots are frequently cyclical. The play Endgame begins where the play
ended. In the beginning of the play itself, Clov utters “Finished, it’s finished,
nearly finished, it must be nearly finished” (1) and themes of cycle, routine
and repetition are explored throughout.
18.2.3 Characters
The plots of many Absurdist plays feature characters in interdependent
pairs, commonly either two males or a male and a female. Some scholars
studying Beckett call this the “pseudo-couple”. Two characters may be
roughly equal or have a begrudging interdependence like Vladimir and
Estragon in Waiting for Godot or two male characters in Rosencrantz and
Guildernstern Are Dead. One character may be clearly dominant and may
torture the passive character as Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot or
Hamm and Clov in Endgame. The relationship of the characters may shift
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dramatically throughout the play as in Ionesco’s The Lesson or in Albee’s Absurd Drama: Technique
The Zoo Story.
The idea of a character moving from one experience to another and
finally achieving the status of an accomplished portrait in the end is of
Aristotelian origin. The character, in this case, achieves growth by acting
and interacting with several forces in the play. But characters in Beckett’s
plays do not conform to this standard. The principle of growth does not
operate in their cases. In fact, the characters in the plays hopelessly defy
any movement towards progress. These plays work upon a fundamental
concept of incoherence and indirection in so far as the character conception
is concerned. Consistently, these characters feature the inconsistency of their
composition. They fail to ascertain any particular standard of development.
In the plays of Beckett there are very few characters and there are only four
major characters in the play Waiting for Godot: Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo
and Lucky. Vladimir and Estragon occupy the maximum length in the play
while Pozzo and Lucky come to that world as outsiders and remain for some
time, but nevertheless appear in both the acts.
But there is a considerable difference in so far as the situations in the two
acts are concerned. The condition of Vladimir and Estragon remain almost
the same in both the acts. They are tied to an appointment with some
Godot of their knowledge and a great precisionist as Beckett is, he makes
a reasonable attempt at portraying the dramatic moments in their act of
waiting. By doing do, he enables the reader to accept the portrayal of the
life of two boys as a process in continuation. Estragon and Vladimir in order
to continue with the tedium of time talk on different subjects and remain
absorbed in futile acts and the same thing is repeated in the next act. Pozzo
and Lucky enter their world as passersby and exchange views with them. In
the second act, they re-enter with some physical difference and after a while,
go away from the scene. The small boy, who acts as a messenger, prefers to
deliver the message from his master Godot and talks something about his
lot to them. In the second act the boy reappears and enacts the something.
The drama ends with the assumption that their waiting will continue till
they meet Godot.
The characters in Absurd plays are lost and incomprehensible and they
abandon rational devices and discourses because these approaches are
inadequate. Many characters appear as automatons struck in routines
speaking only in clichés (Ionesco called the Old Man and Old Woman in
The Chairs “Ubermarionettes”. Characters are stereotypical, archetypal, or
flat character types as in Commedia dell’arte.
The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is
incomprehensible. Many of Pinter’s characters are trapped in and menaced
by some force that they can’t understand. In his play The Room, the main
character Rose is menaced by Riley who invades her safe space though the
actual source of menace remains a mystery and this theme is repeated in many
of his later plays, mainly in The Birthday Party. In Friedrich Durrenmatt’s
The Visit, the main character Alfred is menaced by Claire Zachanassian.
Claire, the richest woman in the world with decaying body and multiple
husbands throughout the play has guaranteed a payout for anyone in the
town willing to kill Alfred (124).
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Absurd Drama The characters in Absurd drama also face chaos of the world that science
and logic have abandoned. Ionesco’s recurring character Berenger faces a
killer without motivation in The Killer. Berenger’s logical arguments fail
to convince the killer that killing is wrong (125). In Rhinoceros, Berenger
remains the only human on earth who has not turned into rhinoceros and
must decide whether or not to conform (126, 127). The characters may
themselves be trapped in a routine, in a metafictional conceit. For example,
trapped in a story, the titular characters in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead find themselves in a story (Hamlet) in which the
outcome has already been written.
The American consciousness was shaped by an optimistic nationalism,
technological and military prowess, renewal of faith in science, energy of
youth, and infiltration of money during the time of Edward Albee, the great
American absurdist playwright. The American Adam was now transformed
into post-lapsarian figure, his youthful innocence tempered and corrupted
by a blatantly self-reliant consumerism. Such a cultural milieu invited the
ironising of experience as Arthur Miller suggested. But for Albee, the social
climate which greatly crippled Broadway gave rise to absurdist satire in The
American Dream. In this play, Albee does not allot names to the characters.
Their namelessness is Albee’s technique for diminishing their humanity.
Each character is a human reduced to a functional type.
Most discernible by its absence, love collapses under the pressure of Mommy’s
domination and Daddy’s acquaintance with hatred and indifference filling
the vacant spaces. Like Mommy in the play The Sand Box, Mommy in
The American Dream is the badgering, manipulative female, the controller
and castrator of a defenceless and emasculated Daddy. The character of
Daddy is one of several Albee’s characters who earns Mommy’s wrath, in
part because his primary social and personal strategy is one of withdrawal
and non-engagement. He chooses a path of least resistance, leading towards
isolation and an ossified spirit. Robert Martin Adams, speculating on our
cultural preoccupation with Nothingness observes that accepting Nothing
“is a wilful submission of oneself to non-experience as an active form of
experience” (3). Daddy precisely embraces such a sense of Nothingness
by leading a death-in-life existence, he just wants “to get everything over
with” (Albee 70). In the play, Albeed doesn’t introduce any great upsetter of
delicate balances, one who could dispel the corrosive influence of Nothing.
Rather, he exposes the inertia paralysing this family. This is how Albee
stages the abstract apprehension of human intercourse and what Susan
Sontag deems “the prototypically modern revelation: a negative epiphany”
(19).
But the character Grandma in the play is the only source of vitality: alive
and articulate. She neither participates in nor entrapped by the absurdism
of dialogues. Her observations are accurate and free from the banalities
of other characters. Even after she is treated disrespectfully, she maintains
her dignity and despite being elderly, she is clear-sighted. For the author,
Grandma represents a singular source of caring, an admittedly sentimental
character based on his grandmother, one reminiscent of an era supposedly
closer to innocence. She understands and accepts her condition, her 86 years
of experience creating an adaptability in the midst of verbal indignities. As
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Ruby Cohn suggests: Grandma “represents the vigorous old frontier spirit” Absurd Drama: Technique
(Albee 268).
As Albee portrays Daddy as a character of withdrawal and non-engagement
in the play The American Dream, he presents Peter and Jerry in the play
The Zoo Story as sharing a profound sense of isolation. That is why The
Zoo Story stands as a kind of intuitive existentialist play. The forced
communication between the two characters underscores the point. Peter fails
in human intercourse because of withdrawal into a comfortable bourgeois
life, a life denying the tragic. Legally, Peter will not be accountable for
Jerry’s death but Albee implies that after Sunday afternoon’s events he
will feel accountable in a spiritual sense. Peter is no longer able to remain
isolated. Jerry fails because of his inability to maintain lasting relationships
in his world, a world that courts the tragic. Accountability means little to
Jerry for he would rather die than perpetuate his desperate life. Thus, both
the characters experience isolation although it is prompted by seemingly
opposite predicaments in each of their lives. Jerry is hyperaware of his
isolation and Peter is too anesthetized to discern separateness within a
broader context of existential aloneness.
18.2.4 Dialogue
Bauer Wolfgang in his essay Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Language, refers
to Roman Ingarden who has distinguished four functions of the language of
drama: statement, expression, communication, and influence of one character
upon another (251). Reciprocation develops a sense of communicability.
But in the absurd drama of Beckett the above mentioned functions have
been diverted towards presenting a sense of incoherence and fixity. This
devaluation has been pointed out by Ihab Hassan in his book on The Literary
Silence, “No one, I think, has carried the devaluation of language in drama
further than Beckett “(185). In the play Waiting for Godot, Estragon and
Vladimir must find something to keep themselves engaged in order to gain
respite from the act of waiting. This results in some incoherent exchange of
ideas. When Vladimir asks “What is terrible is to have thought?” Estragon
answers, “But did that ever happen to us?” (64) This discussion moves
from their exchange over the act of thinking to an idea about corpses.
Such diversion features again in some other form of indirection related
through the contradictory nature of behaviour of the characters. Pointless
deliberation is carried out in the use of a type of language in the second act
which is largely incommunicable. The term “Quevoulez-vous” is repeated
by Estragon (13). On similar lines, we find Jerry talking about dealing with
people in Albee’s play The Zoo Story: “If not with people.....if not with
people...SOMETHING....with a bed, a cockroach, with a mirror... no that
is too hard, that’s one of the first steps. With a cockroach, with a...with a
carpet, a roll of toilet paper...no, not that, either...that’s a mirror, too, always
check bleeding (23).
In another play, Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee makes his character
Martha utter incomprehensible sounds like “Hunh! Hunh!” when George
speaks about chromosomes (197). Likewise, in another play The Sandbox,
Grandma cries again and again “Ahhhhhh!” (88).
Another trait of language used in the absurd drama is its devaluation.
Beckett plays upon this usage in his play Waiting for Godot. Vladimir and
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Absurd Drama Estragon use such phrases as “Ceremonious ape”, “punctilious pig”, and
words like “morpion”, “moron”, “vermin”, and “abortion” (75). Beckett,
with his deft use of absurd satire makes Martha add to her lexicon, “sour
pass, muck mouth, prick swampy, bog, and flop” (218) while she is speaking
to George. “Martha is a devil with language, she really is”, George boasts
later. Martha’s diabolic language includes diverse epithets for her husband
such as: “cluck, dumb bell, imp, pig, blank, cipher, zero” (218). Although
George addresses Martha with surface courtesies like “dear” and “love”,
he slyly likens her to animals “braying”, “chewing ice-cubes like a cocker-
spaniel” and “yowling like a subhuman monster”. He also foists upon Nick
his witty “declension”: “Good, better, best, bested” (26). Besides this,
Albee establishes absurdist texture in The American Dream when Mommy
discusses the colour of her hat. The length, detail, and obsession with which
she analyzes the hat appear ridiculous and boring. Indeed, as C.Roundane
suggests, Albee’s “method of capturing the superficiality of her values, the
way that important energy of authentic communication is wasted on trite,
meaningless expression” (48).
There are also examples of cross talks which show stagnation over a
particular idea in the absurd plays. In the play Waiting for Godot such an
instance occurs at the time of the retreat ceremony of Pozzo in the first act
when Vladimir, Estragon, and Pozzo are caught in meaningless rituals of
farewell:
Pozzo: And thank you.
Vladimir: Thank you.
Pozzo: Not at all.
Estragon: Yes, yes
Pozzo: Thank you (47).
There are several repetitions in the absurd plays. The conversation given
below is marked by repetitiveness which lacks clarity and thereby highlights
the restless and helpless position of the characters in Pinter’s play The
Dumbwaiter:
Gus : Hell see you
Ben : He won’t know you’re there
Gus : He won’t know you’re there
Ben : He won’t know you’re there
Gus : He won’t know you’re there (132).
When language in the absurd play is nonsensical it is used for humorous
effect for the audience too. For example: Lucky’s long speech in Waiting
for Godot when Pozzo remarks that Lucky is demonstrating a talent for
“thinking” as other characters comically attempt to stop him:
Lucky: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of
Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard
quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of
divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some
exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine
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Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell or plunged Absurd Drama: Technique
in torment (146).
Nonsense may also be used to demonstrate the limits of language in the
absurd theatre while questioning or parodying the determinism of science
and the knowability of truth. In Ionesco’s play The Lesson, a professor tries
to force a pupil to understand his nonsensical philology lesson:
Professor: In Spanish the roses of my grandmother
………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………
Professor: But “roses” what else?....”roses” is a translation in Oriental
of the French word “roses”, in Spanish “roses”, do you get it? (15)
The element of absurdity in language is effectively presented through
pauses and silences by the English absurdist playwright Harold Pinter. The
pauses and silences mark the end of the play or prove to be the centre of the
whirlpool of complexities. The ambiguous situation of Davies at the end
of The Caretaker is represented by a long silence. In The Collection, as the
play progresses towards the end, the departure of James from the house of
Harry and Bill is followed by a ‘Long Silence’. The estranged relationship
between James and Stella is felt through the pauses and silences that interrupt
their conversation. For instance, Stella’s silence in the following dialogue
increases the uncertainty experienced by her husband:
James: You didn’t do anything, did you? Pause.
He wasn’t in your room. You just talked about it in the lounge.
Pause. That’s the truth, isn’t it? Pause. (Pinter, 145)
The characters who realize the absurdity of existence exercise silence
and the characters who are unaware of this become violent. Similarly, the
characters who are seemingly unaware of their obscurities resort to pretence.
It will be apt to quote Pinter’s comments on the usage of silence and evasive
language, “I think we communicate only too well, in our silences, in what is
unsaid, and that what takes place is continual evasion, desperate rearguard
attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming”
(Almansi 73).
Despite its reputation for nonsensical language, much of the dialogue in
Absurdist plays is naturalistic. The moments where characters resort to
nonsense language or clichés are when words appear to have lost their
denotative function thus creating misunderstanding among the characters.
This makes the Theatre of the Absurd distinctive in terms of its language
(135). Language frequently gains a certain phonetic, rhythmical and almost
musical quality thereby opening up a wide range of often comedic playfulness
(136). Jean Tardeau, for example, in the series of Theatre de Chambro
arranged language as one arranges music. The Bald Soprano by Ionesco
was inspired by a language book in which characters would exchange empty
clichés that ultimately never mounted to true communication or connection
(139).
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Absurd Drama
18.3 MYTH AND ALLEGORY
As the traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation
of life as we see it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual life:
mythological, archetypal, and allegorical. Often, the focal point of these
dreams is man’s bewilderment and confusion, stemming from the fact that
he has no answers to the basic existential questions like why are we alive or
why one has to die or why do injustice and suffering exist? Ionesco defined
the absurdist everyman as “Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and
transcendental roots...lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless”
(Crabb, Theatre of the Absurd). This theatre also attempts to re-establish
man’s communion with the universe. It can be seen as an attempt to restore
the importance of myth and ritual in our age by making man aware of the
ultimate realities of his condition and “instilling in him again the lost sense
of wonder and primeval anguish” (Crabb, Theatre of the Absurd).
In the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee allows his characters to
confront their lives shorn of bizarre fictions they have nursed for so long.
They face a problematic reality. Such realities, however, allow George and
Martha to accept, love and thus repair the ruins of their past. Through their
long night’s journey into their illusionary stories, they have gone a very
long distance out of their way to come back a short distance correctly;
they progress from performance to being. Edward Albee is a “mythmaker
who deconstructs myth, a storyteller aware of the coercive power of story”
(Roudane, Toward the marrow 57). One is reminded of Tennessee William
and Sam Shepard while reading Albee, a poet of the theatre who himself
discovers poetry in the broken lives of the subjects of his plays and in the
broken society which they inhabit.

18.4 DECLINE
Originally shocking in it’s flouting of theatrical conventions and at the same
time popular for its apt expression of the preoccupation of the mid-20th
century, the Theatre of the Absurd declined somewhat by the mid 1960’s.
Some of its innovations had been absorbed into the mainstream of theatre
even while serving to inspire further experiments. Some of the chief authors
of the absurd theatre have sought new directions in their art while others
continue to work in the same vein.

18.5 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. What do you know about Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre?
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
2. Mention the forerunners of the absurd theatre.
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
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3. Write an essay on the theatrical features of “absurd theatre”. Absurd Drama: Technique

………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………

18.6 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

18.6.1 Primary Sources
1. Albee, Edward. The Collected Plays of Edward Albee 1958-65. Vol.
1, Overlook Duckworth, 2004.
2. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove P, 1958.
3. Beckett, Samuel. End Game. New York: Grove P, 1958.
4. Pinter, Harold. The Collected Plays of Harold Pinter. London: Faber
& Faber, 1996.
18.6.2 Secondary Sources
1. Almansi, Guido & Henderson, Simon. Harold Pinter. London:
Methuen, 1983.
2. Adams, Martin Robert. NIL: Episodes in the Literary Conquest of
Void During the Nineteenth Century. New York: OUP, 1966.
3. Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays. Translation.
Justin O’Brien. Paris: Cathard,1942.
4. C.Roudane Matthew. Understanding Edward Albee. Columbia: U of
South Carolina, 1987.
5. Cohn, Ruby. Edward Albee. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1069.
p.268.
6. Esslin, Martin. Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Doubleday, 1961.
7. Pinter the Playwright. London: Methuen, 1982.
8. Hassan,Ihab. The Literature of Silence:Henry Miller & Samuell
Beckett. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1968. p.185.
9. Crabb, Jerome P. Theatre of the Absurd, Theatre Database, 3 Sept.
2006, www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/theatre_of_the_
absurd.html.
10. Polucci, Anne. “Albee & Restructuring of the Modern Stage”. Studies
in American Drama (1986): 14-15.
11. Sontag, Susan. “The Prototypically Modern Revelation: A Negative
Epiphany”. On Photography. New York: Farrar Strausernard,
1977.p.19.
12. Sartre, Paul. Existentialism.Translation Bernard Frechtman. New
York: Philosophical Library, 1947.
13. Wolfgang, Bauer. “Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic language”.Modern
Drama 9.3 (Dec 1966): 251.
14. Matthew Roudane’s essay “Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Toward
the marrow”
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 UNIT 19: EDWARD ALBEE’S WHO’S
AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF:
CONTEXTUALIZING THE TEXT
Structure
19.0 Objectives
19.1 Introduction
19.2 The Writer’s Bio-brief
19.2.1 The plot of the play
19.2.2 Genesis of the play
19.3 Characterizations
19.3.1 George
19.3.2 Martha
19.3.3 Nick
19.3.4 Honey
19.4 Act wise summary
19.5 The Theatre of Absurd
19.6 The Theatre of Absurd and Albee’s Play
19.7 Life and the Meaninglessness of Modern Existence
19.8 Lack of Communication
19.9 Disillusionment
19.10 Alienation Effect
19.11 Black Humour and Dark comedy
19.12 Summing up
19.13 Check your progress
19.14 Select reading list

19.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will be able to:
●● know about the works of absurd drama in brief and Edward Albee’s
play as absurd play.
●● comprehend Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as an absurd watershed
and how it changed the trend of American drama as distinctly full text
of the playwright.
●● understand Absurd theatre broadly in the context of present text
●● locate social forces as determining the discourse of absurd life
– meaninglessness of individual aspirations and existence in the
aftermath of the Second World War
●● comprehend a picture of modern life and its crucial and complex
nuances in Post war American society.
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 Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
19.1 INTRODUCTION of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee which questions
marriage as a credible institution and its hollowed claims. In a sense, it also
addresses the existential crisis a man is often subjected to in a society where
relationships are being increasingly reduced to a high emotional drama. The
existential crisis which the play exhibits brings parallels with the absurd
play and hence the justification of the play as a theater of absurd. A middle
aged couple George and Martha find marriage incompatible as they don’t
lose opportunities to criticize each other at the drop of a hat. The couple also
drags another unwitting younger couple Nick and Honey into being party to
their frustrated and unfruitful relationship.
The play is in three Acts, portraying “Who is afraid of Big Woolf?” from
Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs (1933), instead of the celebrated English
author Virginia Woolf, Martha and George repeatedly sing this version of the
song throughout the play. The play becomes an instant hit winning several
awards in the process which culminated in the film adaption of the play.

19.2 THE WRITER’S BIO-BRIEF

Born in 1928 in Washington D. C., Edward Franklin Albee, enjoyed the
status of a cult hero in American drama until his death in 2006. The Zoo Story
(1959), The Sand Box (1959), The American Dream (1961) are some of the
earliest known plays of Albee. But Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1962)
has brought the playwright a sort of worldwide recognition bagging Pulitzer
prize for him which was filmed with a fair degree of success. His troubled
childhood owing to bitter relationship with his mother led to his mental
agony. He found a proper medium of expression in poetry and novel initially.
Later he took to Drama in the late 1950s for good.
19.2.1 The plot of the play
A middle aged professor, his wife, and a relatively younger couple resort
to unrestrained drinking bout one night which is full of “malicious games,
insults, humiliations, betrayals, savage witticisms, and painful, self-
revealing confrontations.” A play in Three Acts, Who is Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? exposes the illusions of life, failures of frustrated men and women
to live up to relationships; even the existential crisis of the men and women
and their struggle for existence in a world that denies the very right to live
in, in more than one ways. This very question of existence that the play
deals with comes under the purview of absurdity which is the main thrust of
the play, and hence the focus on the elements of absurdity. The playwright
himself has admitted on an occasion that, the play “has hung about my neck
like a shining medal of some sort.” His plays often offer a scathing critique
on modern life; agony resulting from growing disillusionment of 1960s is
central to his plays.
“The action takes place in the living room of a middle-aged couple,
George and Martha, who have come home from a faculty party drunk and
quarrelsome. When Nick, a young biology professor, and his mousy wife,
Honey, stop by for a nightcap, they are enlisted as fellow fighters, and
the battle begins. A long night of malicious games, insults, humiliations,
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Absurd Drama betrayals, painful confrontations, and savage witticisms ensues. The secrets
of both couples are laid bare, and illusions are viciously exposed. When, in
a climactic moment, George decides to “kill” the son they have invented
to compensate for their childlessness, George and Martha finally face the
truth and, in a quiet ending to a noisy play, stand together against the world,
sharing their “sorrow”.
19.2.2 Genesis of the play
In an interview in Paris Review, Albee declares the genesis and motto of
the play thus:
“I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw “Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?” scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write
the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who’s afraid of
Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who’s afraid
of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather
typical, university intellectual joke.”
Indeed, the play brilliantly brings about the illusion of human existence
which points out absurdity of human life to say the least. The original title
of the play was Exorcism in which the line Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
figures prominently. Albee took permission from Leonard Woolf to include
the name Virginia Woolf in the title. When he witnessed the play in London
along with his friend Peggy Ashcroft he could find the connection between
the play and Woolf’s thought process. We can easily see into the connections
well from the latter’s assertions: We both enjoyed it immensely. It is so
amusing and at the same time moving and is really about the important
things in life. Nothing is rarer, at any rate, on the English stage. I wonder
if you have ever read a short story which my wife wrote and is printed in A
Haunted House? It is called ‘Lappin and Lapinova.’ The details are quite
different but the theme is the same as that of the imaginary child in your
play

19.3 CHARACTERIZATION
19.3.1 George
George is a kind of protagonist who acts as a “house boy” for Martha, opens
the door when she comes home, preparing a drink for her, not reacting to
her tirades, and her readymade companion acting as her “doormat”. He
never seems to be in control of action right from the beginning when he
taught in a college. He accepted his fate without any qualms. In fact, Martha
is convinced that George is married to her to fulfill her needs without
complain. The penultimate night serves as the climax in his life because,
unlike other nights where they had witty and sarcastic exchanges frequently,
they (especially George) have to approach their life and living afresh.
His background is not a promising one; his fictional venture reveals that
he “killed his mother with a shotgun” while he was young. And then later,
while driving along a country road with “a learner’s permit in his pocket
and his father on the front seat to his right, he swerved the car to avoid a
porcupine and drove straight into a large tree.” Such a sedate background is
perhaps the reason why George can never assume importance in life. This
is possibly also the reason why he prefers an imaginary child to a real one;
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an imaginary child cannot do any harm to his father as was the case with Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
George as a child. of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
Both George and Martha are under the illusion of having a child throughout.
He warned Martha thrice before, “Just don’t start in on the bit about the
kid”. He wants to continue with the illusion of a child in order to avoid
being a butt of ridicule in social circles. He has been humiliated by Martha
and talked about the “kid” without caring for their social standing. He
finally decides to kill the imaginary child coming to terms with reality. He
also assumes individuality by killing the imaginary child and frees himself
from the clutches and humiliations of Martha. By killing the child he sheds
the illusion and fantasy surrounding their life and helps Martha to come to
terms with reality. George assumes the role of a real protagonist in the final
scene as he knows pretty well that they have to start life afresh, however
unpleasant it may be.
19.3.2 Martha
To many, Martha is the real protagonist of the play as she holds the upper
hand from the beginning. She enjoys an important clout in the play hailing
from a class family; her father is the president of the college in which
George works. Arranging late night parties on her part, therefore, is not
surprising at all.
She is known for her domineering, forceful and down to earth character.
She is the “earth Mother” exploring “the meat of the matter.” She frequently
resorts to obscene speeches, remarks and gestures full of curses. She openly
flirts with youthful Nick and rejoices in the concept of the game “Hump the
Hostess.” In doing so, she also ignores Honey.
For her both the male characters are “flops’: George at work place and Nick
in the bed. To Martha, George is a failure in every respect. He does not
miss an opportunity to ridicule her. She wants to extract the best out of
George for her physical and emotional satisfaction. She deliberately allows
the interplay of real and illusion as for as accepting the imaginary child is
concerned. When George “Kills the kid” Martha is truly frightened of the
consequences, and she expresses her fear in terms of the nursery rhyme —
she is afraid of the big bad wolf, or in other words, she is afraid of facing
reality.
The shadow of illusion is taken out of Martha’s mind at the end of the play.
She does not want to dominate now, rather she is prepared to start her life
with George afresh arousing pity and compassion in the mind of the reader
finally.
19.3.3 Nick
Nick represents “the new wave of the future” and interestingly he is a
biology teacher dealing with chromosomes and genes which are associated
with future generation. On one occasion, George even accuses him of
readjusting our “chromosomes”.
Nick is the perfect foil of George. What George cannot do; Nick starts from
that point. Being a history professor, George is well versed with the past
but Nick is a biology professor representing the future. In addition to being
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Absurd Drama biology teacher, Nick is also physically strong and stout, the reason why
Martha is attracted to him.
Nick is usually an ambitious character; he loves her childhood friend
Honey, but he also agrees to marry her on account of her money. However,
he does not chase after the daughter of the president of the college for mad
passionate desire. Rather, he is trapped by Martha in that eventful night
where he awkwardly becomes a party to watch the elderly couple fight
bitterly over silly things. He resorts to excess drinking which has reduced
his sexual advancement towards Martha and made him virtually impotent.
Nick is unable to communicate properly with Honey as her abhorring at the
thought of having a child is not properly understood by him. He considers her
as a child devoid of any adult requirements. He is always alert how George
communicates with Honey being not able to cope with even slightest sexual
talk between the two, while he himself openly flirts with Martha, making
sensual advancements while dancing.
Nick is a slow starter as he does not initially warm himself up to the fact
that George and Martha’s child does not really exist. He is really disturbed
by the painful revealation of the imaginary child. He seems to lack foresight
and perception as to why the elderly couple is under illusion of a child. He
is caught up in his own making. Being a man of science stream he always
believes in truth, but here is an imaginary creation which troubles him after
being aware of the truth behind it.
19.3.4 Honey
She seems to be the noncontroversial character in an otherwise bizarre
situation. The audience knows little about Honey except the fact that she
inherits a large sum from her father in important position. Both Nick and
Honey are in love with each other from childhood and Honey becomes
apparently pregnant before marriage. We are not sure whether her
pregnancy is real or a hysterical one. Confirmation comes from Honey that
she is extremely afraid of child birth and agony involved in bearing a child.
George has other opinions about Honey, though.
Honey is seen as an adult child because she does not want to accept the
reality of child birth. There is little development of the character of Honey
in the course of the play for she is either dormant, childlike or drunk every
time the reader encounters with her. Her childlikeness is further emphasized
by her habit of gurgling, being obtuse to the reality of the situation around
her, and ultimately, by curling up in a fetal position when she is drunk and
peeling the labels off liquor bottles.
The eventful night also initiates Honey to accept reality as it is. Honey
suddenly changes her mind and wants to have children. “I want a child,”
she cries as they leave. This is a complete change from the Honey who told
George about an hour earlier that she wanted no children. However, Honey
seems to live in her own recluse and her private world of wine,peeling labels
and solo dancing is all that she cherishes.

19.4 ACT WISE SUMMARY

The setting, running upon a small university campus in a New England
University, seems to be a fitting one to express a series of frustrations and
260
failures its characters undergo in the course of the play. Both the play and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
the film have three acts, titled “Fun and Games”, “Walpurgisnacht” and of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
“The Exorcism”.
The play sets out in a typical American way; Albee has chosen the name of
famous first American couple in George and Maratha, after President George
Washington and his wife Martha to give the play the very American look
that he was set on from the beginning. The couple is coming from a faculty
party. While Martha belongs to university management being daughter of
the president, her husband George is a history professor. Martha has invited
a young couple Nick and Honey for drinks taking no notice of George’s
consent which is significant here indicating their troubled relationship.
Act one: Funs and Games
In Act one George and Martha indulge in each other’s character assassination,
hurling abuses at will, without respecting each other’s sentiment. George
makes a mockery of Martha’s drinking habit with respect to her age, while,
Martha blames George for failure and frustration of life. Martha then
escapes with Honey to lead the later to the bathroom. Nick and George talk
for sometime before violent outbursts follow suit at the prospect of mention
of son’s name by Martha to Honey a short while ago.
Martha does not waste an opportunity to point out George’s short comings
even at the drop of a hat. That he did not get promotion in the history
department despite the fact that Martha’s father was the president of the
University is strong proof of turning George off his position. The story does
not end here, she openly flirts with Nick. She is quick to point out how
once, she had punched George in front of her father. Unable to put up with
such a humiliation, George follows her aggressively with a gun and shots
a bullet at her. Luckily, the bullet misses the target by a whisker. The firing
reveals, it was a playing gun not a real one, that an umbrella pops out of the
end of the gun. Martha continues to criticize George, who reacts angrily by
smashing a bottle. Honey was on a drinking spree, upset by all the fighting,
and runs to the bathroom to vomit.
Act Two: Walpurgisnacht ( The Night of Witches)
George and Nick explore their respective personal life sitting outside. Nick
reveals that his marriage to Honey is an accident, as the thought of her
being pregnant prevail upon him in favour of decision of the marriage. To
his surprise, he finds it to be a hysterical pregnancy which is only a fag of
his imagination. George relates a childhood story of his life when one of his
friends killed his parents by chance. When they join the ladies inside the
house, Martha makes seductive dancing with Nick in presence of George
and Honey. Martha humiliates George in more ways than one when she
points out his failed attempt to write a novel.
An autobiographical account, the novels recounts the horrific story of a
boy who kills his parents accidently. It has evidently been linked to the
George’s earlier narrated story to Nick. Martha takes pride in the fact
that her father, instead of allowing the publication of the work burns it in
the fireplace. George is so upset that he tries to strangle her in front of
the guests. What ensues such a grueling session is game of fun “Get the
Guests”. When George reveals Honey’s hysterical pregnancy during the
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Absurd Drama session of engrossing game, Honey runs to bathroom resorting to bout of
vomit. Nick and Martha come to torment George once again to which he
reacts apathetically, pretending to read a novel. At the end of the act Martha
and Nick go upstairs together which aggravates George’s angry mood and
he throws the novel in a fit of rage.
Act III: The Exorcism
Martha is in the living room and calls upon everybody’s attention on the stage.
Nick appears at once; George also shows up with a bouquet of snapdragons
at the door. A row between George and Martha ensues over the issue of
moon being upstairs or down-stairs. While George says the moon is up,
Martha does not endorse his view. An engrossing and prolonged discussion
whether or not Nick is able to perform sexual act with Martha because of
excess alcoholic intoxication follows laying bare Maratha’s secret missions.
Martha turns to Nick to humiliate him. To calm the situation down George
invites Nick to find out Honey for playing the final round of games called
“Bringing up Baby.” George deprecates Martha for her overbearing attitude
towards their son and then makes her talk about him.
After the two tell their son’s life story, George announces that a telegram
came while Martha and Nick were upstairs. The telegram reveals that their
son was killed that afternoon in a car accident when he swerved to avoid
a porcupine on the road. Martha then screams that he’s not allowed to kill
their son and it becomes apparent to Nick and Honey that the son was a
fictional character all along. George decided to “kill” their son because
Martha broke a rule about never speaking of their son to others. Unable to
cope with their disappointing lives and with no real bond between them,
the couple apparently made up a fictional child to help them deal with the
harshness of reality. Yet, the bitterness and hatred Martha and George have
for each other ultimately destroyed this illusion. The play ends with George
singing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which Martha answers “I am,
George, I am.”

19.5 THE THEATRE OF ABSURD

The term Theatre of Absurd has been coined by Martin Esslin to refer
to post World War II dramatists of diverse interests like Becket, Ionesco
Adamov, Genet, and Pinter. Paris becomes their place of popularity where
they lived, and it provided creative thrust to their writing. Albee’s play is a
classic example of absurd writing which probes the modern condition well.
It contains biting dialogue by highlighting the dysfunctional relationship
between two people who seemingly have only one purpose, the emotional
exploitation of each other.
The play deals with problem of incompatibility of George and Martha;
meaninglessness of life is central to the plot of the play. They put up a fight
for every miniscule thing in life. The protagonist struggles with professional
frustration despite trying to keep up with his reputation and position, an
exercise in futility leading to his existential crisis. The protagonists couldn’t
keep them off drinking bout which is not a permanent solution (if at all it is a
solution), is again indicative of limited vision of man. Even if the play does
not confirm strictly to absurd play nuances of absurd elements is there. The
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theme of an imaginary child dominates Albee’s dramatic oeuvre from the Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
beginning. His early short dramas can be considered as a sequel to his first of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
full length play Virginia Woolf.
In Absurd theatre there is lack of unity and coherence; language is not logical
and characters insignificant. The settings do not offer any understanding as
in case of traditional drama. The cause and effect which characterizes the
traditional drama is absolutely a non-starter. Baffling situations, plausible
devices and lack of communication between characters constitute the
cream of such a kind of drama. Non-communication becomes a means of
communication here, characterizing futility of human life. The audience
approaches such a meaninglessness of life from a detached perspective.
Black comedy, fantastic elements, the indifference of the external world
to represent the reality of life and the protagonists’ inability to adapt to
challenges of life-- are some of the characteristic features of the absurd play
which find expression in Albee’s play. But the fact that poetic language,
repetitive structures and familiar settings dominate the absurd play reveals
that the play has certain deeper layers of communication.
Martin Esslin’s critical coinage of the term “Theatre of Absurd” in his
eponymous book describes a “sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity
of the human condition.” Philosophical writers like Albert Camus, Franz
Kafka and Jean Paul Sartre have already reshaped the vision of absurd in
meaningful, precise and meticulous way, almost following mathematical
precision. One is reminded of universal futility of “The Myth of Sisyphus”
and his eternal rolling of the stone without gathering any moss. The theater
has, Esslin argues, “renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human
condition; it merely presents it in being — that is, in terms of concrete stage
images of the absurdity of existence.”
Miscalculation of a play’s potential appeal has often reduced the multiple
layers of meaning on offer. Being given the tag of an absurd play, it misses
out other interpretations considerably. It is also to the contrast of the play’s
meanings that the reader often fails to bring about the distinctive differences
in the individual writers. the language loses its charm in a absurd world;
it is used only as fillers of empty space. It is also used as the companion
of characters on the stage as sole company of their loneliness. Often the
language draws flak for its obscurity and meaninglessness.
Absurd plays black humour or dry humour and the underlying dramatic
device being irony. Humour is used according to the absurd situation and
merely used to represent the meaninglessness of the absurd world. No
use of being frustrated in an absurd world; it is better to participate in the
process and make fun of it. In a world of nonsense, there is hardly any
logic or sequencing of events. In such an adverse situation ne can count
on dream sequence for absurd association. It is but obvious that the plot
here uses more dream like structure than real cause and effect situation for
representation.
The movement in an absurd play is total let down. The characters do not
follow the pattern of dynamism; the device of “poetic image does the trick
for the movement of the absurd play. Events are being swiftly replaced by
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Absurd Drama the poetic image holding the centre stage for all action to take place. During
the course of the play one is at a loss to find out what is going to happen next.
Instead the reader or the audience is hard pressed to discover the important
message being conveyed by the playwright. With the employment of poetic
images, one can discover multiple ways of interpretation of a particular
scene of a drama.

19.6 THE THEATRE OF ABSURD AND

ALBEE’S PLAY
The absurd drama is a popular trope of dramatic representation in view of
the World War II and its aftermath. But one can always trace its origin in
ancient Greek drama and Roman drama with their focus on Pantomimes,
Clowning, Mimes; morality plays; fools and lunatics in Shakespearian
plays. The heyday of ritual drama with its connection with religion also
provides the backdrop for such a kind of drama. Playwrights like Genet
recognize the importance of ancient ritualistic drama. Albee’s play also
reveals that frustration, disappointment and emotional turmoil make for
existential crisis which absurd plays have made up in their corpus.
The main action of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? centers around the
vicious battle of wills between George and Martha. Martha is a ruthless
opponent, and George doesn’t get the upper-hand until nearly the end of the
play. After being brow beaten, humiliated, and cheated on, George defeats
Martha with four simple words: “our son is…dead” (3.245). Martha reacts
to this news by erupting into a bestial howl and collapsing to the floor.
It would seem pretty normal for Martha to react dramatically to the death
of her son if she actually had a son. The thing is that George and Martha’s
son is purely imaginary. When they found out they couldn’t have kids, they
solved the problem by just making a kid up. Even though he’s imaginary,
both George and Martha have deep attachment to the boy. Martha reveals
the depth of her feeling when she says that he is, “the one light in all this
hopeless…darkness” (3.401). The darkness she refers to is probably her
“sewer of a marriage,” which she also describes as “vile” and “crushing”
(3.401).
This dream of a son seems to be so precious to both George and Martha
because it’s one of the few things they share. They created him together in
order to escape from their “sick nights, and pathetic, stupid days” (3.401).
The boy is the one vital ploy of real intimacy that the unhappy couple
shares. When George “kills” the son it’s like he dropped a nuclear bomb.
Now George and Martha are left with no illusions behind which they can
hide. By the end of the play, they must stare, unblinkingly, into the charred
battlefield that is their lives.
The play can be just as funny as it is emotionally brutal. These seemingly
contradictory ingredients combine to make it a sort of cocktail. What adds
to the complexity and challenge of the play is picking up on a lot of the
historical, literary, and philosophical references in the book. Both of them
recognize: “But, hey, that’s what we’re here for, right?
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World of illusion Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf:
We begin with two people who have been pitied against each other down Contextualizing The Text
for years. They cover themselves up behind illusions – like their imaginary
son – to make it through the bitterness that is their lives. George and Martha
welcome Nick and Honey into their world of darkness. Wicked words fly
thick and fast to hilarious and destructive effect. No one is sure what truth
is and what is a lie. Everyone is trapped in illusion – Nick and Honey in the
mirage of a perfect marriage, George and Martha in the mirage of their son.
Inherent Conflict
George and Martha drag their young guests into their verbal warfare. As the
battle of wills rages, illusions begin to crack. Social niceties soon fall by the
wayside and the characters’ ugliness is on full display. The darkness only
thickens as the characters continue to attack each other. In the course of the
play their illusions are being laid bare. It’s becoming obvious that there are
real problems in Nick and Honey’s marriage. George and Martha’s son is
becoming a topic of suspicion.
When Martha goes upstairs with Nick it’s the really the last straw for
George. Though he acts like he doesn’t care, it drives him toward his
climactic action. George shatters everyone’s illusions. He exposes the flaw
at the core of Nick and Honey’s relationship with a wicked game of “Get the
Guest.” He also reveals the fact that his and Martha’s son is imaginary. With
the destruction of these illusions the characters are now free in a way they
weren’t before. The ending of the play also bears a close resemblance to
classic comedy in that the characters pair off in the end. Both couples end up
together, which was never in the making during the course of the play. After
the loss of many battles, George finally wins his war with Martha. When he
“kills” their imaginary son and exposes him as an illusion, his wife’s will to
fight finally seems broken.
Suspense
The play draws to a close as Nick and Honey take their leave. Martha
makes one last effort to convince George that they should “give birth”
to their son again. He refuses. At the play’s final moment George and
Martha are left alone together, stripped of all illusions. They have nothing
but the bitter reality of their existence to comfort them. In a strange
way, they seem to be drawing closer to each other towards the end of
the play in very bizarre circumstances, getting solace out of nothing.
Their only consolation being consent not dissent for which they fight.
Unlike most comedies, however, the characters aren’t all happy-go-lucky at
the end. The stripping of illusion has laid them bare to the emptiness of their
lives. In some ways the ending resembles tragedy, as the characters have all
paid the price of their flaws. There’s also been a death of sorts, though it is
of an imaginary person. Because the play has tragic elements fused into its
comic structure it is often called a tragicomedy. In absurd plays we find both
these elements. Adversity calls forth protagonists acceptance of reality as it
is. The play argues that people must come to terms with absurdity of their
existence before they can lead honest lives.
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Absurd Drama
19.7 LIFE AND THE MEANINGLESSNESS
OF MODERN EXISTENCE; THE
IMAGINARY SON
Absurd plays bear wonderfully up with meaninglessness of life. The play
breaks the ice of modern existence replete with existential crisis in respect
of the routine life of the protagonists. Comic relief brings on existential
crisis to be reconciled with. Martha calls up fun to deal with such a situation:
Martha: Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf..
Honey: Oh, Wasn’t that funny? That was so funny (1.209-210)
The ridiculous and unrecoverable riddle of the life is also brought about in
the play which is at best absurd and meaningless. The often repeated line,
funny as it is, is the punch line that appears a joke pointing out how the
modern existential crisis takes place in day to day life.
The theme of meaninglessness of existence is exposed when Martha’s age
and weight is hinted at by George knowing pretty well that women are very
much against it. Mark the pertinent dialogue between George and Nick:
George: Martha is a hundred and twenty…twenty…five…year old. She
weighs more than that. How old is your wife?
Nick: She is twenty six.
George: Martha is a remarkable woman. I would imagine she weighs around
a hundred and ten.
Nick: Your…wife…weighs…?
George: No, no, my boy. Yours! Your wife. My wife is Martha (1.311-315)
Upon close scrutiny one notices identity crisis which is an essentially a
modern trait which seems absurd in any case, the play confidently brings
out. If the protagonists themselves confuse with their identity where no
relation, relationship devoid of values, becomes a prominent relationship
what values will remain in relationships?
Again the fact that the protagonist is a history professor, discarding all
present realities in favour of the past events, being envious of the present,
unreliable past is going to celebrate absurd condition of modern man George
so strongly represents:
George: national boundaries, the level of the ocean, political allegiances,
practical morality…none of these would I stake my stick on anymore (1.649)
He dispenses with all boundaries which is absurd because if we fail to keep
faith in the realities around meaning in life always appear far off and beyond
our comprehension, a theme that an absurd play highlights well.
Humanity can never be free from bizarre calculations of life is illustrated by
the play on many occasions. Consider the poignant dialogue where George
laments fleeting character of rules and strictures pointing out with pain that
all we have or aspire for is worth nothing. In the larger scheme of things
these principles are found inadequate lacking strength of character and
substance :
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George: You take the trouble to construct a civilization…to…to build a Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
society, based on the principles of…of principle […] then all at once […] of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
through all the sensible sounds of men building […] comes the Dies Irae.
And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours. (2.270-2.273)
Martha’s monologue in act three is a futile attempt on part of the protagonist
to fill in the gaps around her. She talks sense in George’s absence. But
talks absolutely nonsense in his presence. Her rare civic behavoiur really
surprises the reader: .
Martha: Deserted! Abandon-ed! Left out in the cold like an old pussycat.
HA! Can I get you a drink, Martha? Why, thank you, George; that’s very
kind of you. (3.1)
Isn’t it absurd that we are talking about compatibility in a relationship while
pretty well knowing that it is mere adjustment and sacrifice? The moment
we try to demand out of a relationship, including marriage, breaking up
seems to be the best option. Many relationships collapse like a pack of cards
if the partners start considering their respective interests first. Modern day
relationships are a case in point. If this not absurd what relationships else
could ever be?
The following excerpt is about how a modern man lives in illusion knowing
well in advance that it is only suffering and unreality that man’s life is
consisted of. He is a refugee of his own making that reflects the absurdity of
man. Nick and Martha’s conversations reveals this existential crisis pretty
well:
Nick: You’re all crazy: nuts.
Martha: Awww, ‘tis the refuge we take when the unreality of the world
weighs too heavy on our tiny heads.[…]Relax; sink into it; you’re no better
than anybody else. ( 3.18-3.19)
The present that man is destined for is always incomplete. Human beings
go on living in the unreal or incomplete present in the hope of getting better
fortunes tomorrow. But the tomorrow happens to be no better than today
and the hope never recedes and the waiting never ends as symbolically put
forth by Becket’s play Waiting for Godot. The confusion between truth and
illusion as pointed out by George and Martha towards the end of the play is
a well known absurdist trope:
Martha: Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference.
George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.
Martha: Amen. (3.161-3.163)
The modern man’s existential crisis is portrayed precisely in the above lines.
It is proved well beyond contention that we have to carry on living in this
world even when we do not know the difference between truth and illusion.
In the attempt of doing something meaningful in life we end up with absurd
realities having no concrete claim over our deeds. Compromise seems to be
the underlying truth whether we achieve something or not. But the fact that
we have to continue living in this absurd world is the only reality that we
can derive out of all our deeds. The play has a clear mission to alert man of
his blind ambitions, to continue despite all absurdities of life.
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Absurd Drama By the end of the play George and Martha are forced to face the hard
absurdity of their condition. There lives have been failures. Even if they
had succeeded it would mean nothing. They both hate and love each other,
yet still they’re all the other has. It’s a bleak future, but the overall message
of the play seems to be that we must face the absurd in order to live honest
lives.

19.8 LACK OF COMMUNICATION

The Theme of Failure of Communication: The main characteristic of the
absurd drama is failure of communication between characters. There is
breakdown of communication between individuals. This theme is found in
the Edward Albee’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? When we read
the play we learn that there is no communication between the four characters.
When the play begins we see that George and Martha always quarrel. They
attack each other verbally. We also see that at the end of act two Martha
flirts with Nick and also try to commit adultery with him. But both can’t
get success in it because Nick has drunk a lot. Then in the beginning of Act
Three Martha humiliates Nick and also hates him as he doesn’t fulfill her
sexual desire. The second example is Nick and his wife Honey. Nick and
Honey also haven’t got true love. Before their marriage, both hadn’t have
true love. Before their marriage both had relationship with each other. And
later on Honey tells Nick that she becomes pregnant of his child so, they
marry each other. This is just a story of their marriage but actually Honey
wants to marry Nick so she pretends that she is pregnant from him, though
actually she is not. And Nick also has no true love for his wife because he
marries her for the sake of money only.
Take the example of imaginary child for which a lot of action takes place in
the course of the play. The protagonists consider it a real child for which a
lot of confusion takes place. Incompatibility among characters also troubles
the reader of a an absurd play.

19.9 DISILLUSIONMENT
Reality is always pricking and in case of absurd drama it is more biting.
One of the characteristics of the absurd drama is that reality is unbearable
so there are illusions. We find this element in this play in ample measure.
From the beginning of the play we see, Martha drinks a lot. Her life is too
hollow and empty because she is childless. She fears to face reality so she
lives in the sweet world of illusion. She creates illusion that she has a child,
aged 16 and his eyes are like her only. In the act one Martha tells Honey
that they have a child and tomorrow is his birthday. Then George becomes
angry on her as she opens the secret of their child and it causes a quarrel.
But finally George tells Martha that their son is died. “George : Martha ...
[Long pause]...our son is ...dead.[silence]. He was ... killed... late in the
afternoon... [Silence] [A ting chuckle] on a country road. With his learner’s
permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight
into a ...” ( I. 135 ). Both the protagonists are getting away from reality
and relapse into the world of wine. Similarly, Nick and Honey are also
disillusioned in their marriage because Honey tells a lie that she is pregnant
of nick’s child; Nick does not love Honey as much as he loves her money.
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The protagonists have made a mess of their respective relationships which Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
is unique about any absurd play. They remain away from reality and are of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
always under disillusionment.

19.10  ALIENATION EFFECT
Alienation and its Effect: It is another important aspect of the absurdist play.
The characters in the absurd theatre feel alienated from the society and are
highly affected by it. When we think about the readers, it becomes difficult
to identify themselves with the characters of the absurd drama. So, the
readers laugh at them. According to Martin Esslin, the absurd drama speaks
to a deeper level of the audience’s mind. This is true in the present context
when we look at the characters of the play” The characters feel alienated
from each other as we see that they always quarrel with each other. Once,
Martha starts talking about their son. She doesn’t care George’s warning
and goes on talking about their son so, George becomes angry and grabs her
by her throat. Nick throes George on the floor in order to recluse Martha.
Thus, George is humiliated by his wife and Nick. Later on Martha and Nick
humiliate George and again Nick is humiliated by Martha. In this way there
are lots of scenes, which show alienation. In the drama the characters are
highly affected by this alienation. The contact and talking sense eludes the
characters forever.
The protagonists George and Martha are childless and have no love for each
other. The other couple who come as guests is not free from vulnerabilities.
They have their own shortcomings and incompatibilities in the world. They
hate each other. Yet we laugh at them as their condition is absurd. In all their
endeavours, the characters face utter loneliness and alienation indicating
failure of social systems in a welfare state.

19.11  BLACK HUMOUR AND DARK COMEDY

Mingling of Comic and Serious Elements : Like an absurdist play, Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? has comic nature with serious aspects. Let us
throw light on the comic elements in the play. The play is full of comic
situations. For instance, the practical jokes created by George create comic
situations. At one point, he aims a shot-gun at Martha’s head but when he
pulls the trigger, a Chinese parasol (umbrella) blossoms from the barrel of
the gun. This creates comedy. Later, in the play George brings a large bunch
of snapdragons, which he has stolen from the house of Martha’s father. He
also throws the flowers at Martha and Nick as if they are spears.
Then the names of various games create much amusement among the reader.
The first game is called as ‘‘Humiliate the Host’’. But George himself is the
victim of the game. Martha and Nick humiliate him. He is so much hurt that
he decides to take revenge upon his rivals. So, he suggests another game
named “Hump the Hostess”. It means that the male guest may seduce the
female host. It is amusing that he tries to humiliate his own wife, Martha. He
does so because he is annoyed by her efforts to flirt with young Nick. The
next game is called as “Get the Guests”. In this game George and Martha
humiliate the guests and particularly, Nick. The humiliation causes much
comedy for the audience. Next Georges’ comment about Martha’s father
is creates black humorous as he calls him a large white mouse with red
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Absurd Drama eyes. In this way, there are lots of comic scenes in the play, which create
comedy. The play is also replete with scenes having some serious elements
too. The ending of the play is pathetic and the first two acts too contain
tragic elements. For e.g. the story of the boy who kills his parents narrated
by George is serious and pathetic because later on we learn that the boy
is none other than George himself who kills his own parents. Then, in the
play, there are humiliations of George, Martha and Nick, which provide
much tragic-comedy. But in this humiliation they actually hurt each other.
This contributes to the serious element in the play. Then ending of the play
is quite pathetic and even tragic. It is concerned with the game “Bringing
up the Baby”. Marta and George are childless. They have to face this grim
reality. So Martha has created illusions in her life. She imagines that they
have a son. In the course of the story George and Martha humiliate each
other. But Martha learns the truth finally and becomes pitiable as she has
to face “Virginia Woolf”’ i.e. grim reality. In this way in the play there are
mingling of comic and serious elements, confirming to the stand taken by an
absurd play. Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker is also an absurd drama which
was written in the 1960 offering a good comparison with the present play.
The comparison shows that there are some common elements, which make
theme absurd drama pertinent one. Here are some common elements in both
dramas.
The first and the most important element of the absurd drama is failure
of communication which we find in both the plays. In Edward Albee’s
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? the characters are not able to establish
communication between each other. This same situation is there in The
Caretaker. The protagonist is Davies is almost alienated from others. He
leaves his wife within a week after their marriage and never meets her again.
He can’t continue his work as a cleaner. The Scotchman quarrels with him,
beats him and he has to leave the place. The Monk in the monastery insults
him and sends him away. He can’t communicate with Aston. His complaints
to Mick that Aston does not tell him, where he goes and what he does, he
does not confide in others. Like Davies, Aston too fails to communicate with
others. He talks too much in the café and factory but after his electric shock
treatment, he doesn’t go there. He lives away from his mother. He works
more and speaks less with Davies. He hardly speaks with his brothers, thus
there is failure of communication. The theme of alienation is also common
to both the plays, which make them absurd dramas. Like the characters
in the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woo? suffering from alienation or
loneliness, Davies is also alienated from the society. He is all alone. He
has no social status, he has to leave his wife and café. He can’t establish
permanent friendship with Aston and Mick. He desires to move up to the
upper social status but fails because of his follies. In the same way Aston
too is an alienated fellow. He is almost all alone in the room. Mick is hardly
seen in his bed. He is unable to go to the cafe and enjoy talk. In this way we
find that there is theme of alienation operating with full swing in the play.
Then the next element of the absurd drama is mingling of comic and serious
aspect which we find in both plays. The Caretaker is the play with comic
elements compressed with serious incidents. There is fine combination of
the comic and the tragic elements. The behaviors, manners and language of
Davies provide much comedy. However, his real condition is miserable. He
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is boastful, greedy, a liar, quarrelsome and ungrateful but he is also poor, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
homeless, lonely, old and jobless. He loses the golden opportunity to work of Virginia Woolf:
Contextualizing The Text
as a caretaker. Similarly, we enjoy Aston as he talks a lot but we feel sorry
when due to this reason he has to go under a shock treatment. In this way,
there are comic and serious aspects, which have mingled together.

19.12  SUMMING UP
In this unit we have seen how Albee’s Play Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
is endowed with
●● absurd elements which includes lack of communication among
characters.
●● the element of existential crisis of human beings pointing out how life
is meaningless.
●● characters are alienated from each other, being integral members of
society they aspire to live together. But the play does not offer them
any respite as they are alienated from each other.
●● the theme of disillusionment in the play is prominent as the characters
remain away from reality and prefer instead the world of illusions.
●● the elements of tragicomedy is found frequently in the play confirming
to the absurdist stand of the play.

19.13  CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. Discuss the play Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as an absurd Play.
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2. Do you agree that the theme of alienation is central to the play you
have studied? Elaborate.
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3. Consider the play as tragicomedy citing from the play you have
studied.
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4. Are Absurd Plays indifferent to Wars? Discuss in the light of the play
you have studied.
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Absurd Drama ………………………………………………………………………
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5. Compare and contrast the characters George and Martha.
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6. Sketch the character of Martha. Is she a mismatch for George? Give
your Opinion.
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7. What similarities do you find between Albee’s play and other absurd
Plays like Becket’s Waiting For Godot ?
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8. Discuss the elements of realism and absurdist elements in the play
Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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19.14  SELECT READING LIST

“The Art of Theatre No 4; Edward Albee” Interview with Elbee in Paris
Review. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-29. Retrieved on 23
03. 2020.
Billington, Michael . “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a misunderstood
masterpiece” in the Guardian
Gussow, Mel (2001).Edward Albee: A Singular Journey: A Biography, New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Villard Books, 1993.
“Taking No Prisoners in Boozy, Brutal Head Games”. The New York Times.
Retrieved 23 .03. 2020.
Roberts, James L. Cliffs Notes on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. 04 Apr
2020

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UNIT 20: EDWARD ALBEE’S WHO’S
AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
AS AN ABSURD DRAMA
Structure
20.0 Objective
20.1 Overview to Absurd Theatre
20.2 About the Author
20.3 Ethos of American Drama
20.4 Edward Albee: Nativizing the Absurd
20.5 Overview of the Play
20.6 Theme of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
20.6.1 Fact and Fiction
20.6.2 Communication and its Failure
20.6.3 Marital Bonds and Relationships
20.7 Plot
20.8 Child, Dream and Absurdity of Edward Albee
20.9 Characters of the Play
20.9.1 Martha
20.9.2 George
20.9.3 Nick
20.9.4 Honey
20.10 Absurd Elements in the Play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
20.11 Check your progress: Possible questions (with answer keys)

20.0 OBJECTIVE
After reading this Unit, you will be able to:
●● know about the works of Edward Albee
●● comprehend Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf as different from Albee’s
other works
●● understand absurd drama broadly in the context of this text
●● locate social forces as determining the structure of absurdity
●● understand the reality of an individual and the society in the utilitarian
paradigm of modern America.

20.1 OVERVIEW TO ABSURD THEATRE

WHAT IS ABSURD?
“What do we do now, now that we are happy?”
(Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

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Absurd Drama “Today, tragedy is collective.”
(Albert Camus, The Rebel)
For centuries man has been plunged into nothingness and unfortunately he is
unaware of it. What is nothing? In a prolonged space between life and death
where we are asked to do something in the name of nothing – ‘nothing’ as
action tends to be zero in result but is not zero. Even through the words of
William Shakespeare, we have come to feel the omniscience of nothing
when the great dramatist uttered, “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury … signifying nothing.” Absurdity in life can be best experienced
when we realize the vacuum between intention and final experience. We
always fall short of the goal because the anxiety due to trial and errors for
generations fails us unconsciously. Man’s intellect from the eighteenth and
the nineteenth century was channeled by the essentialist thought. Descartes
had influenced the belief of man when he said, “Je pense, donc je suis” in
French translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.”
Man from the beginning of his life is unaware of the repetition, the chaos
and the victimizing character of both life and death. To the question that
can man do in such a situation is that he has to escape the structure. If he
escapes, only then can he understand that life is absurd. This experience
that life is a cycle of repetitions can only be gained when man can escape
the structure.
The latter half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century
were ripped apart by a school of beliefs and historical event like the world
wars which changed the thought process of the entire generation. Charles
Darwin through his anthropological study had displaced the theocentric
order (god-centered) whereby god was an inevitable answer to everything.
Man suddenly proved to be the actual successor of the apes in the natural
process of evolution. In the materialist belief, Karl Marx had already
showed how the humanistic philosophy was a farce as he explained that
history of humankind was an ontological conflict of bourgeois and the
proletariats; haves and have-nots; oppressor and the oppressed. Sigmund
Freud argued that human subconscious triggered all human desires and
actions. Einstein’s intentions (E=mc2 made for the good of mankind) and
Hiroshima’s experience (the formula modified to create atom bomb during
World War II) contains a molestation of talent in the hands of the system.
Martin Esslin in his book The Theatre of the Absurd, states that there are
some dramatists like Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov, Genet, Pinter, Edward
Albee and others who express a “sense of metaphysical anguish at the
absurdity of the human condition.” (Introduction xix)
The Theatre of the Absurd as described by Martin Esslin disregards
rationally motivated characters and the cause and effect relationship of
drama. It disregards the three unities – time, place and action of traditional
theatre. Language as a logical means of communication ceases to exist.
Esslin refers to Ionesco who while writing on Kafka said, “Absurd is that
which is devoid of purpose … Cut off from his religious, metaphysical And
transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd
and useless.” (Introduction xix).
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But before we move into Esslin’s definition, it is important to understand Edward Albee’s Who’s
how the wave of modernism impacted on the Western world with the Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
proclamation made by Frederic Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra.
He opined that “God is dead”. In this context, he meant to say that we
have exterminated God by misrepresenting him through justification of
false beliefs. We need to undo the past mistakes and thereby we need an
‘ubermansch’ or ‘Overman’ to wish away the worries. But before achieving
this stage, there was a school of intellectuals like Heidegger, Albert Camus
and Jean Paul Sartre who questioned the productive repetitive structure in
which we are dwelling. Sartre found that this life has become futile as the
space between life and death signified some repetitive actions against a pile
of chaos. Man is an eternal victim of dementia and angst.
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is known as the ‘father of existentialism’ whose
theory began from the nihilistic philosophy and he was against traditional
theologies, philosophies and other belief systems. These intellectuals were
known as existentialists as their emphasis particularly fell on existence. “I
exist therefore I am” proclaimed by the existentialists like Albert Camus
became their mantra thereby suggesting that existence is the key for human
thought to at least try to persevere the angst; to evade the chaotic nature of
life; to no more look towards hero-worship. Heroes withered along with the
shattering of liberal humanism during the Second World War. Existence of
man became the guiding metaphor. Ronald Carter and John McRae states:
“the subject matter is still human condition, but the means and methods
of exploring it are infinitely richer and more varied than before. There are
no more heroes, as there might have been in the time of Beowulf” (The
Routledge History of Literature in English 399). Man according to the
existentialists is thrown into life to understand the non-inherent nature of
truth in this world; to comprehend that human condition is absurd in its
essence. Man swings like a pendulum from nothingness in one pole of the
beginning of life to the other pole where life ends in nothingness.
There was a series of existentialist novels, essays and plays like Camus’ The
Stranger (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus(1942), The Rebel, Sartre’s No Exit
(1944) and so on. The similarity of existential and absurd works of art are
that both profess that man has been hurled before the chaos and all man can
do is to pass the time. The difference between the two experiences is how
they are supposed to pass it. James L. Roberts opines, “But other writers
such as Kafka, Camus, and Sartre have argued from the same philosophical
position. The essential difference is that critics like Camus have presented
their arguments in a highly formal discourse with logical and precise views
which prove their thesis within the framework of traditional forms. On the
contrary, the Theater of the Absurd seeks to wed form and content into an
indissoluble whole, so as to gain a further unity of meaning and impact.”
(Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf 7). Existential works of art
profess for actions of potence: action that is meaningful; action which can
have half a chance to redeem this life’s curse. Absurd literary productions
profess about impotence. They talk about facing the chaos of life with
inaction, with nothingness, with meaninglessness. This action can be as
futile as ‘waiting’ but it still represents an action that tends to be more than
zero. In existentialism the chances of coming out successful is fifty-fifty.
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Absurd Drama For example, the potence portrayed by Sisyphus In The Myth of Sisyphus,
depended on the continuation of effort. Had he given up he would have been
victimized by both life and death. Unconsciously, he kept on pushing the
boulder up the hill and thus maintained immortality. Action in the absurd
world is equal to almost insignificant action and therefore the expectation
is lesser. The characters are aware that all they need to do is pass the time.
Therefore actions like ‘waiting’ to ‘Fun and games’, are having maximum
chance of escaping the Sarte-ian “Bad faith”. Bad faith is the realization
that Man is caught in the angst and repetitive nature of life. Camus in The
Myth of Sisyphus aptly stated the absurd condition, “In a universe that is
suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an
irremediable exile … This divorce between man and his life, the actor and
his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.” (qtd in A Glossary of
Literary Terms 1).
Absurd dramas and novels do not rest on heroic characters. They become
heroes by their undaunted nature of struggle. The characters exist in the form
of pairs – Didi and Gogo; Lucky and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, Hamm
and Clov in Endgame. Both plays were written by Samuel Beckett. Waiting
for Godot is a play where two tramps are caught up in a waste place. The
play rejects realistic settings and portrays the absurdity and irrationalism
of life which disregards coherence and logical evolution of plot. They
wait for a certain person in a post-war setting appearance – Godot, who
never appears and which makes the play contain useless conversations,
games and speeches. In the end they realize, “nobody comes, nobody goes,
it’s awful” And then they decide to leave as they were disgusted by this
meaningless waiting. But the stage direction ends with ‘they do not move’
thereby suggesting the stasis of life is all that the absurd has to offer. Such
a similar pair is there in Endgame too, where one can’t stand and the other
can’t sit – Hamm and Clov. One keeps threatening the other of leaving but
they never leave the other alone. Because one’s existence is authenticated
by the presence of the other, none of them that are why can actually leave.
Though the master-slave relationship had changed in Lucky-Pozzo relation
as we find Lucky pulling the blind Pozzo in The second act of Waiting for
Godot, Lucky doesn’t leave Pozzo as Pozzo had atleast given Lucky’s life a
structure; A meaning in the otherwise meaningless world.
Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano (1950) is an absurdist play which
expresses that man is lost and unable to communicate with each other while
severed from the abstract and metaphysical belief systems. While Beckett
keeps the characters in pairs, Ionesco believes in singularity. They are
lonely and have none to communicate with. This play mentioned before
has screams at each other but no meaningful communication. Ionesco
speaks of the loss of individualism in his magnum opus play, Rhinoceros.
Ionesco goes against the unquestioning nature of society which conforms
to everything. He highlights loss of communication too. The calm weather
and common street ambience is suddenly charged up with rhinos charging
in. Rather than worrying about the sudden metamorphoses of rhinoceroses,
people start wondering if they are from Africa or Asia. When only three
individuals are left and the rest have metamorphosed into rhinos, we hear
appeals of “We must move with the times”. Not to become a rhinoceros is as
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if a sin. When Berenger’s beloved, Daisy joins the society of rhinoceroses it Edward Albee’s Who’s
is because she is scared to rebel against the society for the sake of humanism Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
and continuing her human existence. The last man, Berenger, is thrown
alone against the chaos to undergo the angst. Berenger’s last speech is a
sarcastic resonance of the isolated man. One can find the similarity of the
scream of Beckett’s Breath with Ionesco’s screams in The Bald Soprano.
Ionesco unlike Beckettian holocaust settings uses everyday locales like a
street in Rhinoceros and a drawing room for The Bald Soprano. Ionesco’s
language is conventional while Beckett’s language is rooted in a dream-like
state. Ionesco’s man is unable to converse as there is practically nothing to
communicate. Beckett’s characters get stuck while communicating and say,
“Nothing to be done”.
Unlike Ionesco, Arthur Adamov on the other hand, though technically an
absurdist, is thematically immersed in the existential bent. His contention is
that man in his trial to frame his own identity ends up distancing himself from
others. One who tries to prove his existence fails to portray that he exists.
The protagonist of Professor Tarrane ends up as proving himself guilty
while defending himself in a Kafkaesque trial. Sometimes communication
is paralysed by the use of language as language can often be harmful to
man. The protagonist like every man gets caught in the abyss of language
which he previously tried to use as a weapon to defend himself. All the
characters are heard by the audience and communication between them fails
to reach each other. They are self-centered.
Like Adamov’s professor in Professor Taranne, who due to the vacuum
in communication, fails to get his existence recognized by the others in
the play, Harold Pinter’s characters for example in The Birthday Party are
unable to attain a proper valuable intensity in communication. The central
character of The Birthday Party is Stanley Webber, a classical musician,
who has gone on an exile in a seemingly post World War II scenario. But he
fails to understand that he had been under surveillance all the while by dark
political forces in the form of his well-wishers Meg and Petey (her husband).
His mental serenity got disrupted the moment new tenants arrived: Goldberg
and McCann; one a Jew and the other a Christian. Stanley’s birthday party
that was hosted by Meg became a Kafkaesque trial for the former in the
hands of the new tenants. It was a trial held for betraying the system, the
order. That ‘day’ became a new ‘birth’ of a Stanley and the ‘party’ became
the coliseum for the elimination of the modernist character in him. After the
lights went off and came back again, we find the serious artist in Stanley
playing with a toy-drum and making groans instead of musical harmony.
In the end when Stanley was taken away by Goldberg and McCann, Meg
said that she was the belle of the ball meaning she was the end of Stanley’s
absurdist isolation. Stanley was living without expectations and ambitions
but Meg happened to disrupt his existence according to his own choice.
Jean Genet’s characters condemn the audience from the outset with the
thematic persistence of worldly hatred. In the play The Maids, all the
maids hating each other suggest the hatred perpetrating in this society.
Even with theatrical role-reversals where one character plays the role of
the other, all that we are left with is hatred. This play also suggests the
loss of individualism as two maids. Claire and her sister Solange play the
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Absurd Drama roles of their employer and each other As well. Genet’s obsession with the
theme of hatred lies in the psychosomatic investigation of our fondness of
ego while discarding the existential crudity of life. Straight jacketed in his
own illusions, man is fragmented in his images in the absurd world. Jean
Genet is a playwright who understands the basic distortion of reality. Jean
Genet in his play The Blacks, tries to state that man essentially is a ripped
off from the social structure. He isn’t positive about the future of negroes.
Genet is not sloganeering champion of the Negroes. It doesn’t matter if he
is a Negro or not. He had always been lonely and no matter how hard he
tries to redeem himself, it is virtually impossible to offer him a meaningful
existence. That is why his play The Blacks, he does not prefer an all over
majority of Negroes as audience. Genet’s contention is that in an all total
Negro majority of audience, there should be a Negro atleast wearing a
white mask thus conveying the idea of a disfigured reality. Genet began
the destruction of naturalistic theatre from The Blacks and kept going on
The Balcony. Man is a theatrical creature and the theatricality expresses the
falseness which is the underlying current of his plays.
To conclude with, absurdity means loss of individualism and communication.
Man is compelled to follow unevenness. The characters of absurd plays are
portrayed as alienated individuals and are informed that they are trapped in
a repetitive life. Theater of the Absurd reflects the chaos and perplexity of
man. In opposition to the chaos of life, all that an absurd character has to
offer is ‘nothing’.

20.2 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward Albee was born March 12, 1928 in Washington D.C. to Louise
Harvey. However, he was adopted by Reed and Frances Albee when he was
barely two weeks old. Though Edward belonged to a wealthy family, his
academic life was not an impressive one. He was expelled in 1943 from his
boarding school at Lawrenceville. Though he was enrolled at Valley Forge
Military Academy in Pennsylvania, he was again expelled from there in
1944. His third enrollment was at Choate School in Connecticut. It was here
that he wrote his first play in 1946 named The Schism which was published
in Choate Literary Magazine. Apart graduating from Choate, he went to
Trinity College, Connecticut for higher education. It seems he couldn’t stop
himself from getting expelled due to his continuous absence from classes
and chapel.
In 1947, Albee started to work for WYNC radio. He wrote a three-act play,
The City of People, but it remained unpublished and therefore unproduced.
After a verbal quarrel with his adoptive mother, Albee left home and
moved to Greenwich Village. In the meantime, he tried some jobs on a
temporary basis and also wrote poetry and prose. Albee wrote another
unpublished play named Ye Watchers and Ye Lonely Ones in 1951, a play
of three scenes centered on the tussles of four gays. Then he met Thornton
Wilder in 1953 who inspired Albee to script dramas. Then when he wrote
a verse play named The Making of a Saint using a railroad station as a
backdrop, he dedicated it to his mentor Wilder. Unfortunately, this play too
went unpublished. During that decade, there were some other plays that
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went unpublished and unproduced like The Invalid, The Ice Age, An End to Edward Albee’s Who’s
Summer, The Dispossessed. Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
During the 1950s, he was working with Western Union but he resigned
from that job in 1958. Edward Albee, prior to his thirtieth birthday, wrote
a long one-act play in 1958 named The Zoo Story. This play became his
magnum opus production. After approaching numerous drama directors in
New York, The Zoo Story was sent by Albee’s bosom friend to a mutual
acquaintance in Europe and finally the play was staged in Berlin’s Schiller
Theater Werkstadt, along with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape on
September 28, 1959. Interestingly, it premiered as a German play translated
by Pinkas Braun. It was brimming with success in Germany and finally in
January 1960, it was premiered in New York at the Off-Broadway theatre
Provincetown Playhouse. This play by Albee is an example of minimalist
theatre with limited props and actors producers and with a compact storyline
and persuasive dialogues successfully attracted the critics and audiences
instilling new life to the playwrights of the off-Broadway movement.
Edward Albee was the pioneer of Off-Broadway theatre movement and
produced quite a few plays in the span of two years. He said in the New
York Times that the Broadway theatre was obsessed with commercialism
and was a product of commodification. He opines that the Broadway theatre
was, “… a lazy public that produces a slothful and irresponsible theatre.”
In April 1960, The Death of Bessie Smith satirically portrayed the American
conventionality with ideological enthusiasm. It has a character - the Nurse -
who scatters her cruel attitude through monologues of disgust against Father,
Orderly and Intern. This play coupled with another short play, The Sandbox,
was staged at the Schlosspark Theater, Berlin and at the Jazz Gallery, New
York respectively. The American Dream was staged in 1961 January in New
York at the York Playhouse. In the beginning it was supposed to be presented
aside Albee’s adaptation of Herman Melville’s short-fiction Bartleby. It was
succeeded by The Death of Bessie Smith and interestingly Alan Schneider
was the director for both the plays.
Till then, Albee was yet to become a really popular dramatist but in 1962,
his wish for critical success and fame arrived with Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf which was staged at Billy Rose Theatre of the Broadway lounge.
This drama won the prestigious New York Drama Critics Award and many
awards but in spite of this success, he was denied the Pulitzer Prize for
Drama that year. Though Albee kept on scripting effective plays like A
Delicate Balance (1966) which bagged the Pulitzer Prize, none in the latter
period were so widely popular and critically acclaimed than Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf?
Albee’s adapted Carson McCullers’s novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
(1963) and staged it on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre. That same
year, Albee used some of profits of production (with the agreement of his
producers) from Virginia Woolf to launch the Playwrights’ Unit at the Village
South Theatre, to bring forth novel talents of budding dramatists. Albee
endeavored to direct The Zoo Story with minimal budget in Pennsylvania.
While Tiny Alice premiered at the Billy Rose Theatre on 1964, it was staged
in London, Britain 1965 by Royal Shakespeare Company. In the meantime,
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Absurd Drama Albee and his adoptive mother who had a long standing squabble finally
ended probably due to Albee’s adoptive father’s death in 1961. This was a
blessing in disguise in his personal life as he got to reconcile with his mother
for a long period. Edward Albee was named as a Distinguished Professor of
Drama at the University of Houston in 1988 where he engaged playwriting
classes. But in the next year, Albee came to experience the unfortunate
demise of his adoptive mother Frances Cotter Albee.
Then Albee went on to nativize Giles Cooper’s play Everything in the Garden
in the American context in 1967 and staged it on Broadway at the Plymouth
Theatre. Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung followed it on
the next year in 1968 and was staged at the Billy Rose Theatre.
All Over (1971) is a two-act play of love and sadistic alliance and conspiracy
where a man’s fate rests on the will of two women. Seascape premiered
on Broadway at the Schubert Theatre in 1975 January. This play focuses
on relationships and communication between the characters. This play too
bagged a Pulitzer Prize. Listening (1976) appeared as radio play in Britain
on BBC Radio 3. In the same year, Counting the
Ways was staged in London at the Royal National Theatre. This play and
Counting the Ways was premiered on the American stage in 1977 January
and was directed by Edward Albee.
The Lady from Dubuque (1980) is a play centered on three couples and
is highly inspired by the Pirandellian dialogue style which was staged on
Broadway at the Morosco Theatre and ran for twelve performances. Albee
adapted Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita (1981) and the play was staged
at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The same year, he wrote Another Part of
the Zoo, a variation of The Zoo Story, meant for a private benefit function.
The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983) premiered at Lyceum Theatre,
is a play containing three main characters – The Man, The Woman and
Himself. It condemns parent-child relationships and the hollowness of the
Catholic Church. Finding the Sun (1983) is a one-act play of 21 scenes in
the backdrop of New England shore and eight characters forming four pairs
of different generations expressing the difficulties of relationships and a
tinge of the absurdism of The Sandbox. Albee was trying to portray how the
proscenium ‘box’ was becoming lesser in opportunity of content. Finding
the Sun and Walking (1984) was premiered as a double bill together as the
latter was scripted. Marriage Play, premiered in Vienna’s English Theatre
in 1987, is a story of Jack and Gillian who play fun games to wither away
the distaste for life just like George and Martha of Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? The play ends with a shocking revelation when memory excavations
bring out the unfaithful elements stuffed inside them.
Albee’s third Pulitzer came in the year 1994 with the two-act play Three
Tall Women (1990). The play was staged at English Theatre, Vienna and
was directed by the playwright himself. The characters are A, B and C and
focuses on the detachment and problematic relationship of an adoptive
mother and a gay son. This play is seeped into Albee’s own relationship
with his adoptive mother who had died in 1989. Sacharow’s production
of Three Tall Women at the off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre, New York
took place in February 1994 and also it was staged in Britain at the Theatre
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Royal, Haymarket. Meanwhile, Albee directed two self-written plays: The Edward Albee’s Who’s
Lorca Play (1992) which was premiered at University of Houston and the Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
Fragments (1993) staged at Ohio’s Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. The
Play about the Baby appeared for the first time in London’s Almeida Theatre
in September, 1998. Set in an absurd Eden-like ambience, there is a boy and
a pregnant girl who later in the play talk to each other holding a blanket
substituting the new born child. This play prompts the sterile atmosphere of
the utilitarian America immersed in the race for the American dream. The
play was staged in U.S. in 2001 at the Century Center for the Performing
Arts, New York.
Albee’s 2002 production of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? at the Golden
Theatre in Broadway won the Tony award for best new play on Broadway.
He also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. This play borrows
its name partly from Shakespeare who wrote a son in a play named ‘Who
is Sylvia’. It is a play where Albee condemns the judgment of the society
regarding taboos as a husband and father develops a romantic feeling for a
goat. Occupant (2001) was supposed to have been premiered in 2004 but
was suddenly cancelled due to the unavailability of the main star. The last
play by Albee was another absurd play named Me, Myself and I (2007)
produced at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre. Edward Albee died in September
16, 2016.

20.3 ETHOS OF AMERICAN DRAMA

The mainstream twentieth century American Drama was socialistic,
naturalistic and realistic in character. It focused on the contemporary middle
class. The scope of the avant-garde was limited. That is why they had to
depend on experimental theatre for improvisation. This experimentalism
was largely encompassing the works of Eugene O’ Neill. His inner domain
of dramaturgy was centered on psychological realism and the outer domain
was focusing on social realism. The equation of God and man or society
and individual was reverberating through his dramatic idiom. His defining
theatrical traits were drama of quest, drama of analysis and drama of
introspection. Then the dramatic movement of American theatre focused
the 1930s – the phase of Depression and its effect on American drama.
The dramatists in that phase would be measuring the impact of Depression
on day-to-day life of everyone. Clifford Odets’ play Waiting for Lefty is
reminiscent of this trend. It is important to note that how American middle
class was affected became the ideology of the dramatists. The middle class
has always been the central character and not kings or emperors. Democracy
has been a core component of America right from the beginning, since its
freedom. This paves the way for democracy to dive into American theatre.
It was a time when the playwrights were trying to portray how the impact of
the Great Depression was ruining the average life of an average American -
be it through the upset of marriages or kitchen life.
In that era of 1920s and 1930s, there followed a stream which was initiated
by a few avant-garde dramatists like Elmer Rice and Sherwood Anderson.
In Elmer Rice’s play The Adding Machine (1923), through Mr. Zero’s plight,
we find how people are adding one’s functions simply by strengthening or
functioning of that system. One finds himself practically converted into an
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Absurd Drama adding machine or in other words, man becomes equal to the adding machine
because he contributes to the overall process of increase in production. What
are you or who are you – a big zero, and hence the central protagonist is
Mr. Zero. You are contributing to the enhancement of that system of which
you are an integral part. Sherwood Anderson’s two-act drama, The Petrified
Forest (1936), is a forest petrified meaning man without human content.
Thematically it suggests that man has become converted into a machine, a
robot – bereft of humanity. These alternative American playwrights were
trying to tap up the journey within in this way.
This has another way of continuation when we come to the post-hippies era
or the post Second World War. Tennessee Williams was a prominent figure
during these times. He was quite like Eugene O’ Neill in approach. Both
Williams and Arthur Miller are near contemporaries. Miller had the element
of social realism and Tennessee Williams pursued psychological realism
in their plays. The average character that Williams projects is the feeble,
the misfit, the neurotic, the chaotic. Such characters are self alienated in
decisions, in families, in societies and in community as well. Williams
captures this trauma of being a loner in the society where there are not many
sympathizers taking recourse to different devices. Miller shows man versus
the others, social forces or hostile atmosphere. Man has two options – when
the individual is faced against social forces, either he can be victorious or he
can be defeated. Go down or go up – anything can occur.

20.4 EDWARD ALBEE: NATIVIZING THE

ABSURD
As the movement of American drama reaches the sixties, we find Edward
Albee dominating the theatrical scenario. Through his dramatic art we find a
major difference between American and European absurd drama. European
absurd drama does not have the social base apart from certain exceptions
like Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros which was a little overt play (not too
explicit) connecting with the social picture hinting at the backdrop of rise
of Fascism. Otherwise majority of European absurd plays remained asocial
and ahistorical, devoid of any social base. Waiting for Godot is a glittering
example in such a context.
Being realistic, socialistic, historic is American. This is why Albee went for
socio-cultural context Playwright is reacting against anything that is asocial
and a-historical because American audiences will discard any such alienated
context. And if at all they accept, there must be a strong marked connect
with the present. American drama thinks always on utilitarian, pragmatic
traits. Even their sci-fi and spiritual works of art have a strong social base.
American absurdist theatre must have a social base. It therefore becomes
clearly recognizable what the dramatist tries to communicate. They make
it a truly, a near picture as this picture doesn’t seem to be coming from afar
as it straightaway emanates. The American audience must feel that this real,
that it can happen with them, only then will they back up in its presence.
Albee nativizes the absurd in the American mould. The central influence on
American absurd dramatists, especially Edward Albee, is Pirandello – known
for the theatre of contrast. If we are to find a parallel of Albee’s contrast in
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Britain, then we find John Osborne. The only difference is Osborne uses Edward Albee’s Who’s
the naturalistic idiom while Albee uses the absurd idiom. Osborne opined Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
that the existing theatrical form has exhausted itself. Therefore we have to
devise some new form and formula – we had to devise a theatre of feeling, a
British way of feeling. This was an attempt since D. H. Lawrence’s time and
also since Victorian era when snobbery, prudery was being attacked because
people didn’t present themselves as they actually were. They had put on a
mask – a pose. These traits resulted in a theatre of feelings as one posed as
A or B or C ad infinitum. These artificial, man-made differences don’t allow
man to behave as if we were truly human beings. How to dismantle these
many artificial boundaries which we have developed on our own or certain
vested interests was the primary question. In this, is class barrier, feeling of
apathy, critical distancing – all these things let us behave as if we were truly
human as theatre was going to serve the purpose. Theatre was the tool to
arrive at that end. It reminds us of the plethora of Look Back in Anger, we
can pretend that we are human. So the pretention and game-playing has a
definite reason. It is believed that your continuous pretention will become
one day like role-playing; if you keep playing a role then one day that role
will get naturalized and you will become that role though initially you might
be pretending or just playing. But with the passage of time in the long run
it is expected that the role is integrated in your inner psyche and you act
according to that role. This change that has occurred internal, attitudinal and
psychological, the metamorphosis in one’s conduct, demeanor and stance,
this is an expectation that is present in Albee. In the preface of American
Dream did it offend. Antonin Artoud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Pirandello and
Chekhov – all have their distinct influences on Albee but the latter doesn’t
borrow the formers straight away explicitly because his play Zoo Story
premiered as double bill with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in
Berlin, Germany. The audience had nativized Albee and the dramatist had
championed the proletarians. In a Marxist interpretation, Albee’s typical
protagonist in America drama presents social realism in a partial absurd
flavor. The absurd is very much social in context in America. So Albee is a
playwright and an absurdist with a message. Otherwise his writing is futile
if it is bereft of a social message. His message is I should do something
for something. A play is a tool to arrive at the end. We find interplay of
illusion and reality in the center of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee’s
intention to put illusion is to connect the illusion of American Dream in the
social frame. He suggests that whatever America proposes as the Promised
Land, land of freedom, land of immense scope and land of prosperity is
like a colored balloon which though looks pompous is actually filled with
boredom, ennui, and vacuity. This is what he wishes to communicate
through his plays. What is the quality which is there to be found is what his
search and presentation is about. He wants to dispel the venire of illusion
in order to picture the real face of American life which is practically devoid
from within.
This is why the child of George and Martha has a very symbolic role as
only through a symbol can you naturally be suggesting something. Albee
takes recourse to employment symbols in all his plays and these symbols
are highly functional. They behave like tools allow an artist to present their
own vision. Unlike a philosopher who presents a straightaway analysis, an
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Absurd Drama artist can talk of symbols of possibility – possibility of life to be specific
with. Albee is therefore taking a microscopic anatomy of the contemporary
American scene through his plays one after the other. And this anatomy is
a ruthless and merciless form of anatomy because Albee believes that we
can change. As we know from his life that it was a rebellious one in nature.
No doubt Clinton in 2004 mentioned about him that in Albee’s individual
rebellion the America was reborn with the signs and symptoms of a newly
liberated nation.

20.5 OVERVIEW OF THE PLAY – WHO’S

AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
The drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? takes place in the campus of
a college of New England university. There are four characters. The play
initiates with two major characters, Martha and George, returning home
from a party at her father’s place. George is a History professor and Martha,
his wife, is the daughter of the president of the college where George
teaches. The couple is very close to each other, but certain situations have
metamorphosed their marital relations and turned them into eccentric
rivals of each other. In spite of returning late at two in the night, they have
welcomed guests – Nick and Honey, a young biology professor and his
spouse.
Nick and Honey, completely unaware of the cynical relationship of George
and Martha, answer the invitation call. It is to be noted that George is six
years younger than his wife. In the first act, “Fun and Games,” the younger
couple insult and disrespect in innumerable and novel methods thus making
the younger couple, Nick and Honey, uneasy. But with some pretentious
games, George and Martha exploit Honey and Nick, converting the invited
couple into viewers testifying their embarrassing behaviours. In the next act,
“Walpurgisnacht,” the games of George and Martha turn more disgusting.
Games are converted into horrendous experiences. George and Martha
take on Honey and Nick and try to bring out their distasteful identities
and secrets underneath the garb of polished appearances. In the final act,
“The Exorcism,” the actual identities of all the characters are exposed and
cleansed. Honey’s overestimation of her husband shatters, Nick’s unfaithful
character meets a just end and the secret regarding George’s and Martha’s
son finds a shocking revelation. After the exit of Honey and Nick in the
climax, we find George and Martha trying to rethink about renovating their
weary and traumatized marital relationship.

20.6 THEME OF WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA

WOOLF?
20.6.1 Fact and Fiction
Talking about the thematic aspects of the play, we come to observe how the
dichotomy of fact and fiction blurs. The marriage of George and Martha
dwelt on a fictional paradigm for sustenance. In Act III, Martha realized
that withering more than George. The infertility in their relationship created
the urgency of a fictional child in order to keep their hold on life. Later on
they understood that life has become a meaningless signifier in this illusory
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display and pretence. They are confessing this fantasy to themselves and Edward Albee’s Who’s
to Nick and Honey while beckoning into inquiry other things George and Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
Martha utter in the play. It is a fantasy and an illusion if George was really
the reason for the death of his parents. Honey’s hysterical pregnancy and
George’s gun turning into a toy and nick’s temporary display of sexual
victory over Martha are fictional elements of the theme. Alcohol, tales, sex,
and verbal conflicts are weapons of the characters in order to stay away from
the real. The apparent show of the characters is pretence. Martha underneath
her vulgarity is vulnerable and broken. She appears as victorious but she is
the one who yearns for security from the factual world. George, apparently
inactive and subjugated, in the end seems to be the savior of Martha’s life
and in doing so, he saves himself as well. Nick, the “stud” and champion
of the American dream, becomes an impotent signifier. Honey apparently
a delicate woman and one who yearns to be a mother getting inspired from
Martha’s fictional motherhood, ends up being a merciless woman who
stops not from practicing acts of abortion. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
outlines a significant theme in this way that the public now live by illusions
as reality is too complicated and excruciating to encounter.
20.6.2 Communication and its Failure
Communication falters throughout the play and is thus another a recurrent
theme. The characters are regularly, but fruitlessly, trying to communicate
on a complex level among themselves. Martha and George deal in insulting
each other verbally until the end. the proper sense of understanding comes
to them towards the climax. Their language of communication seems more
reliable compared to the superficiality and deception between Nick and
Honey. Honey pretends hysterical illness and pregnancy in order to subjugate
nick while nick on the other hand, attempts to have illicit relationships to
prosper because he knows his own relation with honey has always been a
fruit of opportunism. The customary public communiqué is mimicked in
the play the hackneyed comments and ordinary expressions symbolize the
vacuum or the void of speech. Early in the play, George appears resolute
to baffle Nick by banters, quick shifts of topic, and premeditated slowness.
Violence is another form of language and communication. The boxing match
reference between George and Martha or George trying to use a toy gun or
Nick and George almost trying to beat each other down – all these prove
that violence is a means to reach out at each other. Verbal assaults shared
among George and Martha is another form of psychological exchange of
aggression, of words, et al.
20.6.3 Marital Bonds and Relationships
Marriage and relationships appear blurred while the relation of George
and Martha is a contemporary symbol of infertility. George and Martha
follow the traditional battle of the sexes as portrayed By Shakespeare in
Much Ado About Nothing. However, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? depict
characters who are aggressive and try to conceal their actual needs in their
aggressive insults. ‘American Dream’ is a philosophy for most people that
offer them the chance to attain “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”
(as according to the American Declaration of Independence). The illusions
of accomplishment and qualitativeness appear to be an aspiration that the
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Absurd Drama people continually have struggled to attain for an extensive duration. Dreams
can be satisfied by anyone, indiscriminate of the societal conditions, out of
Assiduousness and resolve.
Jannis Rudzki-Weise states:
Writing the play during the Cold War in 1962, when the world was close
to a nuclear war, Albee responded to the questioning of the patriotic beliefs
which was an ongoing problem in the USA. It is therefore not surprising
that Albee chose the names George and Martha, after President George
Washington and his wife, and Nick, after Nikita Khrushchev, the First
Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This symbolizes the
imperfect state of the USA and shows the people the conflict right in front
of their faces. (Truth, Illusion and the American Dream in Edward Albee’s
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” www.grin.com)
By stating the words the “first couple,” Albee through George and Martha
extracts the dark humour that encompasses the vice of the American
ideal. However the verbal assaults between them far supersede nick and
honey that are actually hollow. The former couple is more hopeful in the
end than Nick and Honey. Martha’s relation with and her father was sad
without any positive influences. George and his parents possibly didn’t
have good bonding as well. Honey and her father had a strange relation of
opportunism. An above all shallow and unfortunate relationship is George’s
and Martha’s fictional “child.” Infertility is authenticated by the drama’s
usage of fictional and prospective children: George and Martha’s fabricated
boy and the fictional pregnancies that Honey has so-called avoided. Albee’s
allusions to “baby”, “child” is ironic. George and Martha use the term as a
doubtfully polite word. They also employ timid conversations like babies.
Honey pretends as a baby taking a fetal position as a symbol that she is
unable to grow up and mother a child. This play is George’s and Martha’s
frantic endeavor to improve, rather than annihilate, a marital bond. After
the death of the “child”, George and Martha try to rethink their fictional
dwelling and understand that it is better to come to terms to reality. At first
Martha was not afraid of the illusion they were living as she was enjoying
the nursery rhyme parody. But that parody fell hard on her and she lets
out that scare and surrenders to George who had a better understanding of
reality.

20.7 PLOT
Act One: “Fun and Games”
George and Martha are a couple living in a town called New Carthage.
George is a 46-year old associate professor of history at a college and was
a favorite of the president. His wife Martha is a 52-year old the president’s
daughter. George and Martha are found to be behaving in a strange, over-
excited manner. George tries to act as the subdued husband while Martha is a
more ruckus creator wife in the dead of night – a person who suddenly sings
“Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf” (Albee, 5)
without any reason. After they return home from a party at two o’ clock in the
night, Martha tells George that she has invited a young married couple. The
relationship of George and Martha is complex as at one particular moment,
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we find Martha feels like puking due to his husband’s conversation, while at Edward Albee’s Who’s
another moment, George chauvinistically speaks without coyness and with Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
a sexual tone, “… if I kissed you I’d get all excited . . . I’d get beside myself,
and I’d take you, by force, right here on the living room rug, and then our
guests would walk in. . .” (7). The ‘fun and games’ hints an all-pervasive
darkness in humor at the beginning of the play in this manner. Then the
guests enter – a young couple, Nick, actually a professor of biology in
the same college where George teaches, and his wife, Honey. The young
couple is at first embarrassed to have bothered the eccentric couple, George
and Martha. However, Martha welcomes them in her obnoxious use of
language. Martha and George, while sharing a drink with the guests, abuse
each other verbally. Nick is 30 and Honey is merely 26 years old. The young
couple feels uncomfortable and trapped in such a situation, however, they
don’t leave. James L. Roberts says, “George constantly shows his superior
wit by his witty repartee. When Nick tries to make social conversation by
commenting on an original oil painting, George responds that it was by
“some Greek with a mustache Martha attacked one night…” Thematically,
this comment emphasizes Martha’s aggressive nature and suggests her later
attempts to seduce young Nick.” (Cliff Notes on Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf 23).
Martha mocks George belligerently every now and then but George
counterattacks with a submissive antagonism. Martha then narrates a past
incident how she and George had a boxing match some twenty years ago
during the second World War due to her father admiring “physical fitness …
says a man is only part brain … he has a body, too, and it’s his responsibility
to keep both of them up.” (Albee 29). This obsession of his father regarding
fitness resulted in Martha punching the passive George on the jaw who fell
in a huckleberry bush. No wonder why the relationship between George
and Martha was so aggressive in spite of the fact that Martha considered
her victory as accidental. That defeat had crushed the male chauvinism in
George. He wanted to appear as the victor throughout and that is why he
playfully fires at Martha with a toy gun popping out a Chinese umbrella
thereby portraying his psychological desire of revenge. This revenge is
not due to a defeat in a match, but in a shattering relationship. He was
encountering the loss of his dreams and identity with passing day. When
Martha states that the experience “… was funny, but it was awful” (30), it
reflected the status of their sterile, marital relationship.
All that remains is apparent sexual innuendos in verbal exchanges. And the
early Nick in discomfiture begins to make the same remarks (37). Honey was
unaware of the sterility in George and Martha’s relationship. She assumed
that the older couple must have a son. When she asks George about their
son’s arrival, George keeps up the game of pretention and convinces Nick
and Honey that he and Martha indeed have a son. George says that his son
is “blond-eyed” and “blue-haired” (38). Martha takes a step forward in this
pretention game and mentions that their son “… does not have blue hair …
or blue eyes, for that matter. He has green eyes … like me.” George and
Martha have a little quarrel on this blue/green pretention. In spite of these
games, Martha unendingly keeps mocking George about how he couldn’t
be a successful person though his father-in-law was the president of the
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Absurd Drama college. Wastage of such an opportunity reflects how “George didn’t have
much … push … he wasn’t particularly aggressive. In fact he was sort of a
… a FLOP!” (45). George retaliates by breaking a liquor bottle but Martha
kept taunting at him saying not to waste the salary of a mere Associate
Professor by breaking bottles. Nick and Honey felt upset and Honey
hurries to the bathroom to puke because she was feeling sick probably due
to overdrinking. But this sickness symbolized the grasp of negativity on
American men and women killing time over fun-less yet compulsory games.
Act Two: “Walpurgisnacht”
Nick and George are seen together in the beginning of the act talking
about their wives. While George says Martha doesn’t fall ill (47), Nick
discloses Honey gets sick quite often and also has a history of a “hysterical
pregnancy” (49). This pregnancy tale hints at the fact that it was Honey who
had fooled Nick into marrying her by pretending to be pregnant. George
tells Nick that when he was sixteen (during the Punic Wars), he used to go to
a friend’s gangster-father’s owned gin mill with his prep schoolmates. That
was a time of prohibition on liquor and George and his friends went there to
drink with grownups. George had this instinct of breaking rules just like the
playwright. In this drunkard and jazz-loving group, there was a fifteen year
old friend of George who had without “unconscious motivation” shot his
mother to death accidentally. This friend killed his own father too through
a road accident in the following year. From then on, he has not spoken
for thirty years. George and Nick talk about having children in the near
future and end up offending each other. After they are joined by Martha,
Martha asks George to clean up the mess of “accommodation, malleability,
adjustment” (54) collected over years. Nick vaunts in pride that such a
mess is not in his married life. Nick recounts how his and Honey’s relation
initiated from an early age how Honey has gathered a lot of wealth from his
father-in-law’s account after the latter’s death. Suddenly George is critical
about women and says that they are like hissing geese to which Nick retorts
and says that Martha then is the “biggest goose in the gangle” (60). George
says that Nick’s blind faith on his wife will make him ‘dragged down in
the quicksand’ (61) of greed. George also says to Nick, “You disgust me on
principle ... but I’m trying to give you a survival kit.” (61). Nick tells George
to mind his own business. Then they are rejoined by Martha and Honey.
George then revealed that their son left home “because Martha here used
to corner him” (64) suggesting that probably Martha had complications in
pregnancy or that their relationship had went devoid of romance and been
filled with dissatisfaction and sterility. George flirts with Honey in front
of Nick and Nick dances with Martha (when the latter asks him) out of
vengeance against George (68-69). Martha and Nick flirt with each other
quite explicitly (69). Meanwhile, Martha discloses the fact of George’s first
and last attempt at writing a novel: it was regarding “a naughty boy-child”
(70) who killed his parents pretending accident as the sole reason (‘naughty’
here is an implication and sarcasm that these murders deaths reflected the
murder of innocence). However, Martha’s father forbade George to publish
it ever by threatening him to the limit that if he does cross him, then George
would lose all the fortunes that were in store for him. George reacts in
disagreement, but Nick calms them down and the dance-fun is over as well.
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The murder-angle is the subconscious of George who has a pent up anger Edward Albee’s Who’s
against his father-in-law. This friend is an imaginary rebel while the father Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
is George’s father-in-law and the friend’s persuasive mother is none other
than Martha.
Till now the game that went on as said by George was “Humiliate the
Guests” (73). George then proposes a vulgar game of “Hump the Hostess”
(73) to take revenge on Martha, but the proposal was turned down as Martha
felt insulted (or revealed). George suggests another game called “Get the
Guests”. George refers to a “Mousie” whose father is a holy man just
like Honey’s father. While talking about the Mousie, who “tooted brandy
immodestly and spent half of her time in the upchuck” (76), Honey felt the
deliberate insult hurled on her by George. Honey comprehends that the tale
of the Mousie refers to her “hysterical pregnancy” – pretentious pregnancy
and subsequently pressurizing Nick to marry her. Feeling offended and
moreover sick, she ran to the bathroom again. Nick is insulted seeing
the plight of his wife and promises George that this act shall not pass un-
avenged. Then George just like Martha orders, “Go clean up the mess” (79)
thus suggesting every relationship of the great America is as shallow as the
other.
Then suddenly a verbal tussle between Martha and George resulted in
Martha deciding to be unfaithful towards George. Meanwhile, Nick says
that Honey is lying on the bathroom floor because “she likes the floor . . .
she gets lots of headaches and things, and she always lies on the floor.” (85).
This statement implies a domestic violence pervading in the relationship of
Nick and Honey. Martha suddenly starts to entice Nick sexually in front of
George. She urges Nick to “make a little experiment” (87) on her as Nick
was a biologist. George once comes in and seeing this uncomfortable scene,
leaves the stage with a smile. (87). Then George announces that he was
planning on reading a book but Martha in an irritated manner informs him
that George normally reads books at four in the afternoon and not at four in
the night. However, Martha and Nick keep behaving in an improper manner
as before. In the battle of ego, Martha informs George, “I’m entertaining
one of the guests, I’m necking with one of the guests…” (90). After a few
minutes, Martha says, “I’ll make you sorry you made me want to marry
you. I’ll make you regret the day you ever decided to come to this college.
I’ll make you sorry you ever let yourself down” (92) and exits the stage.
George throws his book in extreme anger against the door. Honey re-enters
the stage and wonders why he was hearing the sound of bells as if there
were bodies tingling the bells. George asks if she didn’t speculate who rang
the doorbells: Martha and the former’s husband had done so. Honey keeps
on bothering George about who was ringing the bells and the decency of
George was stopping him from ultimately revealing the fact. Finally, George
decides to tell Martha that their son has died to Honey’s shock. The act ends
then and there portraying that George is on his way to tell Martha.
Act Three: “The Exorcism”
The term exorcism means the expulsion or attempted expulsion of a
supposed evil spirit from a person or place. In this act, it seems that Martha
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Absurd Drama and George intend to remove the great desire they have always had for a
child through continuing their story of their imagined son and his death.
Martha stands unaccompanied on the stage and beckons others to join
her with clinking sounds of glasses. She is joined by Nick who states that
Martha is as crazy as George. After a seductive talk between Martha and
Nick, Martha says that Nick was a flop in performance and a dandy in
potential while she was “Earth Mother” (100). After a while, the doorbell
rings and George is heard with a bunch of snapdragons covering his face,
speaking out in a cracked falsetto, “Flores para los muertos” (104) meaning
flowers for the dead. Martha and George begin to insult Nick as a houseboy
and order him accordingly (105). George and Martha quarrel if the moon is
in the sky or not. George is sure that the moon is up, but Martha states that
the moon couldn’t be seen from the bedroom. This lead to a conversation
in which Martha and George disrespect Nick alongside each other, and
through an argument it was revealed that Nick was too drunk to physically
be intimate with Martha.
George tells Nick to fetch Honey for the “Bringing Up Baby” game. Even
Martha was against the idea of another game but George was adamant
about it. Honey in this act seems to have lost the memory of his husband’s
lustful act. In the “Peel the Label” (113), George reveals that they had a
child. George even informs the young couple about the age, “the eve of his
twenty-first birfday, the eve of his majority …” (114). Martha says, “Our
son was born in a September night, a night not unlike tonight, though unlike
tomorrow, and twenty … years … ago.” (115) Martha also informed that
they brought up their child affectionately which led Honey to wish to have a
child as well (118). George speaks of Martha’s domineering approach in the
direction of their son. Martha describes the son’s innocence, charisma and
potentials and then blames George for tarnishing his life, “A son who was so
ashamed of his father he asked me once of it … as he had heard, from some
cruel boys . . . that he has not our son; who could not tolerate the shabby
failure his father had become …” (120). George and Martha sing a strange
duet together as they are different in language but speak of the rearing of
their son (121).
Then George tells Martha that a messenger named Crazy Billy from Western
Union arrived earlier with a telegram (when Martha was busy with Nick)
informing that their son will not be coming home for his birthday as he was
“killed late in the afternoon … on a country road, with his learner›s permit
in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine” (123). Though this story
runs parallel and similar with the gin-mill boy’s story, Martha couldn’t
understand her mistake: her breaking of a particular rule. She in a “rigid
fury” (123) shouted unreasonably.
Martha continuously shouts at George “You can’t kill him! You can’t have
him die!” (125) George replies, “You know the rules, Martha … I can kill
him … if I want to” (125). It becomes by this point clear to Nick and Honey
that George and Martha’s son is a made up fictional character. The only
reason that George makes this fictional character die was because Martha
broke the rules and confided to Honey that they had a child. Never mention
about the child to anyone: that was the only rule the couple had to follow.
This fictional son is the final or end-“game” that the older couple had been
290
playing for twenty three years since their biologically sterile marriage. No Edward Albee’s Who’s
wonder why Martha was asking George not to play the “Bringing Up Child” Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
game. From the beginning of the play, the couple was pretenting to have
a child just for playing a game. The American pursuit of fulfillment was
breaking apart during those times and the end of child pretense was its mere
reflection. After this shocking revelation of a psychological game, Nick
and Honey leave. Martha feels that they could have another fictional child
through verbal games and duels, but George disagrees, suggesting that this
particular “Bringing Up Child” game was enough. Listening to George’s
answer Martha keeps saying “Yes. No.” (128) suggesting that though her
ontological desire is to be a mother, it is ruled over by the epistemological
and patriarchal chauvinism of George. These verbal stand-offs between the
couple in a way were their personal tactics in the American society to save
their marriage and avoid divorce and psychosis. The play concludes with
George singing, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (128), to which Martha
replies, “I am, George … I … am (128).” Earlier, in the play, when Martha
sang it, it was meant to make the younger couples the prey. But now when
George sings the song, Martha surrenders as her suppressed desire to be a
mother was meant to be unsuccessful.

20.8 CHILD, DREAM AND ABSURDITY OF

EDWARD ALBEE
Void and lack is mitigated by their frantic search for a child. Their social
life is also reflecting the void. Maybe they are professionally advancing but
they are not integrated. If man isn’t getting the sustenance in the family and
is well integrated outside then something is there to sustain you. But if you
are not getting integration inside and outside then it becomes difficult as it
depends on how others look upon you, how others rate your effort. But what
is your own? The entrapment of the individual inside as well as outside then
that is what is shown by Albee; the illusion of playing the game is the only
solution left. Otherwise their life is practically so much deficient. They try
to overcome the chaos with the help of game-play. And that is why the child
is a symbolic implication.
In Look Back in Anger, the void is lack of reconciliation, lack of
understanding, lack of mutuality, and lack of love because there is something
stronger – class feeling and the class antipathy which doesn’t allow you to
love. It is the natural incapacity. They don’t want to and if they do, they
cannot because of the inherent incapacity borne of psychological barriers
which stop you to act in a spontaneous manner. In a larger frame, they refer
to that vacuity, that nullity is eating into the vitals of the American society
which may apparently seem very rich like apparently George and Nick may
seem apparently well settled and successful. But Albee’s intention was to
pierce and puncture this apparent glaze and that’s what happens with the two
male professionals. The belief that American society is fine is an illusion.
Actually nothing is fine with the American society and that is his intention.
If you observe and analyze the society and American dream closely, you will
find that how much dysfunctional things are from within. Maybe that thing
can look pompous, alluring and good from appearance, all that is within
is full of ennui and vacuity from within and everything is disintegrating.
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Absurd Drama Society is to exist like a unit if it requires integration. On the individual
level, there is the family which is the microcosmic unit of the society and
Albee treats the family as a unit as he is a minimalist. The two characters
in The Zoo Story are not just and two characters but the entire American
society. The couple and the marriage in this play is symptomatic of the
entire society, the marriage is a miniature rendering of the society. But one
family can’t project the society in full and therefore Albee includes another
couple in the story to understand the society in its full comprehension and
its function. What ought to be and what not brings out as the entire picture.
For Albee he searches for symbols of possibility which means symbols
of possibility which can electrify and reinvigorate otherwise they can
bring decadence to the society. He says societies have become completely
decant, institutions have become dysfunctional and his job as a trenchant
critic of the contemporary society is to show certain signs and symbols of
possibility. Talking about possibility, had that child been there and had their
lives been integrated, then it would have been as real as possible. Albee’s
absurdity with a message who offers the question and the solution – how it
was dysfunctional and how it became functional again.
Child refers to a dream of George and Martha. They are partakers of that
dream. But your life is so miserable that you cannot even dream. If you
cannot draw sustenance from what is around you, what are left are the
thoughts about future. Future presents the child supposedly and by chance
the future is also bleak the life becomes immensely miserable. Their dream
has become highly dysfunctional just like life. If they were dreaming
about a family, that dream should have been seen together. But it is in a
way causing alienation inside because the dream was not shared together.
It is both self-alienation and social-alienation as George and Martha are
social-entities too. Nick and Honey present the outer world while George
and Martha represent the inner world. Ultimately the situation remains so
much desolate that all the contraventions, organizations, institutions and
conventions of the society, they are punctured. This is why Albee’s motto
is a requirement of a complete revamping; total overhauling in order to
restore a qualitative work. Theatre for Albee was a transformative means
how he can offer certain symbols of possibility – of a better life full of
quality which is vigorous, which is enthusiastic, which is based on the
principle of understanding, love, devotion, etc. Albee’s intentions were
how to have better humane, compassionate society. That is why there is
a central statement since The Zoo Story that we misunderstand so much,
why did we invent the word love? Misunderstanding is due to the inherent
incapacity. That is why we have become hollow – bankrupt from within, we
lack the internal qualitative grit. We lack the humane qualities. That is why
the degeneration and disintegration that have taken place, he wants to draw
attention to those. He is a satirist of the American society along with being
an absurdist uniquely.

20.9 CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY

20.9.1 Martha
She is “A large, boisterous woman, 52, looking somewhat younger. Ample,
but not fleshy.” She has a loud behaviour. She is a seductress who doesn’t
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shy at seducing youths and also an unpleasant wife stooping to any level Edward Albee’s Who’s
to insult his husband. One can easily find her bossing around her husband Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
George, hurling their marital relation towards slow destruction. Her energy
isn’t spent on the positive side. In spite of being married to George, she in
the name of ‘fun and games’ doesn’t stop herself from stooping low. She
continuously tries to seduce Nick during the game. She insults her husband
George in front of the guests. She hates the intellectual air of superiority
that George carries. Martha feels that George has wasted his life and not
been ambitious in spite of having a wonderful opportunity like a college
president for a father-in-law. Martha had dreams of power which she feels
were defeated by George’s lack of ambition. She taunts at George because of
his failure in marital relationship and mediocrity in career. Though George
calls her demonic, Martha is a woman who lives a life in utter seclusion.
Martha’s apparent portrayal as a rude woman hides the fact that she was
mentally estranged. She is in fact a profoundly troubled person. The
troubled mind can be drawn out of the references to her childhood. After
the demise of her mother, Martha’s father married a rich and old woman
who didn’t care much for her step-daughter. In her maidenhood, her so-
called loving father rejected her marriage prospect due to class differences.
Somewhere he didn’t feel the same about George and thus Martha was
married to the latter. However, George’s lack of ambition drove Martha’s
father to consider him worthless. This probably hurt Martha’s ego and thus
her bitterness for husband was the result. George considered his father-in-
law as a mouse ready for a lab experiment. As an influential person in the
booming American society, Martha’s father was an opportunist. It was his
devalued sense of morality which instigated Martha to behave the way she
does and to perceive the life through his crooked and opportunistic vision.
George becomes the Martha’s victim and all her hate is emptied on her
husband because he stood for all those things that Martha’s instigating
father represented. Martha’s sterility is another reason to stimulate her
suppressed feelings. Her story of a son is an escape from her fruitless life.
Martha’s depression regarding her marriage, her husband and her failure to
be a mother required a distraction – something more than just games. This
invented tale of a twenty one year old son and his grooming offered her the
required solace.
In this game-filled play, Martha breaks one rule which the couple had
decided to maintain. In the party with Nick and Honey, she tells them that
she and George have a son. But this son was a fictional character: it was
meant to offer peace and distraction to their fruitless marriage. Probably due
to the effect of a few drinks, she happened to mention their invented son. Her
conscious or unconscious error leads George to take revenge who thereby
decides to end the tale and kills the son. Martha, who was so insulting in
nature to George, breaks down with this unfortunate news.
The climax of the play portrays Martha’s fear in this absurd world about
her existence without the only solace - the invented fantasy tale – informs
us that how she lost her individualism and therefore succumbed to George.
The aggressive and powerful Martha descends from a life of fictionality
in order to face the chaotic, angst-filled life. Her colorful conjuring of life
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Absurd Drama becomes dull with real revelations and she is found seeking refuge in her
husband’s embrace – the person whom she had been ridiculing throughout
the play. We find a role-reversal in George and Martha. In the beginning she
appeared strong and jocund while parodying the ‘Who’s afraid of the big
bad wolf’ in the beginning of the play and George appeared to be the victim
of this joke. But later, her reaction to being afraid of Virginia Woolf depicts
her weakness in the end.
20.9.2 George
George is Martha’s husband. He is forty-six years old and a history professor.
Basically, he married the daughter of the college president – that is the
actual truth – more than marrying Martha. George is a passive character
and a failure to live up to the expectations of his father-in-law, who had
once considered him as his heir. He had failed his wife’s expectations and
therefore became the subject of her taunts. To his wife, he is a symbol of
mediocrity.
George seems to have a troubled past as well. His tale of a school-mate
killing his mother and father in an accident one by one hints at a latent
desire that George blamed himself for the deaths of his own parents.
Though George is a character who is like a psychological retreating and yet
protesting character like Harold Pinter’s Stanley Webber, he also believes
in sticking to certain rules like Stanley. He doesn’t disrupt the rules of the
game. His social realistic parallel is Jimmy Porter of Look Back in Anger by
John Osborne given the pent up anger.
Professionally, George is challenged by budding professionals like Nick.
The display of intellectual superiority that he has a wide knowledge of
social and world history and possesses a critical outlook is oozing out of the
inferiority complex. George compromises, being weak in character. Books
are his way to save his marriage. Martha knows George doesn’t want to
meddle into confrontation. So she takes advantage of the situation while
George accepts the insults without reaction quite a number of times.
However, George’s retaliating figure is brought out when he decides to show
that he wants to shoot at Martha and also breaks a bottle in the midst of her
insults. He also rebels with intelligence when his manly worth is challenged
by Martha and Nick. He is aware though that his wife gives him meaning
and therefore in spite of the ridicule, he didn’t dissolve the marriage.
Just as the couple is unable to accept the reality of this world, they are also
a failure in maintaining the fictional world they had built together. George
kills the conjured tale of a son in order to save them from the society who
would laugh at their infertile marriage while gossiping about this fiction. He
helped Martha to exorcise the myth; the fiction of having a child from their
reality. Initially he decided to end the myth to take revenge on martha, but
later it was more of a mercy done to their relation, for a renewed start. This
killing of the myth was a significant step to save them from disparaging
delusion. In the end, he becomes as devalued as his father-in-law, when
he ruthlessly ends the collective son-myth, but his understanding of the
situation and response to it was prompt.
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20.9.3 Nick Edward Albee’s Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
Nick is a thirty-years-old biology professor at New England College. He an Absurd Drama
symbolizes for contemporary principles and the incline of the sciences
in wisdom. He poses danger to George on both professional and sexual
fronts. He is a typical seeker of the American Dream who has an aspiration
and enthusiasm to act as a rent boy for professional progress. He signifies
the rejection and crumble of human merits. In a way, he is a contrast to
George in this aspect. He is obsessed with his fine appearance apparently
and heartlessly deceptive below. As Martha succeeded her father as the
president of the college, he wanted to extract promotional favors out of
her. Martha was more a commodity to him than an attraction in a world of
opportunism. He is not aware of the rules of the games; however he keeps
participating in them in a competitive manner. But in the end, his encounter
with Martha is futile as he is proved to be impotent. Martha informs that it
was nick’s ambitious nature in professionalism that had ultimately been his
‘Achilles’ heel’ and made him her prey to her seductive ploys.
His marriage with Honey resulted from the money inherited from the
latter’s father explicating his money-centric and success mongering nature.
He is more like a mastiff-in-waiting for Honey. He safeguards Honey from
George’s insults. Marital love is absent in their relationship. He is hated by
George and Martha and wishes to curry favors from them and attempts to
establish his manhood to Martha but ends up insulted and angered due to his
inability to satisfy Martha.
Nick’s approach is completely contradictory to George’s endeavor to
conserve the principles in life. While George (as a history professor)
is a vanguard of the historical past and Nick (as a professor of science,
specifically biology) symbolizes the future technology. Nick’s childhood
memories are linked to Honey with their “doctor games” He is a good boxer
and has passed his master’s degree when he was nineteen years old. He
remains a shrewd and manipulative character throughout the play.
20.9.4 Honey
Honey, the twenty-six years old blonde is not as strong as Martha but is
able to wield her power over Nick in spite of her appearance of a pale, slim-
hipped woman and a subservient, wife to Nick.
Honey’s inexperienced child-like pretence throughout the play sparks
everyone to revisit their past – the days when they too were inexperienced.
She is strangely unwilling or should we say scared of grooming a child.
According to George, Honey is scared of pregnancy and therefore avoided
it without letting Nick know her fear. But she pretends a false pregnancy
to marry Nick. This history of deception and betrayal acts a psychological
discomfort to the couple. Her fears and mental anxieties make her impervious
to the verbal duels occurring around her. She acts like a child throughout to
fill up the void in her own self – the incompleteness as a mother.
Her own apprehensions, constant nausea and her hysterical acts (regarding
pregnancy) make her so feeble that she is not ready to accept from George
the hints of her husband’s adultery in the kitchen. Her hysterical pregnancy
and nausea might have been due to some past abortion which further makes
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Absurd Drama her afraid of becoming a mother. Her body language on stage like sucking
her thumb and lying in womb posture points to her negation to agree to the
accountability along with parenting a child.
She is the only round character who finds some courage and moves past her
apprehensions in the end and announces that she wants a child. On the other
side, we find the other three characters drowning in their disappointments
and surrendering to the chaotic existence. George and Martha’s ending the
game by revealing that their son is a fictional existence acts as an antidote
to the young, crooked, secretive and apprehensive life of Honey and Nick
so that they can go back over and have another look at their lives with
a more realistic approach. While Martha though sterile, takes pleasure in
pretending as a mother, Honey is happy in acting as a child though she can
have children.

20.10  ABSURD ELEMENTS IN THE PLAY

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
The absurd elements suggested by the playwright Edward Albee are always
with a message. the first thing that strikes as absurd in this play is the name
of the play itself. Originally it rhymes with the nursery poem ‘who’s afraid
of the big bad wolf’ but the big bad wolf is replaced with the name of the
female novelist Virginia Woolf. It has nothing to do with the novelist yet
the name has been kept just to make a parody of the nursery poem. This
suggests that the fun and games suggested by the play starts right with the
name of the play. This nomenclature has maintained a parody throughout
the play. There are three acts in the play and yet none of their names have
actually anything directly linked with them. The first act “Fun and Games”
has little fun and more humiliation. Instead of games, it has more indications
of revenge. But these acts are just for passing the time. The acts at certain
times hint at some latent desires but they are not meant as meaningful acts.
The second act “Walpurgisnacht” is a German night of the witches. What we
find in this act are acts of adultery, hysterical illness and mental depression
in some characters. Some critics opine that this witch is actually Martha
in the play quite like Meg in The Birthday Party. But that is depending on
how one wants to construct the theme. This entire play is about a night’s
experience at the most. What is more strange is that the act of revelation has
been named as ‘The Exorcism’. This act deals with the end of the illusory
child in the life of George and Martha. The child wasn’t a ghost yet he
has been regarded as one. Actually Albee here tries to hint at illusions and
hallucinations are equally impactful in our lives like supernatural forces.
The games in the play like ‘Get the Guests’, ‘Doctor games’, ‘Bring up the
Child’, ‘Hump the Hostess’, ‘Humiliate the Guests’ played by such grown
up couples suggest that their meaningfulness of life has extinguished. They
keep on trying to demolish the real of their life through these fictional games
as life in actuality has become too unbearable to undergo. Set in a living
room, packed insults, it is a play of a night party in the most absurd manner.
Like any absurd play discussed earlier, this play doesn’t have a story line.
The logicality of absurd drama is subverted in Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf Like other absurd plays. No one can tell why George and Martha
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needed a game to bring up a child. The living room action throughout the Edward Albee’s Who’s
play suggests the limitation of mobility and the overpowering stasis. George Afraid of Virginia Woolf as
an Absurd Drama
and Martha had and have nowhere to go. That’s why we find them caged
in the play. All they can do in the end is undergoing a role-reversal to find
a solace When George ends the illusory dwelling of Martha with the child-
myth.
Language in normal absurd dramas is incomprehensible and in this play
we find some similar disconnected dots where logicality and rationality fail
to join. This starts with parodying the nursery rhyme and the hysterical
memory loss of Honey. As Albee goes with a message even in an absurd
play, he injects a dark humor along with the games. The eccentricity of the
characters suggests that we are trapped in an uncaring universe alone.
Most absurd plays carry a pair of characters facing the chaos together.
Vladimir and Estragon with their meaningless talks and games do the job
wonderfully in Waiting for Godot, Hamm and Clov in Endgame, Berenger
and Daisy in Rhinoceros. Similarly in this play Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?, we find George and Martha tearing through the world of illusion to
reach the world of reality. Nick and Honey are also a pair seen in the play
but seem less hopeful to find redemption because their objective isn’t to
stick together amidst the glittering emptiness of the American Dream but to
just seek an opportunity, atleast in the case of Nick. All that Honey knows
is to prevent being a mother.
The absurd dramas have limited acts or scenes because in a world of
repetition they have hardly anything to offer. Waiting for Godot has two
acts, Endgame follows suit and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf has three
acts. Actually this one night affair in the life of George and Martha had
become an everyday occurrence. They keep on playing games, humiliating
each other due to their sterile life and also bring up their child-myth in their
fictitious life in order to escape the stark reality. The drama is based on a
picture of today’s values and virtues that have become too much to bear
with and should be ridiculed. The playwright’s main purpose is to offer
the shallowness of the glossy emptiness of American Dream; the ideals of
victory and query of the modern standard of life which demeans sympathy
and equality while uplifting achievement and aspiration as the highest
success. It delineates how this existing philosophy can encompass vicious
and alienating effects as well as destructive societal situations.

20.11  CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

(QUESTIONS WITH ANSWER KEYS)
1. Who would you consider the real hero of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Remember that the play is a tragicomedy molded in an absurd form.
And an absurd play has no heroes. The characters are thrown into life
and that is how you have to find George and Martha trying to cling to
each other to give themselves a taste of existence in their unbearable
illusory life. You need to focus on the climax to state how fictionality
can become unbearable as well.
2. What is your opinion of Albee’s ‘child-myth’ in the play?
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Absurd Drama Your answer should consider the factors that have changed the life
of George and Martha. Remember that the myth is a means to escape
and so justify how the characters find solace in such myth creations.
3. How would you place Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf as an absurd drama?
As indicated in the relevant sections, you need to state all the factors
to bring the text as an absurd drama. Then you may focus on the
most powerful character and portray her/him as an absurd character.
Discuss language as a too because language is limited in absurd art.
4. How would you view the aspect of human relations in Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?
Understand that human relations as stated in the plot. analyse the social
and domestic matrix in the play. Comprehend the fact that society in Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf is predominantly absurd, and is stuck within the
failures of American dream and the illusory necessity to live by.

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