MASTERS THESIS M-2903 RUDISILL, Cecil Wayne Ali ANALYSIS OF THE MARTYR AS A DRAMATIC CHARACTER IN THREE PLAYS BY EDWARD AL3EE: TINY ALICE, THE ZOO STORY, AND A DELICATE EALANCEl American University, M.A., 1971 Soeech-Theater University Microfilms, A XERQ\ Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. AN ANALYSIS OF THE MARTYR AS A DRAMATIC CHARACTER IN THREE PLAYS BY EDWARD ALBEE; TINY ALICE, THE ZOO STORY. AND A DELICATE BALANCE by Cecil Wayne Rudisill Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts Theatre History Signatures of Committee: Chairman : Dean of the College Date: [5 ~ , / 9 V / Date; /I?/ THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY The American University Washington, D. C. JUN 22 1971 V 36/ Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION ........................................... 1 II. AN EXTENDED DEFINITION OF MARTYRDOM ...................... 9 III. TINY A L I C E .............................................. 15 IV. THE ZOO STORY .......................................... 36 V. A DELICATE BALANCE...................................... 51 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................... 65 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In a New York Times article on November 13, I966, Harold Clurman states that during his lectures abroad he was asked his opinion of Edward Albee •vdio was the man, or the name, among American dramatists who aroused the greatest interest. His answer, beyond a few generalizations was "Albee is 38; I shall be able to offer you a more considered judgement when he is 581"^ At 38 Ibsen had not yet written A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, and most of his other prose plays— all written after he was 50. At 38 Shaw had not yet written Man and Superr°T., Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan— all written alter he was ^5. The point is that Albee is a talented young playwright in the process of growth. Albee has won much critical acclaim: î«îac: Lemer of the New York Post states "Albee is the freshest and firmest young talent writing for the American stage today.Cleve Bames of The New York Times calls Albee "the finest American dramatist of this century."^ And frequently in the press he is described as an O'Neill, a young Strindberg, or a northern Tennessee Williams. ^Harold Clurman, "Edward Albee," New York Times, November 13, I986, p. 16. ^Max Lemer, "Review, " New York Post, April I6, i960, p. 12 D. ^Cleve Bames, "Review," New York Times, September 13, I966, p. 8 C. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 Albee*s actual critical awards attest his reputation: in 1963 he was awarded the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the best play of the year; the Outer Circle Award for Outstanding American Playwright of a Broadway play; the Tony award for the Best Play; in appreciation of his distinguished literary career, the National Academy of Arts and Letters elected him to membership in I966; in 19^7 he received the Putlizer Prize for his play, A Delicate Balance. These honors have come to Albee in spite of his short career: as a playwright he has worked only a little over a decade. Before Albee started writing plays, his life had not been very dis­ tinguished. When he was two weeks old, he was taken out of a foundling home in Washington, D. C., adopted by Reed and Frances Albee, the heirs to a celebrated vaudeville fortune founded by Reed Albee*s father, Edward Franklin Albee, and named Edward Franklin Albee III. He rather unenthusi­ astically attended various fashionable private schools— Lawrence, Valley Forge Military Acadeny, and Choate— and he was briefly (l9^ - ^ 7) a student at Trinity College. On receiving a bequest from his grandmother in 1950, he left hone, worked at odd jobs (as an office boy, a counterman, and a Western Union messenger) in New York, tried to write poetry and fiction, attended innumerable plays, and, for nine years, shared extremely modest living arrangements with a young conç>oser, William Flanagan. Just before turning thirty, Albee decided to prove himself by taking a few weeks to write his first play. The Zoo Story, a short play that was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 first performed in 1959 in Germany at the experimental branch of the Schiller Theater of West Berlin, the Werkstatt. Early the next yeix, it opened Off-Broadway in New York, on the same bill with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; a warm endorsement frœi Tennessee Williams stimulated business and helped to avert a threatened closing, and the two plays ran for nineteen months. In this conpelling little drama two strangers with nothing in common meet on a park bench and discovered how they both are isolated individuals : Jerr;' because of his desire to make contact with society and Peter because he has been absorbed into society’s complacency. Even t h o u ^ The Zoo Story’s main theme is the problem of communication, Albee has blended many traditional Christian symbols into the play. These symbols, viewed in their entirety reveal The Zoo Story as a m o d e m morality play depicting the suffering and sacrificing of a martyr. In April i960 a second short play, Ihe Death of Bessie Smith, had its world premiere in German at the Schlosspark Theatre in West Berlin. It was not seen in New York until its production Off-Broadway early in the following year. Set in Memphis in 193T, it has to do with the death in an automobile accident of the Negro blues singer Bessie Smith, but she never appears onstage. Instead, the emphasis falls upon her rejection by white hospitals and upon the portrait of a vicious white nurse who likes Bessie Snd th'^s music but remiorselessly teases her admirers and is obviously incapable of the love embodied by the singer and her songs. Because of the incidents around Bessie Smith’s death, she becomes a martyr for her black people. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. k A very short play. The Sandbox, opened Off-Broeidway in May 196O. It shows the death of a perky grandmother, the only sympathetic member of an otherwise tiresome family. In The American Dream (1961) the little family of The Sandbox reappears : a dominating Mommy, an emasculated Daddy, and a saucy, rebellious Grandma -vbom the others humiliate. A neighbor comes calling and so does a handsome young man who identifies himself as the American Dream; he is the identical twin of a child previously adopted and destroyed by Mommy and Daddy. Albee then set himself to answer one of the Broadway showbiz ques­ tions of the moment: "Can Albee write a full-length play?" He had already replied that all my plays are full-length. But as it happened, his first long play turned out to be Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a popular and critical success running for nearly two years. The play is a violent dis­ play of frank sexual references and constant verbal flagellation. Thereafter, Albee wrote full-length plays for Broadway. The next to be staged was actually written before Virginia Woolf— The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, a dramatization of Carson Me Cullers' novella. This drama about the strange attachment that binds a strapping, self-reliant woman, her rather feckless husband, and a dwarf is climaxed by a wrestling match between husband and wife that is essentially a contest for the dwarf's affections. It opened in the fall of 1963, ran for approximately four months, and did not notably contribute to Albee's fame. Tiny Alice opened at the end of 1964, with Sir John Gielgud playing a lay brother "vbo is summoned to a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 mysterious house, marries a wealthy but equally mysterious lady whom he meets there, and finally is deserted by her and her strange followers. It was a puzzling and controversial play. The protagonist resembles Christ, Job, and Faust, and his martrydom seems to be a cruel cosmic joke. Tiny Alice was much talked about, but even the controversy kept it on Broadway for only a little more than five months. Early in 1966, Malcolm, adapted from the novel by James Purdy, opened and, after seven performances, closed. This was an antifeminine parable with a vengeance about an inno­ cent young man \dio is destroyed by his encounters with women and dies worn out. Albee who had warmly defended Tiny Alice against all comers, accepted this failure stoically. The dramatist’s reputation was some\diat restored by A Delicate Balance (1966), concerning a family disrupted by a sudden visit from two lifelong friends fleeing a sudden, strange, and indescribable feeling of fear ^eathY. The hosts are made to see themselves: the husband and wife who still feel guilt over the small son who died; their frequently divorced daughter, homeless herself, and so resenting the idea of giving a home to the intruders; and the wife’s sister, who has taken refuge in drink and speaks the best lines in the play. A Delicate Bai an ce ran a little more than four months in New York, but a subsequent tour made it a commercial success. When it won the Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer Committee was widely assumed to be responding to feelings of ..guilt over its failure to honor Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Eveiything in the Garden, which opened late in I967, was adapted by Albee Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.