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notes on Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

English 11 / Mr. Foster Interviewer: When did the title Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? occur to you? Albee: There was a saloon—it's changed its name now—on Tenth Street, between Greenwich Avenue and Waverly Place, . . . [where] they had a big mirror on the downstairs bar in this saloon where people used to scrawl graffiti. . . . 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. (Flanagan 52) I am very concerned with the fact that so many people turn off because it is easier; that they don't stay fully aware during the course of their lives, in all the choices they make: social, economic, political, aesthetic. They turn off because it's easier. But I find that anything less than absolutely full, dangerous participation is an absolute waste of some rather valuable time. . . . I am concerned with being as self-aware, and open to all kinds of experience on its own terms—I think those conditions, given half a chance, will produce better self-government, a better society, a better everything else.—Edward Albee (Roudané 45) the characters [George and Martha] are uncomfortable with themselves but comfortable with each other.—Taybra Marchese '12 [George and Martha] are six-year-olds with alcohol.—Dylan Bruening '11 George is a 46-year-old history professor at a small New England college; he has not become as successful as he, or his wife, might have hoped: he is not the head of the history department, much less a dean or other prominent administrator. Like his wife, he drinks heavily. Martha, six years older than her husband, George, is the daughter of the college president. Especially when she's been drinking, she is capable of "unrestrained malice and unstoppable powers of emotional destruction," Charles Isherwood writes. "She has a tongue that could flay a horse at ten paces"; the habitual target of her malice and rage is George. Nick, a new biology professor, is handsome and ambitious; he is a former champion college boxer. He and his wife, Honey (a wealthy preacher's daughter whom George dismisses as a "simp" but who turns out to be a character with her own painful secrets) are George and Martha's guests for one long, turbulent, alcohol-soaked evening.

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notes & questions to consider ACT ONE—FUN AND GAMES 1-86 Signet 3-95 NAL 2005 NOTE—peritonitis 5 Signet 5 NAL "Inflammation of the peritoneum," a membrane lining the abdominal cavity (Random House Webster's College Dictionary; 2nd. ed., 1999). ~~ REVISING THE PLAY (I) 18-19 Signet 19-20 NAL 2005 For the 2005 Broadway revival, Albee made significant changes in the text; if you have the 2005 edition, please read the passages in this handout that document the most extensive alterations. The words in bold type below were omitted in the revision: GEORGE (Moves a little toward the door, smiling slightly) All right, love ... whatever love wants. (Stops) Just don't start on the bit, that's all. MARTHA The bit? The bit? What kind of language is that? What are you talking about? GEORGE The bit. Just don't start in on the bit. MARTHA You imitating one of your students, for God's sake? What are you trying to do? WHAT BIT? GEORGE Just don't start in on the bit about the kid, that's all. MARTHA What do you take me for? GEORGE Much too much. MARTHA (Really angered) Yeah? Well, I'll start in on the kid if I want to. GEORGE Just leave the kid out of this. MARTHA (Threatening) He's mine as much as he is yours. I'll talk about him if I want to.

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GEORGE I'd advise against it, Martha. MARTHA Well, good for you. (Knocks) C'mon in. Get over there and open the door. GEORGE You've been advised. MARTHA Yeah . . . sure. Get over there! GEORGE (Moving toward door) All right, love ... whatever love wants. Isn't it nice the way people have manners, though, even in this day and age? [The scene continues] ~~ REVISING THE PLAY (II) 29 Signet 31 NAL 2005 When Albee revised the play in 2005, he omitted the words in bold type below: MARTHA (To GEORGE) Honestly, George, you burn me up! GEORGE (Happily) All right. MARTHA You really do, George. GEORGE O.K., Martha ... O.K. Just ... trot along. MARTHA You really do. GEORGE Just don't shoot your mouth off ... about ... you-know-what. MARTHA (Surprisingly vehement) I'll talk about any goddamn thing I want to, George! GEORGE O.K. O.K. Vanish. MARTHA Any goddamn thing I want to! (Practically dragging HONEY out with her) C'mon.... [The scene continues] NOTE—Illyria 40 Signet

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Illyria is an archaic name for the former Yugoslavia, territory that, like Carthage, was conquered after repeated assaults by the Romans from 156 BC to 78-77 BC (Roudané 94). However, it is also the setting of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's most melancholic romantic comedy. Like Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare's play prominently features heavy-drinking characters, particularly Sir Toby Belch, who is by turns charmingly witty and vicious. NOTE—Penguin Island 40 Signet 43 NAL The reference is to Anatole France's novel, a satirical look at French history in which a city is destroyed, in part, by its own decadence (Roudané 95). NOTE—New Carthage 40 Signet 43 NAL Albee's reference to Carthage might tacitly allude to Dido, the legendary queen of Carthage famous from the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem about the founding of Rome. In Virgil's account, Dido is beautiful, powerful, and doomed. Dido's treacherous brother killed her husband, she flees to Tunisia in the north of Africa to establish a new kingdom. She falls in love with Aeneas (himself a refugee after the fall of Troy), and they have an affair; after Aeneas leaves (at the urging of the gods, who tell him he must fulfill his destiny as the founder of Rome), the despondent queen kills herself: atop a funeral pyre, she pierces herself with Aeneas's sword. As you read the play, you might ask yourself why Albee alludes to a passionate relationship ending in bitterness, despair, and self-destruction. For some historical information about Carthage, see the note at the end of the handout. George's umbrella 57 Signet 62 NAL First, a plot question: what prompts George to grab the toy shotgun and aim it at his wife? Second, two interpretive questions: What does this episode reveal or reinforce about George? And what might a shotgun that issues not bullets or buckshot but a parasol symbolize about the character wielding it? ACT TWO—WALPURGISNACHT 87-181 Signet 99-192 NAL 2005 NOTE—what does "Walpurgisnacht" mean? In old German lore, St. Walburga, a British missionary, worked in an eighth-century convent that became one of the chief centers of civilization in Germany. She is often associated with Walpurgisnacht, the May Day festival in which witches reveled in an orgiastic, ritualized Sabbath on Brocken, the tallest peak in the Harz Mountains. . . . [D]emon spirits are exorcized from villages and villagers by a rite in which a cacophony of loud noises, incense, and holy water are used to achieve purgation. (Roudané 103-104). George vs. Nick 89-117 Signet Alan Schneider, director of the first Broadway production, said of the long conversation between George and Nick

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I thought of it as kind of a chess game—all the scenes between them were chess games in which the two men who had contempt for each other would win a pawn, and we actually structured the scene around winning pawns. . . . There's a kind of parry and thrust on a very subtle level, but each one's aware of it. (73-74) Dies Irae 117 Signet 131 NAL Latin for "day of wrath," the Dies Irae (DEE-ace EE-ray) is "a Latin hymn on the Day of Judgment, commonly sung in a Requiem mass" (Random House Webster's College Dictionary; 2nd. ed., 1999). ~~ REVISING THE PLAY (III) 123 Signet 137 NAL 2005 When Albee revised the play in 2005, he omitted the words in bold type below: HONEY (GEORGE hands her a brandy) Oh, goodie! Thank you. (To NICK) Of course I do, dear. GEORGE (Pensively) I used to drink brandy. MARTHA (Privately) You used to drink bergin, too. GEORGE (Sharp) Shut up, Martha! MARTHA (Her hand over her mouth in a little girl gesture) Ooooooops. NICK (Something having clicked, vaguely) Hm? GEORGE (Burying it) Nothing ... nothing. MARTHA (She, too) You two men have it out while we were gone? . . . [The scene continues] NOTE—daguerrotype 126 Signet 141 NAL "An obsolete photographic process, invented in 1839, in which a picture made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine is developed by exposure to mercury vapor"; the process is named for its inventor, Louis Daguerre (1789-1851); Random House Webster's College Dictionary; 2nd. ed., 1999. NOTE—Sacre du Printemps

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129 Signet 144 NAL The Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's 1913 Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), written as a ballet, Anthony Rudel writes, shocked the world . . . when it premiered on May 39, 1913. . . . The world premiere was held at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, danced by Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, conducted by Pierre Montuex, with choreography by Nijinsky. On that opening night riots broke out as the audience was startled, some negatively, by the radical sound and vision being unveiled before them. Right from the start, laughter, catcalls, and shouting erupted, so loud the music couldn't be heard; however, the visceral excitement and staggering brilliance of the ballet overcame the initial raction and place the score in the mainstream. It is a critically significant piece of twentieth-century art. . . . Percussive, rhythmic, and propulsive are all apt descriptions of the music, as it is filled with a variety of sounds capturing the barbarity of nature. (Rudel 322-323). Rudel's comments about the plot of the ballet might help you appraise the significance of Albee's allusion. In "Part I—The Adoration of the Earth," at the bottom of a sacred hill Slavonic tribes gather to celebrate spring. A witch tells fortunes followed by a wild dancing game ending in exhaustion, with more ritual games played between the members of two tribes, Old wise men arrive interrupting the festivities, the sage then kisses the earth, and the first part ends with a frenzied dance. In "Part II—The Sacrifice" young virgins dance at the foot of the hill to choose the victim to be "honored" by being sacrificed. She dances her final dance as the other maidens glorify her. The wise men return to witness her dance, ending with the sacrifice of the chosen. (323) ~~ REVISING THE PLAY (IV) 135-137 Signet 151-152 NAL 2005 When Albee revised the play in 2005, he omitted the words in bold type below: GEORGE I will not be made mock of! NICK He will not be made mock of, for Christ's sake. (Laughs) (HONEY joins in the laughter, not knowing exactly why) GEORGE I will not! (All three are laughing at him) (Infuriated) THE GAME IS OVER! MARTHA (Pushing on) Imagine such a thing! A book about a boy who murders his mother and kills his father, and pretends it's all an accident! HONEY (Beside herself with glee) An accident!

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NICK (Remembering something related) Hey ... wait a minute ... MARTHA (Her own voice now) And you want to know the clincher? You want to know what big brave Georgie said to Daddy? GEORGE NO! NO! NO! NO! NICK Wait a minute now ... MARTHA Georgie said ... but Daddy ... I mean ... ha, ha, ha, ha ... but Sir, it isn't a novel at all ... (Other voice) Not a novel? (Mimicking GEORGE's voice) No, sir ... it isn't a novel at all ... GEORGE (Advancing on her) You will not say this! [The scene continues] Later in the scene (137/152), Martha no longer says, "IT HAPPENED! TO ME! TO ME!" In the revised text, she simply says, "COWARD!" NOTE—bucolic 142 Signet 158 NAL According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, bucolic, also known as pastoral, "imitates rural life, usually the life of an imaginary Golden Age, in which the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses play a prominent part" (603). While the term technically refers to a genre of poetry, it has come to be used more broadly to refer to any narrative about country life. "In modern English, the term [bucolic] has a slightly humorous connotation" (86). ~~ REVISING THE PLAY (V) 155 Signet 172 NAL 2005 When Albee revised the play in 2005, he omitted all the words in bold type in George's following speech: GEORGE (Calmly, matter-of-factly) I'm numbed enough ... and I don't mean by liquor, though maybe that's part of the process—a gradual, over-the-years going to sleep of the brain cells—I'm numbed enough, now, to be able to take you when we're alone. I don't listen to you ... or when I do listen to you, I sift everything. I bring everything down to reflex response, so I don't really hear you, which is the only way to manage it. But you've taken a new tack, Martha, over the past couple of centuries—or however long it's been I've lived in this house with you—that makes it just too much ... too much. I don't mind your dirty underthings in public ... well, I do mind, but I've reconciled myself to that ... but you've moved bag and baggage into your own fantasy world now, and you've started playing variations on your own distortions, and as a result ...

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MARTHA Nuts! GEORGE Yes ... you have. MARTHA Nuts! GEORGE Well, you can go on like that as long as you want to. And when you're done... [The scene continues] ~~ REVISING THE PLAY (VI) 174 Signet 191 NAL 2005 When Albee revised the play in 2005, he truncated the end of Act Two. The play originally ended with a lengthy exchange between George and Honey indicated by the words in bold in the following passage: GEORGE "And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must ... eventually ... fall." (He laughs, briefly, ruefully ... rises, with the book in his hand. He stands still ... then, quickly, he gathers all the fury he has been containing within himself ... he shakes ... he looks at the book in his hand and, with a cry that is part growl, part howl, he hurls it at the chimes. They crash against one another, ringing wildly. A brief pause, then HONEY enters) HONEY (The worse for the wear, half asleep, still sick, weak, still staggering a little ... vaguely, in something of a dream world) Bells. Ringing. I've been hearing bells. GEORGE Jesus! HONEY I couldn't sleep ... for the bells. Ding-dong, bong ... it woke me up. GEORGE (Quietly beside himself) Don't bother me. HONEY (Confused and frightened) I was asleep, and the bells started ... they BOOMED! Poe-bells ... they were Poe-bells ... Bing-bing-bong-BOOM! GEORGE BOOM!

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HONEY I was asleep, and I was dreaming of ... something ... and I heard the sounds coming, and I didn't know what it was. GEORGE (Never quite to her) It was the sound of bodies ... HONEY And I didn't want to wake up, but the sound kept coming ... GEORGE ... go back to sleep ... HONEY ... and it FRIGHTENED ME! GEORGE (Quietly ... to MARTHA, as if she were in the room) I'm going to get you ... Martha. HONEY And it was so ... cold. The wind was ... the wind was so cold! And I was lying somewhere, and the covers kept slipping away from me, and I didn't want them to.... GEORGE Somehow, Martha. HONEY ... and there was someone there ...! GEORGE There was no one there. HONEY (Frightened) And I didn't want someone there ... I was ... naked ...! GEORGE You don't know what's going on here, do you? HONEY (Still with her dream) I DON'T WANT ANY ... NO ...! GEORGE You don't know what's been going on around here while you've been having your snoozette, do you. HONEY NO! ... I DON'T WANT ANY ... I DON'T WANT THEM ... GO 'WAY.... (Begins to cry) I DON'T WANT ... ANY ... CHILDREN .... I ... don't ... want ... any ... children. I'm afraid! I don’t want to be hurt.... PLEASE!

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GEORGE (Nodding his head ... speaks with compassion) I should have known. HONEY (Snapping awake from her reverie) What! What? GEORGE I should have known ... the whole business ... the headaches ... the whining ... the ... HONEY (Terrified) What are you talking about? GEORGE (Ugly again) Does he know that? Does that ... stud you're married to know about that, hunh? HONEY About what? Stay away from me! GEORGE Don't worry, baby ... I wouldn't.... Oh, my God, that would be a joke, wouldn't it! But don't worry, baby. HEY! How would you do it? Hunh? How do you make your secret little murders stud-boy doesn't know about, hunh? Pills? PILLS? You got a secret supply of pills? Of what? Apple jelly? WILL POWER? HONEY I feel sick. GEORGE You going to throw up again? You going to lie down on the cold tiles, your knees pulled up under your chin, your thumb stuck in your mouth ...? HONEY (Panicked) Where is he? GEORGE Where's who? There's nobody here, baby. HONEY I want my husband! I want a drink! GEORGE Well, you just crawl over to the bar and make yourself one. (From off-stage comes the sound of MARTHA's laughter and the crashing of dishes) (Yelling) That's right! Go at it! HONEY I ... want ... something.... GEORGE

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You know what's going on in there, little Miss? Hunh? You hear all that? You know what's going on in there? HONEY I don't want to know anything! GEORGE There are a couple of people in there.... (MARTHA's laughter again) ... they are in there, in the kitchen.... Right there, with the onion skins and the coffee grounds ... sort of ... sort of a ... dry run for the wave of the future. HONEY (Beside herself) I ... don't ... understand ... you.... GEORGE (A hideous elation) It's very simple.... When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past, as I have done, or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! HONEY Stop it! GEORGE And you, you simpering bitch ... you don't want children? HONEY You leave me ... alone. Who ... WHO RANG? GEORGE What? HONEY What were the bells? Who rang? GEORGE You don't want to know, do you? You don't want to listen to it, hunh? HONEY (Shivering) I don't want to listen to you.... I want to know who rang. GEORGE Your husband is ... and you want to know who rang? HONEY Who rang? Someone rang! GEORGE (His jaw drops open ... he is whirling with an idea) ... Someone ...

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HONEY RANG! GEORGE ... someone ... rang ... yes ... yessss ... HONEY The ... bells ... rang.... GEORGE (His mind racing ahead) The bells rang ... and it was someone ... HONEY Somebody.... GEORGE (He is home, now) ... somebody rang ... it was somebody ... with ... I'VE GOT IT! I'VE GOT IT, MARTHA ...! Somebody with a message ... and the message was ... our son ... OUR SON! (Almost whispered) It was a message ... the bells rang and it was a message, and it was about ... our son ... and the message ... was ... and the message was ... our ... son ... is ... DEAD! HONEY (Almost sick) Oh ... no. GEORGE (Cementing it in his mind) Our son is ... dead ... And ... Martha doesn't know.... I haven't told ... Martha. HONEY No ... no ... no. GEORGE (Slowly, deliberately) Our son is dead, and Martha doesn't know. HONEY Oh. God in heaven ... no. GEORGE (To HONEY ... slowly, deliberately, dispassionately) And you're not going to tell her. HONEY (In tears) Your son is dead. GEORGE I'll tell her myself ... in good time. I'll tell her myself. HONEY (So faintly) I'm going to be sick. GEORGE (Turning away from her ... he, too, softly) Are you? That's nice.

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(Martha's laugh is heard again) Oh, listen to that. HONEY I'm going to die. GEORGE (Quite by himself now) Good ... good ... you go right ahead. (Very softly, so MARTHA could not possibly hear) Martha? Martha? I have some ... terrible news for you. (There is a strange half-smile on his lips) It's about our ... son. He's dead. Can you hear me, Martha? Our boy is dead. (He begins to laugh, very softly ... it is mixed with crying) CURTAIN ACT THREE—THE EXORCISM 184-242 Signet 195-257 NAL 2005 O'Neill suggested that you have false illusions in order to survive. The only optimistic act in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is to say, admit that there are false illusions and then live with them if you want and know that they are false. After all, it’s an act of public exorcism. —Edward Albee (Roudané 87) [T]o the conviction that suffering and degradation are now a destiny against which it is useless to struggle, Mr. Albee would seem to have added another belief which has not yet permeated contemporary writing. . . . This is the belief that although we are forced by the grimness of modern civilization to live in defeat, we make bad things worse by lying to ourselves and fleeing to the solace of fantasy. . . . The New York Times quotes [Albee's explanation of the play's title]: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? means 'Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?' means 'Who's afraid of living life without false illusions?'"—Diana Trilling (84) two allusions to Tennessee Williams 186, 195 Signet 206 NAL In her monologue opening Act Three in the original text of the play, Martha makes a fleeting reference to "poker night," which, as Matthew Roudané points out, was Tennessee Williams's working title for the play A Streetcar Named Desire. There is a second allusion to Streetcar. . . The phrase "flores para los muertos"—Spanish for "flowers for the dead"—alludes to Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Streetcar Named Desire. Both allusions implicitly link Martha to Blanche DuBois. If you are familiar with Williams's play, you might want to ask yourself this: as different as the two characters are—a caustic, belligerent New England college president's daughter and a fading, neurotic Southern belle—what do the two characters have in common? (See "Appraising Martha (I)" in the "Now that you've finished the play..." section below.) NOTE—croup tent 219 Signet not in the NAL edition

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Croup is "any condition of the larynx or trachea characterized by a hoarse cough and difficult breathing" (Random House Webster's College Dictionary; 2nd. ed., 1999). the closing lines 239-242 Signet 253-257 NAL The play opens with Martha asking George one question after another; how does the play end? What parallels—and what significant differences—do you see between the very beginning and the very end of the play? (Roudané 32) George's incantation 220-228 Signet 234-242 NAL 2005 As Martha relates the history of their "son," George recites the Mass of the Dead. Here is a translation of the Latin: Absolve, Domine, animas omnum fidelium defunctorum ab omni vinculo delictorum. Absolve, O Lord, the souls of all the faithful departed from every bond of sin. Et gratia tua illis succurrente, mereantur evadere judicium ultionis. And by the help of Thy grace, may they be enabled to escape the judgment of punishment. Et lucis aeternae beatudine perfrui. And enjoy the happiness of eternal light. In Paradisum deducant te Angeli. May the angels lead you into paradise. In memoria aeterna erit Justus: ab auditione mala non timebit. The just shall be in everlasting remembrance: he shall not fear the evil hearing. Dominus vobiscum. The Lord be with you. Libera me, Domine, de morte aeternam in die illa tremenda: Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra: Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo, dum discussio venerit, atque ventura ira. Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra. Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae; dies magna et amara valde. Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. Requiem aeternam dona eis. Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. Libera me Domine de morte aeterna in die illa tremenda: quando caeli movendi sunt et terra; Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. Deliver me, O Lord, from death everlasting, upon that dread day of terror: When the heavens and earth shall be moved: When Thou shalt come and judge the world in fire. Trembling and full of fear I approach the time of the trial of the wrath to come. When the heavens and earth shall be moved. Day of anger, day of terror, day of calamity and misery, day of mourning and woe. When Thou shalt come and judge the world in fire, Eternal rest grant them, Lord: and light perpetual shine down upon them. Deliver me, O Lord, from death everlasting, upon that dread day of terror: When the heavens and earth shall be moved: When Thou shalt come and judge the world in fire.

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Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison. Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us. Requiescat in pace. Rest in peace. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Eternal rest grant them, Lord. Et lux perpetua luceat eis. And light perpetual shine down upon them. source Lupu, Michael. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Study Guide for the Guthrie Theatre’s 2001 production] http://www.guthrietheater. org/ sites/default/files/woolf.pdf . . . . . now that you've finished the play. . . the allusion to Illyria 40 Signet As noted earlier in this handout, Illyria is an archaic name for the former Yugoslavia, territory that, like Carthage, was conquered after repeated assaults by the Romans from 156 BC to 78-77 BC (Roudané 94). However, Albee also alludes to the setting of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's most melancholic romantic comedy. And where did Shakespeare get the name Illyria? The editors of the Arden edition of Twelfth Night suggest that it came from Ovid: in Book 4 of the Metamorphoses. According to mythographer Pierre Grimal, Ino, after the death of her sister Semele, asked her husband, Athamas, to raise Semele's son, Dionysus, as one of their own. This request infuriates Hera because Dionysis is the illegitimately born son from the affair between her husband and brother, Zeus, and Seleme. In revenge, the goddess Hera drives Ino and Athamas mad: Ino kills one of her children, Melicertes, by throwing him "into a cauldron of boiling water, while Athamas killed [their other child] Learchus with a spear imagining that he was a deer." Despondent after discovering her deed, Ino throws herself into the sea to drown, but the sea-gods transform her into Leucothea, a sea-goddess, and her son into Palaemon; together they "guided sailors in storms" (Grimal 259). In the Metamorphoses, we read that Cadmus did not know that daughter and grandson Had become sea-gods; overborne with sorrow, And one misfortune after another, conquered By all the portents he had seen, he left The city he had founded [Troy], as if luck, Not his own fate, oppressed him, and he wandered With his queen [Harmonia] until they reached Illyria. They were sad, and old, and they kept talking over The troubles of their house. (Humphries translation 99)

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Consider . . . a) why George might allude to the locale of one of Shakespeare's more celebrated plays. Twelfth Night is an undeniably melancholic play, but it nevertheless concludes with long-lost siblings reunited and with two love-lorn characters finding romantic happiness b) what parallels and differences you see between Ovid's story of Cadmus and Harmonia on the one hand and Albee's of George and Martha on the other. NOTE—New Carthage 40 Signet 43 NAL Here is some historical information about Carthage; unless otherwise noted, the following summarizes a discussion in McKay 145-146: an ancient city-state in the north of Africa Carthage was an ancient city-state near what is now Tunis in Tunisia (in the north of Africa). Carthage dominated commerce in the western Mediterranean. Made wealthy from trade in tin and precious metals, Carthage forcibly expanded its empire into parts of Spain and—running afoul of Rome's ambitions to expand in the same territory—Sicily. clashing with Rome in the Punic Wars Rome battled Carthage for dominance in Sicily and finally prevailed in the First Punic War (264-241 B.C.) Carthage, after expanding into Spain, attacked Rome in the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.). (Incidentally, the name of the wars derives from the Roman name for the Carthaginians: "Punici"; Mead 73. The name Carthage itself is a Latin variant of the Phoenician phrase "new city"; Roudane 93.) The Carthaginian general Hannibal led his army through Spain, France, and through the Alps into Italy (Mead 73): For fifteen years Hannibal roamed freely, the Romans powerless to defeat him. Both sides destroyed cities and villages all over Italy. . . . At the Battle of Cannae in southern Italy in 216 B.C., Hannibal inflicted Rome's greatest disaster, one of the supreme tactical triumphs in military history. Yet though Hannibal soon after stood at the gates of Rome, he did not have the resources to capture it. (Mead 73-75) Led by the general Publius Cornelius Scipio, the beleaguered Romans ultimately prevailed. After resoundingly defeating Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in North Africa, the general acquired the honorary title Africanus. the end of Carthage At the end of the Third Punic War (146 B.C.), Carthage lay in ruins, its threat to the ambitions of the Roman Empire finally, decisively, crushed. In fact, the Roman legions "so methodically destroyed [Carthage] that archaeologists today can find little or nothing of the once-mighty city" (Mead 76). You might ask yourself why Albee alludes, prominently and often, to a city more famous for its destruction than for anything else. the themes of the play: an interview with Charlie Rose

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In May 2008, the then-eighty-year-old playwright spoke about his work to Rose; here are some excerpts: what theater is for Any play that doesn't ask a lot of tough questions is wasting your time. That's why most of Broadway is not worth going to. . . . Ideally a play should hold a mirror up to people and say, "Look—this is the way you live. This is the way you react to things. If you don't like what you see, why don't you change?" how to live [If I were to give advice about living] I'd probably tell you to live on the precipice, live dangerously, completely fully, don't . . . go to sleep in the head, in the mind, in the gut—stay fully awake, keep questioning your values and realizing that being conscious—no matter what your faith might be—is the only thing you've got. To what extent does Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? reflect these sentiments? For example, what "tough questions" does the play raise? And are George and Martha, or Nick and Honey, or any or all of them, living dangerously, or are they guilty of "sleeping in the head"? the name Martha In the New Testament, Martha is the sister of Mary. In John 11:1, their brother Lazarus has died. Jesus tells Martha, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. (11:24-27) Jesus stands before the cave in which Lazarus was interred four days before and has the stones closing the mouth of the cave taken away. He "crie[d] with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth" (11:43-44). Is it possible that Albee means to allude to the biblical Martha? If so, what might the significance of this allusion be? appraising Martha In her essay on Tennessee Williams's 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, Camille Paglia characterizes Blanche DuBois as a dreamer who lives by language. . . . She creates poetry and illusion through her flights of rhetoric, which transform the harsh, bare environment. . . . Blanche's love of imagination and artifice clashes with the humdrum routine of the practical, utilitarian world, embodied in Stanley's curt, deflating minimalism. . . . Paglia suggests that Albee's Martha resembles Blanche: "Blanche's aggressive talking and baroque fantasies will live again in [Albee's] caustic termagant Martha." What similarities do you see between Blanche and Martha? What significant differences are there? What theme(s) link the two plays? the child

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Responding to criticisms of the play that George and Martha's child is a "gimmick," evidence that the play is clever but essentially hollow, Alan Schneider, who directed the Broadway premiere, writes If the child in Virginia Woolf is merely a "gimmick," then so is the wild duck, the cherry orchard, the streetcar with the special name, even our old elusive friend Godot. But Albee's play is not about the child—just as Godot is not about Godot but about the waiting for him—but about people who have had to create him as a "beanbag" or crutch for their own insufficiencies and failures, and now are left to find their own way, if there is to be a way, free of him. (67) the Girl in Listening The Girl, a character in Albee's [1977] play Listening, says We do not have to live, you know, unless we wish to; the greatest sin, no matter what they tell you, the greatest sin in living is doing it badly—stupidly, as if you weren't really alive. (qtd. Roudané 46) What relationship do you see between this statement and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the inspiration for Martha 195 Signet Martha—whom New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis calls "that harridan of all times"—was inspired by Marie Menken, a largely forgotten avant-garde film maker. Her "ephemerally beautiful, short personal films," Dargis writes, which [Menken] bundled together with deliberate casualness and called "Notebook," . . . were seemingly straightforward and simple—a nodding flower, a droplet of rain on a leaf, showily patterned tiles, a gurgling fountain, pigeons tracing loops across the sky—but only in the way that everyday life is straightforward, simple, and profound. The palpable joy her films express, Dargis writes, seem at odds with Menken's personal life; she married Willard Maas, a writer and filmmaker, who was homosexual. The marriage might have been a happy one, Dargis writes, but it's hard not to think that there was some pain mixed in with all that bohemian free loving and living. Certainly the couple's monumental boozing and arguing, which inspired Mr. Albee so memorably, suggests that there might have been some self-medication in the mix. APPENDICES I. for further reading Letts, Tracy. August: Osage County. (2008) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Letts's three-hour melodrama is unapologetically raucous, bitterly, sometimes obscenely funny heir to Albee's and Eugene O'Neill's studies of the American family in crisis. O'Neill, Eugene. Long Day's Journey Into Night. (1940) An unsparingly bleak classic, in which the Tyrone family faces the consequences of the horrors of alcoholism, infidelity, heroin addiction, and consumption, each of which has blighted the

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family of the swaggering stage actor James Tyrone; his fragile, devoted, doomed wife Mary; and their two sons. Theater critic John Simon contends that this "sublime" play, whose characters "stagger through life, so endlessly wounding, so unliberating from the prison of the self," is "immense . . . , the towering achievement of American drama" (238). Anne Paolucci suggests that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? "is, in Albee's repertory, what Long Day's Journey Into Night is in O'Neill's; the aberrations, the horrors, the mysteries are woven into the fabric of a perfectly normal setting so as to create the illusion of total realism, against which the abnormal and the shocking have even greater impact" (45). Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. (1927) This elegant, compassionate novel, focused on the deeds and thoughts of an English family at their shabby Scottish summer house, is as low-key as Albee's play is raucous. Yet its characters share George and Martha's wary distrust of (and impulse to retreat from) a turbulent, violent world. The novel is also one of the more accessible classics of the modernist tradition.

II. vocabulary from the play All page references are to the 1983 Signet edition. 58, 122 ABSTRACTED 63 ABSTRUSE 180, 231 DISPASSIONATE 169 INCREDULOUS 111 INEFFECTUAL 19 OSTENSIBLE 123 PENSIVE 130 PETULANT 176 REVERIE 57, 124 RUEFUL III. a brief summary of the plot ACT ONE Fun and Games pp. 1-86 in the Signet edition The entire play takes place in the shabby New England home of George, a college history professor, and Martha, his wife. The play opens late at night—more exactly, at two a.m. one springtime Sunday—as this middle-aged couple, both drunk, return from a cocktail party. Their host was the college president, who also happens to be Martha's father. George and Martha squabble; George teases Martha about the fact that she is older than he is, and Martha grumbles that George never mingles at parties. George is unhappy to learn that—much as he would like to turn in—guests are coming: Nick, a handsome young professor new to the college, and his wife, Honey. As George sulks, Martha tries to amuse him by repeating a joke from the cocktail party: she sings her version of "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?" substituting the name of the celebrated English novelist Virginia Woolf. When she feels that George is not sufficiently amused, their squabbling escalates. The doorbell rings, repeatedly; as George goes to the door, he gives Martha an odd warning—"Just don't start in on the bit about the kid" (18). The significance of his words will be clear only late in the play.

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When the guests enter and get settled, George and Martha do not restrain from lashing out at one another. For example, Martha faults George, who complains about the difficulties of having the college president as his father-in-law: "for some men," Martha says, it wouldn't be a difficulty at all but "the chance of a lifetime" (27). It is quickly clear that the other couple's relationship is not ideal; for example, Honey makes more of an effort to ingratiate herself with their hosts, even though she unthinkingly interrupts her husband during the conversation. Martha and Honey leave for a tour of the house; George and Nick have a bumpy, sometimes hostile conversation in their absence. Over the course of it we learn that Nick teaches not math (as Martha concluded) but biology (36), and that he and Honey have no children. When Nick asks if George and Martha have any children, George replies, "That's for me to know and you to find out" (39). Honey returns with the news that Martha is changing into more comfortable clothes—seemingly unremarkable news that George responds to with surprising hostility (43). Martha enters in clothing that Honey finds inappropriate but that Nick finds alluring (47). Martha and George repeatedly try to humiliate one another: —she harps on his failure to make a name for himself at the college—a topic that, as George tells her, he and Nick had already discussed (49) —she flirts openly with Nick (50, 63, 68, and elsewhere) —when she learns that Nick was a college boxer, Martha reveals that, at her father's house some years back, she playfully put on some boxing gloves and punched George in the jaw. The episode—"it was funny, but it was awful," Martha says—has "colored our whole life" (57). —George retaliates by sneaking up, shotgun in hand, behind his wife: Honey sees him raise the rifle to the back of Martha's head and screams. When Martha turns, George pulls the trigger—and she is delighted when a red and yellow parasol pops out of the barrel of the gun (59). —When George needles Martha for mentioning their son to Honey, Martha tells the guests that George fears he is not the child's biological father (71) —George and Martha argue about what color their son's eyes are (72-75) Martha talks about her childhood: Martha's father raised her after her mother's early death (77). In her sophomore year in college, she impulsively married a young groundskeeper, but her father had the marriage annulled. George, her father imagined, could be not only his son-in-law but his successor as the college president—only to conclude that, as Martha puts it, George was "a great . . . big . . . fat . . . FLOP!" (84). As the hostility between George and Martha escalates, Honey fears that she is going to be sick. ACT TWO Walpurgisnacht

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pp. 87-181 in the Signet edition The act begins with George alone; Nick enters, saying that his wife really shouldn't drink so much, and that Martha is in the kitchen making coffee. Although Nick is clearly contemptuous of George, the two men have a surprisingly revelatory conversation: —Nick reveals that he married Honey because she was—rather, because she thought she was—pregnant. The fact that she had family money also influenced Nick. (94, 102) —George reminisces about "the grandest day of my youth," an episode from his prep school days: during Prohibition, he and some classmates, in New York during break, went into a speakeasy. When one of them (a fifteen-year-old who, some years before, had accidentally shot his mother) ordered a glass of "bergin," everyone in the bar is so amused by his misspeaking that they all drink for free. (94-95) —George tells Nick he is encouraging his guest to reveal his past "because you represent a direct and pertinent threat to my lifehood, and I want to get the goods on you" (111) —With cynical humor, Nick imagines his rise to power: he will take over courses from older faculty members and seduce some of the more prominent women in the college community—especially the college president's daughter. (112) After Martha and Honey return, the battle between George and Martha almost immediately resumes. For example . . . -- When Honey says she vomits all the time with no explanation (119), Martha says that George makes everyone sick—including their son when he was a child. However, George says the real reason their son got sick and ran away from home was to avoid his mother (120). -- George puts on some music because Honey wants to dance (127); soon Martha and Nick are dancing suggestively (131). As they do, Martha ridicules George: she tells Nick about the book George wrote about a boy who murders his parents—not a novel, as George insisted to the college president (Martha's father), but a memoir (137). Furious, George tries to throttle Martha; Nick intervenes and throws George to the floor (138). Either to save face or further his humiliation, George proposes to his guests that they all play another game: Get the Guests. So George pretends that he's written another novel; when he describes it, the plot is a thinly disguised account of Nick's description of his marriage to Honey (142-146). When Honey realizes that Nick has revealed their secrets to George, she is horrified and runs out of the room, sick to her stomach once more. Nick, before running after his wife, lashes out at George—though it is clear that Nick is more worried about himself than he is about Honey (149). Martha is disgusted with George's petty game (151). As they squabble, Martha and George essentially declare war against one another (159). Nick returns, apologetic, and pours himself another drink (159). When George exits to get more ice, Martha starts aggressively coming on to Nick (162). What they don't know is that George sees them embracing and is amused rather than hurt (165). He retreats, starts singing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" to signal his approach. When George announces that he is going to read, Martha is outraged and declares she and Nick are going to make out. George's reply: "good for you" (171). Furious, Martha confronts George (knocking against the door chimes as she

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does); both she and Nick are disgusted when George essentially gives his permission to them to do whatever they want (174). Nick and Martha exit. Honey enters, having heard the chimes (176); caught up in the memory of a dream she had, she cries out that she doesn't want any children. George realizes that Honey has been aborting her pregnancies without telling Nick (177). When Honey insists on knowing who rang (she thought someone came to the door), George comes up with an idea. As Honey listens with horror, George decides to tell Martha that someone indeed came to the door with devastating news: George and Martha's son is dead (181). ACT THREE The Exorcism pp. 183-242 in the Signet edition The act opens with Martha, all alone, wondering where everyone else has gone. Nick soon enters, and is stung when Martha complains about him being too intoxicated to sleep with her. Nick e is yet another man, Martha says, who has disappointed her. Nick is incredulous when Martha explains that George is really the only man who has ever made her happy (191). The door chimes sound, and Martha goads Nick into answering the door. It is George, with flowers he has picked from the college president's garden (195), setting off more bickering about whether or not the moon is out that night. Preparing to play one more vicious game, George tells Nick to fetch his wife, asleep on the bathroom floor (207). When everyone is in the living room, George announces that in one day his and Martha's son will be twenty-one and is headed home to celebrate (214). He coaxes Martha into describing her son to their guests; he was, Martha says, a "beautiful boy" with hair like "fleece" (220) and who made marriage to George bearable (221). Of course, Martha says, with a father like George, any happiness in the house could not last—then another battle begins, with George blaming Martha for the chronic unhappiness in their house. As Martha defends herself, George starts reciting in Latin what turns out to be the Mass for the dead. George then tells Martha he has some terrible news: while Nick and Martha were fooling around, a telegram arrived to announce that George and Martha's son is dead, killed as he drove into a tree to avoid running over a porcupine (231). Martha, devastated, says to George, "You can't decide these things!" (232). But George is insistent, and Martha collapses, crying out in pain: "You can't kill him! You can't have him die!" (233). Nick, puzzled, tries to comfort Martha. As the play ends, Nick—and the audience—realize that George and Martha. . . -- never could have children -- created an elaborate private game where they pretended to have a wonderful child -- the game had to end when Martha broke a rule: she mentioned the child to someone else (236) As the sun rises on Sunday morning, Nick and Honey leave. Martha is frightened: how can she live without comforting herself with that elaborate fantasy of having a wonderful son? To comfort her, George tenderly sings Martha's song to her: "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf?" Martha's reply: "I am, George. I am" (242).

August 2007 revised August 2014

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sources Albee, Edward. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1962. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1983. ---. ---. 2005 ed. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2005. Bigsby, C. W. E., ed. Edward Albee: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth-Century Views. ed. Maynard Mack. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Bradbury, Malcolm and James McFarlane, eds. "The Name and Nature of Modernism." Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. London: Penguin, 1976. 19-57. Charlie Rose. Interview with Edward Albee. PBS. 28 May 2008. Clurman, Harold. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Naked Image: Observations on the Modern Theatre. New York: Macmillan, 1966. 18-21. Bigsby 76-79. Dargis, Manohla. "Who's Afraid of an Artist Who Loved Flowers?" [Review of Martina Kudlacek's documentary Notes on Marie Menken] New York Times . . . Flanagan, William. "Edward Albee: An Interview." The Art of the Theatre IV. The Paris Review 10 (Fall 1966): 93-121. qtd. Conversations with Edward Albee, ed. Philip C. Kolin. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1988. 45-66. Green, Jesse. "Albee the Enigma, Now the Inescapable." New York Times November 11, 2007. Grimal, Pierre. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. 1951. Trans. A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985. Hayman, Ronald. Edward Albee. World Dramatists. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973. Isherwood, Charles. "A Matriarch After Your Attention, If Not Heart." [Review of the Steppenwolf Theater Company's 2007 production of August: Osage County by Tracy Letts] New York Times August 13, 2007. E1+. Lupu, Michael. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Study Guide for the Guthrie Theatre’s 2001 production] http://www.guthrietheater.org/ sites/default/files/woolf.pdf McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckler. A History of Western Society. 6th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Mead, Robert Douglas, ed. Hellas and Rome: The Story of Greco-Roman Civilization. New York: Mentor, 1972. Ovid, Metamorphoses. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1950. Paglia, Camille. "1947, December 3: 'Hey, there! Stella, Baby!' A Streetcar Named Desire Premieres at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York." A New Literary History of America. Ed. Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard UP, 2009.

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Paolucci, Anne. From Tension to Tonic: The Plays of Edward Albee. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1972. Preminger, Alex, ed. Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1965. Roudané, Matthew C. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Necessary Fictions, Terrifying Realities. Twayne's Masterworks 34. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Rudel, Anthony J. Classical Music Top 40. New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1995. Schechner, Richard. "Reality is Not Enough: An Interview with Alan Schneider." Tulane Drama Review 9.3 (1965): 143-150. 69-75 in Bigsby. Schneider, Alan. "Why So Afraid?" Tulane Drama Review 7.3 (1963): 10-13. 66-68 in Bigsby. Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. ca. 1602. Arden Shakespeare. Ed. J. M. Lothian and T. W. Craik. London: Methuen, 1975. Simon, John. "The Lies That Bind." [review of two New York productions of Eugene O'Neill plays] New York April 6, 1998. Trilling, Diana. "The Riddle of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Claremont Essays. New York: Harcourt, 1964. 80-88 in Bigsby. Williams, Tennessee. A Steetcar Named Desire. [1947] New York: Signet, 1951. Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. [1927] San Diego: Harcourt, 1989.