"WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Yet for those who can't see a production of the play, the text can provide an opportunity to study Albee's characters and language more fully. The elements of the play that were once so shocking--perhaps even offensive--seem almost tame in an era of sexual permissiveness on stage, screen and television. That the play continues to generate enormous power suggests to many playgoers and readers that Albee has indeed created an enduring masterpiece.

After Virginia Woolf, Albee continued to experiment. His next play, Tiny Alice (1964), is a dark and mysterious allegory about man's relationship to God. In 1966 he won the Pulitzer Prize for A Delicate Balance, which tells of a "conventional" family whose lives are overturned when good friends invade their household, driven from their own home by a nameless fear. All Over (1971) details the reactions of a group of people--relatives and loved ones--to the death of a famous writer. Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968) are two interrelated one-acters. In Box there are no characters; a box sits on stage and a voice from within it speaks to the audience. In Seascape (1975), which also won a Pulitzer Prize, two of the four characters are large lizardlike creatures that emerge from the sea.

Among Albee's other works are adaptations of novels which audiences and readers have never felt to be among his best work: Carson McCullers' Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1963), James Purdy's Malcolm (1965), and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1981). Albee has even written a musical, an adaptation of Truman Capote's short novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's, which closed before it got to Broadway.

By the mid-1980s none of Albee's other plays had received the critical acclaim or popular acceptance of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Some people felt that his plays had become more and more inaccessible, that Albee was speaking to himself in his own coded language, with little regard for how well he communicated with the audience. Others defended him by saying that his lack of interest in the commercial theater should not be held against him, and that perhaps the test of time would prove his later works to be among his best.

What was important was that Albee, who had long disregarded the opinion of critics ("I have been both overpraised and underpraised," he had said), kept writing. He was not content to rest on past laurels. He also gave generously of his time and energy to other artists, both as a founder of the William Flanagan Center for Creative Persons, at Montauk, New York, and as a member of national and state organizations furthering the arts. Although reluctant to talk about his life or his past, Albee was dedicated to artistic excellence and often shared his expertise with college students in lectures and seminars.

It was also clear that he had a major influence on his younger contemporaries. Evidence of his remarkable ear for dialogue, his poetic flair for the American idiom, and his cynical viewpoint on American values could be seen in the work of such playwrights as Sam Shephard (Buried Child, True West, Fool for Love), David Rabe (Streamers, Hurly-burly); John Guare (House of Blue Leaves); and David Mamet (American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross).

^^^^^^^^^^WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?: THE PLOT

Late one Saturday night, a husband and wife return to their home in a New England college town. George, 46, is an associate professor of history; Martha, 52, is the daughter of the college president. They have been drinking heavily at a faculty party given by Martha's father, and as the two stumble around the living room and bicker, they seem like many other such couples after a long and alcoholic party. But this is a night in which tensions within their marriage will erupt and the patterns of their lives may be altered forever.

To George's surprise, Martha announces that she has invited another couple to join them for a drink--at 2 A.M.! Naturally combative, George and Martha use the invitation as another excuse to battle.

The guests arrive--Nick, 30, a new faculty member in the biology department, and his wife, Honey 26. He's good-looking and athletic; she's a sweet and seemingly superficial person. They quickly find themselves to be the audience for George and Martha's scalding war of words.

As the evening progresses and the liquor flows, tensions that have been partially hidden emerge in the form of psychological games. Martha is disgusted with George's lack of ambition and failure to advance in the history department, particularly with his advantages as the son-in-law of the university president. She treats George with open contempt, and George tries to strike back by using his superior verbal skills. He has taken an immediate dislike to Nick, not only because Martha is obviously physically attracted to the younger man, but also because Nick is a biologist. As a historian, George sees biology as a science determined to eliminate man's individuality.

Nick tries to stay detached from the turmoil between his hosts, but he soon gets caught up in it and reveals himself as ambitious and shallow. Honey seems too drunk and too mindless to comprehend much of what is going on.

A turning point occurs when George discovers that Martha has mentioned a forbidden topic to Honey while the two women were out of the room. The taboo topic: George and Martha's son. The bitterness between the couple accelerates, and they persist in their battle of verbal abuse. As Act I ends, Martha has figuratively twisted a knife in George's back by harping on his supposed failure as a man and as a teacher. The fight dissolves into a shouting match and Honey is made physically ill by a combination of the quarreling and too much alcohol.

As Act II of the play opens, George and Nick talk alone. George tells the story of a young boy who killed his mother and caused his father to die, a story that may or may not be autobiographical. Nick reveals that he married Honey when she thought she was pregnant, but that the pregnancy turned out to be a false alarm. George's attempts to warn Nick about being "dragged down by the quicksand" of the college fall on deaf ears. Nick has his eye set on the top, and one of his techniques for advancement will be to sleep with a few important faculty wives. Martha and Honey return, and the sexual attraction between Martha and Nick increases. They dance erotically with each other as Martha goads her husband by telling their guests of George's attempts to write a novel, whose plot concerns a boy responsible for his parents' deaths. Infuriated, George physically attacks Martha, stopping only when Nick intervenes. George seeks his revenge, not on Martha, but on the guests. He tells a "fable" that mirrors Nick and Honey's early lives and her hysterical pregnancy. Humiliated, Honey flees the room. Enraged and out for blood, George and Martha declare "total war" on each other.

The first victory is Martha's, as she openly makes sexual advances to Nick but fails to make George lose his temper. Yet after she has led the younger man to the kitchen, where George can hear the sounds of their carousing, George makes a decision that will be his final act of revenge, one that will change his and Martha's lives forever: he decides to tell her that their son is dead.

Act III finds Martha alone. Nick has proven himself impotent in their sexual encounter, and when he arrives again on the scene, she expresses contempt for him. She also reveals to him that George is the only man who has ever satisfied her.

George appears at the front door, bearing flowers and announcing that there is one more game to play--"Bringing Up Baby." First, he induces Martha to talk about their son in the most loving and idealized terms; then, he announces the death of their son.

Martha's furious reaction that George "cannot decide these things" leads Nick to understand at last George and Martha's secret. Their son is a creation of their imagination, a fantasy child that they have carefully harbored as a means of helping them survive the pain of their failed lives. Nick and Honey leave, and George and Martha are alone, with just each other as shields against the world. Only the future will tell whether they have been strengthened or made even more vulnerable by the traumatic experiences of the evening.


^^^^^^^^^^WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?: GEORGE

George is an associate professor of history at a college in the New England town of New Carthage. At 46, he should probably be further along in his career, but through a lack of ambition, coupled with a bad relationship with the college president (his father-in-law), he has become "bogged down" in the history department. He's been married to Martha, six years older than he, for 23 years, and their marriage has degenerated into an ongoing battle of words and psychological games to get the upper hand.

George is intelligent and witty, and has a keen ability to use words. In fact, he might be an excellent dinner companion if his basic energy had not been dissipated by Martha's constant belittling of him. He fights back by using his wits, but she knows where to wound him at his most vulnerable points--his failures, his physical weakness, his passivity.

Virtually nothing is told us of George's (or the other characters') early life. George relates a story that he claims to be autobiographical, about a trip to a gin mill (saloon) during the Prohibition era, when he was a teenager. But there are clues to suggest that a boy in the story whom George refers to as a "friend" may actually be George himself. This boy had murdered his mother and caused the death of his father. Whether the story is literal or metaphoric is never made clear in the play, nor is it known if George is talking about himself or someone else. Whatever interpretation is accepted, however, it's evident that George suffers from a great deal of conflict about his parents, and seems to harbor guilt and/or resentment about them.

Through most of the play Martha gets the better of George, beating him down psychologically. She is skillful at dishing out punishment, and George accepts it. He turns the tables by abusing their guests in ways similar to Martha's treatment of him, by chiding them for their weaknesses and revealing their hidden secrets.

In the end, however, George proves himself stronger than Martha. His decision to kill their imaginary child--a fantasy he and Martha have shared privately--can be viewed as an act of heroism or as an act of revenge. Whichever approach you favor, it is clear that George is in control by the end of the play.

To some readers, George's name suggests George Washington (an ironic comment on the corruption of American ideals); to others, it suggests St. George, the dragon slayer who conquered evil (much as George conquers the "devil" that possesses him and his wife in the form of the child fantasy).