This entire presentation is copyright © 1968 and © 1999 by William Allin Storrer. Phd. For permission to quote, contact Dr. Storrer at mindalive@storrer.com

Throughout Stagwoolf Albee sets traps of truth that later spring upon the unsuspecting observer as illusions, or perhaps not illusions, but who can tell for sure? Was George involved in the death of his mother or father? Was his novel a true or false story? Was George the boy in the Bergin story? What is the real reason for Honey and Nick not having children? These are some of the major situations that Albee leaves in ambiguity, and they all confront the audience before the question of the central illusion of Stagwoolf is raised, the question of Martha and George's "son." When George "kills" the son, the ambiguities of whether or not a son ever existed and whether or not his death is similar in any way to the story of the killing of the Bergin boy's father, is all the more challenging demanding a consideration of, and solution to, the mystery of just what truth lies within Stagwoolf. The very ambiguity Albee has created becomes a dramatic device to force the perceiver to come to grips with the central issue of Stagwoolf as Albee sees it himself: "'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' means 'Who's afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf' means 'Who's afraid of living without illusions'?"¹ Tom Prideaux, a regular writer on theatre for Life, puts the "message" of Stagwoolf rather succinctly;

<Some critics complain it is implausible that an intelligent man and wife would pretend to have a son for 20 years. But to Albee the implausibility couldn't matter less. He is interested not in factual truth, but in underlying truth, which is that people cherish false illusions for all kinds of reasons--and that they are better off without them.>²

A consideration of some of the questions of truth or illusion in Stagwoolf will demonstrate the pervasiveness of ambiguity that is established before the truth or illusion of the son arises, and lead to the question of illusions in the lives of Martha and George, and perhaps to what Albee is implying through his centering of the denouement of Stagwoolf on the ritualistic murder of that son.

Early in Act Two, George and Nick are alone. Each reveals much of his past history. George however, skirts a direct statement, and talks about another boy. Is this other boy actually George? The question is raised in a statement by Martha to George; "You used to drink bergin, too,"(123) suggesting that George is in reality the Bergin boy of whom he earlier spoke. By the time Martha's comment is spoken, it seems more significant than it may be, for her remark is made in the middle of the play and so little concrete information has been established about any of the background of George's life that could cause him to act the way he does in Stagwoolf, that the reader/viewer is grasping for any thread to his past.

One should not be so hasty in accepting Martha's connection of George with the Bergin boy. George, in the Bergin story, notes that "everyone started ordering bergin,"(95) so he, too, could have ordered bergin, without being the boy of whom he speaks.

This does not settle the question, however, for George notes that the boy was fifteen then, and "the following summer . . . ."(95) (presumably when the boy was sixteen) "he swerved the ear," "and drove straight into a large tree." "That was thirty years ago."(96) One can add sixteen to thirty and get forty-six, the age Albee specifies for George on the Stagwoolf listing of The Players. George telling the story in the first person singular identifies himself then as sixteen: adding one year for the later summer, and thirty intervening years, brings the total to forty-seven, or one year older than he is when he tells the story to Nick. Mathematical logic points to George as the Bergin boy, while George's own telling of it as a one-year older boy denies this.

The question is not yet resolved, for it relates to whether or not George's novel is or is not true. Martha says that the novel is "A book about a boy who murders his mother and kills his father, and pretends it's all an accident!" to which Honey cries out with glee, "An accident," at which Albee gives the stage direction to Nick: "(Remembering something related)."(136) The "accident," so it is suggested, was the accident of the Bergin boy who, as George has stated, "Had killed his mother with a shotgun some years before--accidentally, completely accidentally without even an unconscious motivation,"(94) and then "The following summer, on a country road, with his 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,"(95-96) but "was not killed, of course . . . . and when they told him that his father was dead, he began to laugh."(96) At the time George tells the story, Nick seems to believe it, for he asks of the Bergin boy, who was put in an asylum, "Is he . . . still there?"(96) George's reply stretches one's credulity; "Oh,yes. And I'm told that for these thirty years he has . . . not . . . uttered . . . one . . . sound."(96) If this is true, literally, then the Bergin boy cannot be George. If it is only a figurative statement, the thirty years without uttering a sound suggest George's failure for the past three decades to publish his novel.

Martha suggests that the novel is true, for George told her father, "Sir, it isn't a novel at all . . . this is the truth . . . this really happened . . . . TO ME!"(137)

Can one believe Martha? Is she just being vindictive to George, or must the most heinous of crimes, murder, be ascribed to him? The vehemence with which George asserts that the boy had no motivation for his mother's murder, might be George's attempt to protect himself from the novel being revealed as the story of his life. Though such premeditation seems to point to the truth of the story being about George, perhaps it only suggests that George has been all through this before, has told the story to others, and had Martha pin it on him. Then why does he react so strongly this time, with the result being violence? As noted in Chapter III, this moment is just before the reversal of George's fortunes, just before the ending of Humiliate the Host. Is it just that he is going to lose the game that bothers George, or is he really upset at his past being revealed? Martha might be lying, yet George is aware of the apparent element of truth in her story and may foresee that Martha has finally tied it all together in a manner that makes it seem true, and therefore devastating to his position. His violent reaction is then justified as revenge for a wicked falsification and misuse of the facts.

The last word on the subject appears much later in Stagwoolf and its connection may be easily overlooked. In Act Three George mentions his college graduation present from his "Mommy and Daddy."(200) Nick rejoins "Was this after you killed them,"(200) and George defies him, "Maybe,"(200) with Martha adding "Yeah; maybe not, too,"(201) effectively reversing her earlier position on the subject. In reality we cannot know as an objective fact whether or not George is the Bergin boy, or the novel a true story of his fifteenth and sixteenth years. We can at best, from the way we acquire the information, which may be dependent upon how attentive we are at any given moment as we experience Stagwoolf, make a decision based upon the way we "feel" about it at the conclusion of the play.

Another major ambiguity of truth and illusion is in the question of Nick and Honey never having children. Can they have children, or do they just not want any? By the time this situation comes to a seeming head near the end of Act Two, it has been learned that Nick married Honey when she had an hysterical pregnancy,(94) though Honey calls it an appendicitis false alarm,(119) that she throws up a lot(93) and gets sick, occasionally all by herself(9) and the two have never been very passionate.(105) Honey says "I . . . don't . . . want . . . any . . . children. I'm afraid! I don't want to be hurt."(176) Her statement points up the ambiguity, just before George begins to see to the root of the problem, for one must ask what is meant by "hurt." Does Honey fear the physical pain of childbirth, or does she fear the psychological hurt a child can bring, unwittingly or otherwise, to its parents? Then Honey instructs George, "Stay away from me,"(177) putting in his mind the idea that he could do to her what Nick is at that moment trying to do to Martha. An idea comes to George; "How you do it? Hunh? How do you make your secret little murders stud-boy doesn't know about, hunh? Pills? PILLS?"(177) Yet, as Alfred Chester makes clear, George's accusation reveals no truth:

<So the truth is out at last. But what truth? . . . Honey has said nothing, and George's mind has said all. But if Honey is by turns conveniently stupefied and conveniently silent, she is also conveniently frightened. Somehow George has hit home. And so has Albee--he has impugned Honey and further impugned George by showing his cruelty to her. We begin to realize that the "truth" about Nick and Honey's reproductory dilemma will never be revealed as an objective fact.>³

The second act concludes with ambiguity pervading the moment of the hero's reversal, as well as immediately preceding the moment when the hero comes upon his idea of how to get back at Martha, by "killing" the son. The question of truth and illusion is now pushed to an extreme: we know that George as lying, but Nick, now so confused by truth and illusion, seems almost willing to accept the lie:

Once . . . once, when I was sailing past Majorca, drinking on deck with a correspondent who was talking about Roosevelt, the moon went down, thought about it for a little . . . considered it, you know what I mean, . . . and then, POP, came up again. Just like that.

That is not true! That is such a lie!

You must not call everything a lie, Martha. (To NICK) Must she?

Hell, I don't know when you people are lying, or what.

You're damned right!

You're not supposed to.(199-200)

Even the characters within Stagwoolf have difficulty separating truth from illusion.

The biggest illusion of all, the imaginary son, is yet to be dealt with. Perhaps one would never feel sure that the son was imaginary unless doubt about all things had previously been placed in one's mind, much as it has been placed in Nick's. George, early in Stagwoolf, warns Martha, "Just don't start in on the bit about the kid, that's all."(18) But Martha mentions him to Honey while they are at the "euphemism," and George and Martha both bring him into the conversation after that.

It is George, however, who forces Martha to tell the story of the child, to play the last game, Bringing Up Baby. As she begins the story, hints of something being not quite right, appear. "It was an easy birth . . . once it had been . . . accepted, relaxed into."(217) Martha had always wanted a child. "A son? A daughter?" George prods, but she answers only "A child!"(218) as if an "it" rather than a "she" or "he" would do. For the banana boat the son had on Saturdays, the oar was a carrot, "Or a swizzle stick, whatever was easier."(220) Already one must wonder how true the story is, with such an interpolation by George. Then George begins the Requiem Mass, and his lines that closed the previous act come to mind: "It's about . . . our son. He's dead. Can you hear me, Martha? Our boy is dead."(181)

If at that earlier point we did not sense the fact that the child never existed, perhaps because we thought George was only planning to play a bad joke on Martha, a joke that would be given the lie by the appearance of the son later in the day for his birthday, we are now led to the unequivocal conclusion that there never was a son. George continues the Requiem Mass as Martha continues the story of their son They end together, Martha on "OUR SON" as George finishes the Libera me.(227) Honey, having overheard the plan that came to George's mind at the end of Act Two, realizes the significance of George's actions, and tries to stop him, but to no avail. George kills the son:

Martha . . . (Long pause) . . . our son is . . . dead. (Silence) (A tiny chuckle) on a Coventry road, with his learner's permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a . . . .

YOU . . . CAN'T . . . DO . . . THAT!

. . . large tree.

YOU CANNOT DO THAT! (232)

The point is not yet clears for Nick initially thinks that the son is actually dead and therefore, actually did exist. Martha tells George "YOU CAN'T KILL HIM! YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM DIE,"(233) and Nick does not catch on. Then George says he ate the telegram announcing the son's death, and Nick senses something wrong. When Martha challenges George's right to the act of murder, he replies "YOU KNOW THE RULES, MARTHA! FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, YOU KNOW THE RULES!"(235) Albee's stage direction to Nick is significant: "(With the beginnings of knowledge he cannot face) What are you two talking about?"(235) George speaks only to Martha, "I can kill him, Martha, if I want to."(235) As Nick begins to understand, so the reader/viewer is led to the same understanding. Martha once more challenges; "You have no right . . . you have no right at all . . . ."(236) and George counters, "I have the right, Martha. We never spoke of it; that's all. I could kill him any time I wanted to."(236) Now Martha accepts this and only asks "Why?"(236) Her next protest is weaker; "You didn't have to have him die, George,"(237) but George only continues the Requiem. Nick asks George, "You couldn't have . . . any?" and George makes only one correction, "We couldn't," which Martha echoes.(238) Not only couldn't but didn't, for the child was only an illusion, created with words, and destroyed with them.

Why have Martha and George lived so long with illusion? What is Albee suggesting in his use of this imaginary child as the theatrical device central to the denouement of Stagwoolf?

The answer has already been given, in the lines quoted earlier from Tom Prideaux. We cherish illusions, for what ever reasons, but are better off without them. The place of this imaginary son in the drama is best understood if we "accept it as an effect and not a cause of the couple's predicament."⁴ Furthermore;

<When George and Martha destroy that child they destroy whatever illusions they have made in reaction to a reality that has been responsible for the loneliness they feel. And that reality they act against by conjuring up a fantasy child is actually the reality of man's predicament . . . . man--in this very complex and bureaucratic world in which the sheer organization of it is dehumanizing--feels an overwhelming sense of aloneness and separation.>⁵

At this juncture, one is led in two directions that have to do with the child both as a specific and general entity. As a specific entity, the child is Martha and George's act of procreativity. They have taken out of God's hands the human miracle of birth, and have thus incurred the wrath of the gods, as in Attic Tragedy. George recognizes this finally; "I'm not God. I don't have the power over life and death, do I?"(233)

This leads further to a point beyond the capability of easy development in Chapter III, but essential to the outline of classic tragedy. If George's lines only are considered, it may be seen that his assertion that he could kill the child is not just an assertion of his right to, but his ability to as well:

I can kill him, Martha, if I want to.(235)

AND I HAVE KILLED HIM!(235)

I have the right, Martha. We never spoke of it; that's all. I could kill him any time I wanted to.(236)

It was . . . time.(240)

It will be better.(240)

The two, who have needed the child as their "bean bag,"(98) have now rid themselves of this illusion, and George's enlightenment is that it is possible, contrary to his beliefs of the last twenty-one years, to live without illusions; "Who's afraid of living without illusions," as Albee puts it. So when Martha admits that she is still afraid of Virginia Woolf,(241) who is Albee's symbol of illusion, we must realize that only George has had an enlightenment, an epiphany, and thus only he qualifies as tragic hero by having completed the entire cycle of events necessary to Attic Tragic structure.

The other side of this complex coin is that the child represents illusions generally. In this view, it is less significant that the illusion is a child, than that the child is the greatest possible illusion that could develop from the condition Martha and George found themselves in after they were married. This child who is an illusion becomes a symbol of all possible illusions in Stagwoolf. Since Albee finds it necessary to exorcise this illusion from the lives of Martha and George, he is suggesting, by extension of the principle of exorcism to the perceptor, that everyone should get rid of illusion. What may be America's collective illusion, the illusion that must be exorcised if America is to survive, will be considered in Chapter V.

This question of illusions is central to Albee's "absurd" philosophy of life, and is revealed in a lengthy article⁶ the playwright wrote a half year before the premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, yet after he had written most of the first two acts. Albee begins his statement on absurd theatre humorously;

<When I was told, about a year ago, that I was considered a member in good standing of The Theatre of the Absurd, I was deeply offended. I was deeply offended because I had never heard the term before and I immediately assumed that it applied to the theatre uptown--Broadway.>⁷

He then turns to justifying why the Theatre of the Absurd is a proper title for his and other contemporary theatre:

<A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and flight, man feels a stranger.>⁸

<Ultimately a phenomenon like the Theatre of the Absurd does not reflect despair or a return to dark irrational forces but expresses modern man's endeavor to come to terms with the world in which he lives. It attempts to make him face up to the human condition as it really is, to free him from illusions that are bound to cause constant maladjustment and disappointment * * * For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions--and laugh at it.>⁹

This last comment recalls George who, with "(A tiny chuckle)"(231) reveals how the son died, then "(Barely able to stop exploding with laughter)"(234) tells Martha he ate the telegram that is the evidence of the death.

Summing up his feelings, Albee avers that

<. . . the purpose of the Theatre of the Absurd . . . is to make a man face up to the human condition as it really is . . . . I would submit that The Theatre of the Absurd, in the sense that it is truly the contemporary theatre facing as it does man's condition as it is, is the Realistic theatre of our time.>¹⁰

George has faced up to the central illusion of his life, but Martha is still afraid of Virginia Woolf. For George, and even for Martha, as George asserts, "It will be better" living without illusion.

1. "Award given to 'Virginia Woolf'," New York Times (April 26, 1963), p. 25.

2. Tom Prideaux, "The Albee attitude, both sweet and sour," Life, LIII (December 14, 1962), p. 110.

3. Alfred Chester, "Edward Albee: Red Herrings & White Whales," Commentary, XXXY (April, 1963), p. 299.

4. Michael E. Rutenberg, "Edward Albee: Social Critic" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University New Haven, June, 1965), p. 102.

5. Ibid., p. 115.

6. Edward Albee, "Which Theatre is the Absurd One?" New York Times Magazine (February 25, 1962), pp. 30-31, 64, 66.

7. Ibid., p. 30.

8. Ibid., p. 31. Albee is citing Camus.

9. Ibid., Albee is citing Martin Esslin from The Theatre of The Absurd.

10. Ibid., p. 31.