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

<Behind Dionysus there were other ancestor-gods of similar indestructibility -- Adonis of Syria, Egypt and Greece, Thammuz of Babylonia, Attis of Phrygia, and above all, Osiris of Egypt. We know that the four thousand-year-old passion play of Abydos told the story of how Osiris -- god-king of his people -- was treacherously killed and torn to pieces, and how those pieces were reunited to give him eternal life in the pantheon of the Egyptian Gods.

<. . . The other theory of the origin of Greek tragedy denies Dionysus and Osiris, and turns to heroes who had not achieved the status of gods. Such men were warriors as well as kings, and their stories may first have been told in war dances that served as sympathetic magic to insure the defeat of enemies} and as stimulants to martial courage. So far as Greece is concerned this theory holds that the stories of the heroes were told in ceremonies at their tombs, and that these stories developed from chanting and dancing into the re-enactment of dramatic events, with a side line of athletic competition.>¹

These are the contrasting theories of the origin of Attic Tragedy, respectively of Professor Gilbert Murray and Sir William Ridgeway. Within these theories may be a formal structural pattern for tragedy that is comparable to the formal pattern of Stagwoolf.

The more generally accepted current theory concerning the origins of ancient Greek Tragedy is probably by Professor Murray.² His assertion is that Greek tragedy arose from some sacred marriage, or Sacer Ludus, at Eleusis, This Sacer Ludus is a Dance, centrally that of Dionysus, with Dionysus regarded as an "Eniautos Daimon," who represents the cyclic rebirth of the world. This theory first developed by Jane Harrison,³ is challenged by Sir William Ridgeway on several grounds.

Ridgeway's attack on the theory that the thymele was always the altar to Dionysus leads to his major thesis, that tragedy arose out of the worship of the dead, not Dionysus. He quotes Polux's statement that "In the orchestra was the thymele, whether it was a bema (step or platform) or bomos (an altar or a tomb),"⁴ as one proof that the thymele was an altar commonly used by all the gods. The essence of this argument is in Ridgeway's statement that

<. . . men first pray to the dead and not to abstract spirits for rain and good crops; that in gratitude they make offerings of the first fruits to the dead; that it is only at a late stage that . . . generalizations appear.>⁵

Turning to the ancient Egyptian passion play at Abydos, he notes Sir James C. Frazer's support of his position in the argument that

<. . . under the mythical pall of the gloried Osiris once lay the body of a dead man, may not the same hold true for Dionysus, who is termed by the Greeks not only theos but also heros, i.e. one who had been a real human personages but treated with divine honours after his death?>⁶

Ridgeway's theory explains why gods do not die in the tragedies, why their lives are not the themes of dramatic art, but the lives of heroes are. It gives credence to the treatment of Oedipus, Agamemnon, Creon and Pentheus as the sufferers rather than Zeus, Dionysus, Apollo and the other gods, in the dramas of Attic Greece. It also suggests that Murray is wrong in attributing the origins of Attic Tragedy to a god, specifically Dionysus. Perhaps the tragic pattern, which Murray relates to the god, can be applied fruitfully to the human hero of Ridgeway's drama.

Murray finds that there are certain structural elements common to both Dionysian ritual and Greek tragedy.⁷ With respect to drama he cites the following six elements: an agon or agons, pathos, a messenger, threnos, anagnorisis and theophany. He details how this molpaic structure fits the extant tragedies, but fails to account satisfactorily for one apparent flaw; the anagnorisis should be a change from sorrow to joy, while in fact the change seems to be one from joy to sorrow.

If Murray's theory is corrects it suggests an ordering of events in dramatic form. The play begins with a battle between the hero god or protagonist and someone else, an antagonist. The hero is effectively defeated and this leads to either the symbolic or actual rending of his body, the pathos. As this rending would be too awful to view in public, or too difficult to perform, it is told of by a messenger. The chorus bewails the death of the hero, but then realizes that he lives on in his rightful successor. This realization converts sorrow to joy, and the old king/hero is deified.

Francis Fergusson makes a significant change in the Murray order of dramatic events so as to make them fit the actual situation of the thirty-one extant tragedies as he sees them.⁸ He places the anagnorisis at an earlier point in the play, such that his order becomes agon(s), anagnorisis, threnos, pathos/ messenger, theophany; and the reversal becomes one of joy to sorrow, as actually found at that point in the extant plays. It must be noted that Murray does not exclude this particular kind of reversal from his theory: he never considers it. Such a reversal at the middle of a play does not prohibit a sorrow-to-joy reversal from occurring at the end of the play.

Kenneth Burke describes the structure of such a play in the terms Poiema, Pathema and Mathema.⁹ Fergusson calls this Purpose, Passion and Perception, and develops his theory in relation to Aristotle's use of the term "imitation," but he takes immediate issue with all rational (e.g. neo-Classical) interpretations given this word. How does the play imitate action? It is, according to Fergusson, by means of the ritualistic element; "It is this tragic rhythm (Purpose, Passion, Perception) of action which is the substance or spiritual content of the play . . . ."¹⁰ This spiritual content is what we, the audience, are to experience, and this content is presented in a plot so ordered as to affect us most strongly, a plot similar to the molpaic structure that Murray notes as present in Dionysian ritual and Greek tragedy.

Francis M. Cornford pointedly suggests the purpose of action:

<The very essence of Tragedy is to be a representation of action: it is, above all, for the sake of the action that the persons concerned in it are represented . . . . Tragedy must represent the way of the world, the movement of life, the workings of destiny, the end that grows inevitably out of a given beginning . . . . The sense of internal structural necessity seems indispensable to the tragic effect.>¹¹

Thus, the action represents universal elements of life itself, the workings of destiny.

Stage action is symbolic of the psychic action that Fergusson considers the heart of Greek drama.¹² For Fergusson, the action of Oedipus Rex is "to find the culprit in order to purify human life."¹³ In more specific terms, this action may be expressed as "to find the slayer of Laius in order to rid Thebes of the Plague." Every character of the drama is involved in this search for Laius' slayers and dramatic irony is served when the greatest of the hunters, Oedipus himself, is found to be the one they are all hunting.

This dramatic structure of action may be described in terms of the dramatic hero. Each extant Attic Tragedy has a hero who begins the play with everything going right for him. But that hero, the male leader of his particular tribe (such as Oedipus, Agamemnon, Creon, Pentheus), is guilty of hybris, overt pride against the gods. The fault is present in his character before the play action begins, but he is usually shown guilty of it within the presentation of the play itself. The hero has tried to act like or become a god by controlling or directing life to his own needs. This hero is hunting the solution to some problem common to all the people, a universal problem for the tribe. His first struggles to find a solution take place in the agons of the play, physical (which term includes "verbal") struggles with the antagonist or antagonists in which he loses his friends one by one. But the problem turns out to be caused by the hero (Oedipus is guilty of incest, Agamemnon of sacrificing his own blood, Creon of putting the state laws before the laws of kinship as ordained by the gods, Pentheus of not allowing the worship of Dionysus) and he stands alone. This reversal of his fortunes, which heretofore had been good, is the moment that the hero-hunter becomes the scapegoat-hunted, the peripety. His recognition of this reversal of fortunes is the Fergusson joy-to-sorrow anagnorisis. The highest of the high is now the lowest of the low. He then searches for the reasons for his having been chosen as the one to suffer so. He searches within himself the earlier physical agons now symbolically converted to spiritual agony sparagmos, the pathema of the dramatic structure. In some Attic tragedies this sparagmos actually constitutes a symbolic rending of the body in physical terms. If the hero were of lesser abilities than hero-status implies, the drama might go no further, but the hero triumphs over his suffering and accepts his fate. He makes his suffering a meaningful life experience and is enlightened in the coming of the gods symbolically to his spirit to give him the understanding he seeks. In the theophany, or perhaps better called the "epiphany," this understanding is revealed to the audience, and such understanding is cause for rejoicing. The play has taught a truth by aesthetic means.

Is this dramatic structure that may be found in the extant Attic Tragedies not both specific and universal at the same time? Each play demonstrates this structure with respect to a particular hero, yet the recurrence of the structure in all the plays is a universal element: it implies something about those who watch it and whose needs it fulfills. It implies that man himself suffers a similar rate at the hands of life, but the suffering man finds is not in vain, for it implies rebirth.

From this pattern, we may develop the following sets of analogies in an effort to clarify the relationships that exist at different levels of consideration of Attic Tragedy:

Action according to Fergusson	and Burke:	Dramatic Structure:	Hero's tragic pattern:
1. Purpose	Poiema	Prologue	Hero at highest point in career
2.	Agons	Physical (& verbal) battles	Hero symbolically oversteps limits of man
3. Peripety	Anagnorisis	Reversal and recognition	Hero accepts his guilt
4. Passion	Pathema (sparagmos)	Spiritual battles, or rending	Hero at lowest point in career
5. Perception	Mathema	Epiphany	Hero, enlightened, accepts suffering

Each of these views of tragedy outlines a pattern of events that may be described for our purposes in this manner:

1. The particular myth or story to be treated is introduced, with the hero at the height of his powers, respected by everyone in the drama. The hero is confronted with a problem that he must solve for the good of the community.

2. But the hero, protagonist, is guilty of hybris, some flaw in his character, some Achilles heel, which causes him to overstep certain well-defined human or other limitations. One by one he loses his friends in a series of agons.

3. Eventually the hero stands alone. His fortunes are completely reversed (peripety), and soon he recognizes his guilt, that he is no longer the hero, but the scapegoat; the person he has been hunting is himself.

4. The hero, now at the lowest point of his history, searches for an explanation that will make his suffering a valid human experience. This suffering that he endures (sparagmos) may take place off stage, with the hero appearing only after he accepts his fate.

5. The hero accepts his fate; the antagonist(s) may be justified, and the audience may perceive the enlightenment of the hero, and in that enlightenment, find cause for rejoicing.

Stagwoolf must now be investigated to see if it follows a structural pattern similar to that of Attic Tragedy. Either Martha or George might serve as the tragic hero. A consideration of both possibilities will demonstrate how the pattern of Attic Tragedy most clearly applies to George, not Martha.

Martha is the daughter of the President of the College, and George is her husband.(27) This is the immediately perceivable hierarchy in Stagwoolf, but since Daddy never comes on stage, Martha is number one, George number two, and the new couple, Nick and Honey, three and four. The early part of Stagwoolf develops through verbal battles between Martha and George, with Martha establishing herself as the prime-mover in the opening scene. She continually forces George to answer her commands never letting him take the offensive. George identifies her Achilles heel as their "son."(18-19) The verbal battles turn physical after George learns that Martha has broken the rule (act of hybris) of keeping the child to themselves by telling Honey that the son's twenty-first birthday is tomorrow.(44-45) George retaliates eventually with the gun that blossoms into a Chinese parasol,(57) and this leads, after several further battles, to "Total war."(159) George destroys the illusory child.(231) Martha has been brought low from her high position, having failed to properly seduce Nick, and having lost her "son." She learns from George that it had to be done, the child had to be exorcized.(239-240) George lets her know "It will be better,"(240) and the audience realizes with Martha that the action has led to this point of justification of the events; the false illusion has been removed, and there is thus cause for rejoicing even in the cathartic exhaustion of the drama.

This pattern is easy to accept as one watches the drama, particularly if the Martha has been portrayed by a strong personality or by an actress who uses Martha's vulgarity to overpower whomever is playing George. But it remains false to the total fabric of Stagwoolf, which points strongly to George as the guiding principle of the action.

"Try to learn, teach" George tells Nick in a speech cut during rehearsal of the Broadway production by Albee because it sounded too pat and preachy.¹⁴ George is a teacher of history, but has yet failed to learn from the past what he needs to know in order to bring about a successful union between himself and Martha. Late in the play, he reveals his strategy; "When you get down to the bone, you haven't got all the way, yet. There's something inside the bone . . . the marrow . . . and that's what you gotta get at, (A strange smile at MARTHA)."(213) It is only in the middle of Stagwoolf, after Martha has brought him down to the lowest level of his life, that he finds the means to breach Martha's marrow.

George and Martha are equally guilty in creating the illusory child, but George, as a teacher of history, should have known that history teaches that living on illusion solves no problems. Long ago he should have exorcised their illusion. It is he who, at the beginning of Stagwoolf, stands in the highest position, though this is not made clear until Martha's third act admission that "There is only one man in my life who has ever . . . made me happy," "George, my husband."(189-190) The earlier ranking of the characters with Martha at the head of the list is overturned. She who was first ranks George above herself. George must be the modern-day Oedipus.

In a bit of dramatic irony, it is now seen that the real goal of George, the teacher of history, is to learn from history and to teach it to others. His Achilles heel is his historical past, which will cause his humiliation if revealed to others outside the family. His warning to Martha not to mention the kid(18-19) is but the visible act of his failure to cope with his life's history. Martha takes this seemingly insignificant part of their fire, and turns it into the downfall of George. He thought his position impregnable, but his wife reveals, step by step, the failures of his past until he is left with only one illusion, their common illusion, the child, which he has all along been aware of as an illusion. Brought to this awareness, he is at the lowest point of his history, for Martha no longer respects him. From this moment, when "Total war" is declared, he strives to bring order back to the chaos, to learn from his downfall.

Again, dramatic irony is at work, for Martha actually entered the evening with total war declared, if not stated. She takes charge at the beginning of Stagwoolf, attacking the weaknesses of the hero with all the inventiveness available to her. Attention in performance is thereby all too often focused upon her, rather than her husband.

The mood of the play is humiliation. George articulates this fact: "You can humiliate me . . . I CANNOT STAND IT:" to which Martha counters, "YOU CAN STAND IT!! YOU MARRIED ME FOR IT!!"(152) All four characters are eventually humiliated, and the humiliation proceeds through three major games played by the two couples, to a fourth game which resolves Stagwoolf. These games, which articulate the shape of the drama, are Humiliate the Host, Get the Guests, Hump the Hostess and Bringing Up Baby. The first, Humiliate the Host, occupies the entire first half of Stagwoolf and produces George's reversal: "We've done with Humiliate the Host," "and we don't want to play Hump the Hostess, yet," "We'll play a round of Get the Guests,"(140) and later recognition of "Total war."(159) George, brought down from eminence by Martha, proceeds to bring each of the other three down to his level. He takes care of the guests simultaneously in Get the Guests, revealing their past and thus humiliating them as completely as Martha has him. This accomplished neither Nick nor Honey has any reason to respect him, as they did at the beginning of the play when he represented the distinguished husband of the daughter of the president. George's first on stage sparagmos follows as Martha teases Nick. Nick turns on George openly, and Humps the Hostess, but unsuccessfully. This humiliates Martha, for she has failed to cuckold the host. When Honey mentions the door chimes, George comes up with his way of getting to the marrow of Martha's bone. His off stage sparagmos takes place at Daddy's greenhouse.(185-195) Upon his return he completes his tragic action in a final battle with Martha. Then he realizes he has killed the illusion, things will be for the better, and transcends the night's revelry with joy.

The act titles also point up the pattern of events. Martha and George indulge in "Fun and Games" in Act One, producing no mortal wounds. Act Two brings "Walpurgisnacht," which Webster calls not only a witches' Sabbath, but in general, diabolical revelry. Only in Act Two do the games become so diabolical as to inflict wounds of seeming mortal nature, wounds which can no longer be overlooked as they have been for twenty-three years by George and Martha or for the few years of Nick and Honey's married life. All four characters are humiliated in the revelry of this act, even though awareness of Nick's failure and realization of Martha's humiliation, does not come until Act Three. The crucial moment of Act Three is "The Exorcism;" it is the crucial moment of Stagwoolf and the completion of the final game, Bringing Up Baby. George exorcizes the final element of their past not yet brought fully to light, their son. Only then is the entire relevant past history of Martha and George, of Nick and Honey, revealed, and the four freed of history's binding power.

<The exorcism serves to remove all that is unreal from both George and Martha, an exorcism of final despair which eliminates all fantasy and returns to reality, or to the point where new rules and new games can be devised. The old fun and games are gone forever. Only the new are possible.>¹⁵

The entire community of the play, all four characters, are bound up in George's historical dilemma, for all have placed their faith in an external world that does not operate according to their needs. The world demands creation of its inhabitants, pro-creation from married couples. George's one creative act, the book he wrote, died unborn because of Martha's ridicule and Daddy's ban. Martha "cannot create either through her husband or herself as a woman. Honey, naïve, simple, cannot have children for fears of pregnancy. Her pregnancy is illusory, Martha's imaginary."¹⁶ Nick has failed with Honey, and Martha, too. Each has accepted the world's call for creation/pro-creation, and each has failed. Their illusions all destroyed once Baby is exorcised, the two couples are free in the future to choose whatever path they desire, in spite of the world's demands. George, the history teacher, has learned his lesson from the past, and has taught those around him. This final triumph represents his reversal from sorrow, over having allowed the games to get out of hand to the point where Martha bested him, to joy at having achieved final reconciliation with her and their world.

From the preceding discussion, the following tragic structure may be derived for Stagwoolf: agons,(3-137) principal reversal (with Martha),(138) secondary reversal (with guests),(150) recognition,(159) sparagmos with Martha,(160-174) on stage extension of sparagmos,(174-181) off stage sparagmos,(185-195) sparagmos with Nick and Martha,(195-204) and epiphany.(205-242) As evidence that this pattern is not a forcing of events to concur with the established theory, it may prove instructive to find this pattern in a very contemporary idiom, in the framework of the games of Stagwoolf.

Joy Flasch, in a detailed article for Modern Drama,¹⁷ considers Stagwoolf in terms developed by Dr. Eric Berne in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, and in the more "popular" Games People Play.¹⁸ The analysis that follows is largely a condensation of her article, interleaved with those occasional comments necessary to make it pertinent to the current discussion.

People in groups of two or more structure their time in one of five ways, in order of increasing complexity: (1) Rituals, (2) Pastimes, (3) Games, (4) Intimacy, and (5) Activity. Games are often repetitious, basically dishonest, with outcomes that are dramatic. The essential feature of a game is its payoff, such as in "Schlemiel,"¹⁹ in which one makes messes and then apologizes, but wins the payoff by obtaining the forgiveness forced by the apology. In order of increasing intensity, games may be of first-, second- or third-degree. First-degree games are socially acceptable, while third-degree games usually end in the hospital, the morgue or the courtroom. The participants in games assume the roles of Parent, Adult or Child, and a proper balance of the roles must be maintained, or analysis and reorganization will be required.²⁰ An understanding of the games as games is, however, not necessary to see that these games represent a course of action engaged in by the participants.

Stagwoolf, Act One. Round One. The chief game of this act is "Blemish,"²¹ which is "I am no good" from the Child position, leading to "They are no good" from the Parent, and devised to achieve negative reassurance. Martha begins first-degree "Blemish" with "cluck"(3) and "Dumbbell"(4) George, who at first refuses to play. She forces with second-degree "Blemish;" ". . . you make me puke!"(13) George finally joins in first-degree "Blemish," suggesting Martha chews ice like a cocker spaniel. Unable to get a kiss from George, Martha switches to "Sweetheart,"²² which combines derogatory comments with loving epithets. George, however, combines "Sweetheart" with "Blemish" by speaking of his "love"(19) as a "subhuman monster,"(19) causing Martha to retaliate with "SCREW YOU"(19) as the guests arrive.²³

Round Two. Martha begins "Blemish" again, on her husband, but he chooses to play it with the guests by imitating Honey and finishing every sentence begun by Nick. "Ain't it Awful"²⁴ is killed by the Pastime "Sunny Side Up,"²⁵ leading to "Courtroom,"²⁶ or how difficult it is to be married to the daughter of the college president. Martha counters with her viewpoint. The women leave(30) and Nick tries to shift from games to pastimes, but George enters into "Blemish," all the time learning about Nick's past. Nick and Honey are inexperienced at games, but at least Nick learns quickly. Martha soon makes Nick's success story a foil against George's failure, combining "Blemish" with "Let's You and Him Fight,"²⁷ this latter adumbrating the later "Stocking Game"²⁸ which leads to Hump the Hostess. George stumps Martha when she asks him to light her cigarette; "No . . . there are limits," "Now . . . I'll hold your hand when its dark," "but I will not light your cigarette. And that, as they say. is that"(51) ends Round Two.²⁹

Round Three. Martha, having changed her clothes, switches the games to "The Stocking Game," but is quickly detoured back to "Blemish," the boxing match between herself and George.(54-56) He counters with the Chinese parasol gun,(57) and Martha, pleased, invites George to kiss her, offering love.(58-59) Having rejected a kiss before, and winning that game, he now rejects this offer. The games become second-degree, as Martha plays "Blemish" with George, "The Stocking Game" with Nick, and George plays "Blemish" with Nick. The result is "Let's You and Him Fight," which Martha has wanted all along. The games increase in intensity as George picks up Honey's mentioning of his "son," Martha turns this into third-degree "Blemish," only to be further one-upped by George who declares that "son" to be the one thing he is sure of.³⁰

Round Four. Martha, having come close to victory several times, moves on to "Courtroom," and almost wins when George breaks the liquor bottle and pleads with her to stop.(84) He maintains his top position precariously by drowning Martha's triumphal speech on his inadequacies with the singing of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"³¹

It is not necessary to agree with Miss Flasch that Martha and George and their guests are playing games, nor with the choices she makes from Berne's lexicon of games to describe them, to discern in her description a pattern of battles among the characters, rising to its peak at the act curtain, and that these battles lead to momentary triumphs which force further action. Miss Flasch gives each of the rounds, to this point, to George, but by the narrowest of margins as the act ends. This follows the Attic Tragedy pattern of battles, with the hero in control, but losing ground towards the moment(s) of reversal and recognition.

Miss Flasch gives Martha her only victory in Act Two, and significantly this is at the point of George's reversal, the end of Humiliate the Host. This moment is reached through games of third-degree "Blemish," "The Stocking Game" and "Sweetheart," leading to Martha's revelation of how George killed his parents. George tries to stop the progress of these games by announcing "THE GAME IS OVER!"(136) Martha disagrees, and pushes to victory by mimicking George; "this isn't a novel at all . . . this is the truth."(137) Violence ensues, since George is left no other recourse. He who was on top of the situation, in control, has finally been bested, and this turning point of the play is marked by his statement after he regains composure, "That's one game. What shall we do now, hunh?"(138) What he does is attack the guests so that Honey gets sick and Nick vows revenge. All three antagonists have turned on George who reveals his bitterness at having been bested; "you can humiliate me," "I CANNOT STAND IT!" The revelation is complete as he realizes that the war is "Total."(159)

But the act is not over. Martha begins third-degree "Stocking Game" with Nick, and George counters with "Corner,"³² forcing Martha to complete "The Stocking Game" or lose. When Martha and Nick leave, George hurls the history book he has been reading across the room, temporarily defeated. But the book strikes the door chimes, and Honey, returning, mentions them, giving George the means to win this game. The curtain falls on George, still not in control, but with the means to permanently triumph in his grasp.³³

Though a number of critics³⁴ found the third act wanting in interest, and the resolution of the play through the exorcism of the child to lack conviction, it is central to the play and to the climax of the games. Albee thought of the idea of an exorcism before he developed the remainder of the play,³⁵ always knew he wanted the exorcism at the end of the play³⁶ and originally titled the play The Exorcism.³⁷

With George gone from the house for the first time since he entered it in the first act (he leaves the room, not necessarily the house, to get the Chinese parasol gun), Martha engages in third-degree intensity games. First she plays "Blemish" and "Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch" with Nick, her "houseboy." George enters with snapdragons,(195) and announces one last game, while Martha pleads for no more.(206-207) Acting as Hospitable Host, George combines variations of third-degree "Blemish," "Courtroom," and "Bringing Up Baby" to force the life story of the child out of Martha. He picks up the story, and reveals the depth of Martha's problems, then registers a decisive victory over Martha with the arrival of the telegram, the death of the son.(231) Nick and Honey go home, for the games are over. The death of the son ended the games, on George's triumph.³⁸

Again, the line of action that Miss Flasch describes reveals the pattern of Attic Tragedy, for the hero ends Stagwoolf in a return from sorrow to joy; George has fully triumphed out of his sorrow, even because of it. Whereas many Attic Tragedies leave the hero seemingly desolated with at best a transcendence of a spiritual nature (e.g. Oedipus is blind, yet he sees wherein he was wrong and achieves an inner tranquility), George has demonstrated what he has learned by teaching the three antagonists. They have been exorcised of their illusions, and can look freely to the future. Exhausted, they have cause for joy.

Stagwoolf may thus be seen as a modern equivalent of Attic Tragedy in its pattern of events. George does not stand in his community as an Oedipus, but the twentieth century seems to offer few real men of such stature who face the tragic downfalls of an Oedipus. George's downfall is, to the twentieth century, of the same nature as that of Oedipus, and his final triumph more than a mere surrogate for the Greek epiphany.

J. C. Trewin noted to his British readers that as he watched the play, he "was seeing the New England college as another Kithairon, another world of passion unrestrained."³⁹ Anthony and Dolores Filandro in a letter to the editor of Commentary noted "The classical unities of time and place, the small cast, the dialogues, the offstage murder pointing to a Greek tradition,"⁴⁰ and the same or similar characteristics of Attic Tragedy are recognized by Allan Lewis, author of The Contemporary Theatre:

<The four characters in Albee's play repeat the life of Dionysus, god of theatre and debauchery, who, torn to bits and boiled in the cauldron, returned to life. What that life will be is another subject, but there is renewal and possibility. Albee has captured in modern terms the dramatic power of man destroyed by his own acts still clinging to life, still groping for meaning.>⁴¹

1. Kenneth Macgowan, and William Melnitz, The Living Stage (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1955), pp. 15-16.

2. Cf. Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925); Gilbert Murray, "Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy," published in J. E. Harrison, Themis (second edition, Cambridge: The University Press, 1927), pp. 340-363; Gilbert Murray, "Foreword," published in Theodore H. Gaster, Thespis (New York: Harper and Rows 1966), p. 67.

3. Cf. J. E. Harrison Themis (second edition; Cambridge: The University Press, 1927).

4. Sir William Ridgeway, The Origin of Tragedy (Cambridge: The University Press, 1910), p. 40.

5. Sir William Ridgeway, The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964), pp. 63-64.

6. Ibid., p. 62.

7. Cf Murray, "Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy," loc. cit.; Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1 Vol. abr. Ed., New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 452.

8. Cf. Francis Fergusson, "Introduction," in S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Poetics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961).

9. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (second edition; (New York, Prentice-Hall, 1945), pp 264-265.

10. Francis Fergusson, The Idea of a Theatre (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, originally published by Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 31.

11. Francis Macdonald Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (London: E Arnold, 1914), pp. 196-197.

12. Fergusson, op. cit., pp. 25-53.

13. Ibid., p. 48.

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

15. Allan Lewis, "The Fun and Games of Edward Albee," Educational Theatre Journal, XVI (March, 1964), p. 34.

16. Ibid., p. 35.

17. Joy Flasch, "Games People Play in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ," Modern Drama, X (December, 1967), pp. 280-281.

18. Eric Berne, Games People Play (New York: Grove Press, 1964).

19. Ibid., pp. 114-116.

20. Flasch, op. cit., pp. 280-281.

21. Berne, op. cit., pp. 112-113.

22. Ibid., pp. 108-109.

23. Flasch, op. cit., pp. 281-282.

24. Berne, op. cit., pp. 110-112.

25. Ibid., p. 45.

26. Ibid., pp. 96-98.

27. Ibid., p. 124.

28. Ibid., pp. 129-130.

29. Flasch, op. cit., pp. 282-283.

30. Ibid., pp. 282-284.

31. Ibid., pp. 284-285.

32. Berne, op. cit., pp. 92-95.

33. Flasch, op. cit., pp. 285-286.

34. Note especially; "Blood Sport," Time, LXXX (October 269 1962), p. 84.

35. "Albee: Odd Man In On Broadway," Newsweek, LXI (February 4, 1963), p. 52.

36. "Games of Truth," Newsweek, LX (October 29, 1962),

37. Arthur Gelb, "Dramatists Deny Nihilistic Trend," New York Times (February 15, 1960), p. 27.

38. Flasch, op. cit., pp. 286-287.

39. J. C. Trewin, "The World of the Theatre. Nights With a Ripsaw," The Illustrated London News, CCXLIV (February 24, 1964), p. 288.

40. Anthony and Dolores Filandro, "Albee vs. Chester," Letter to the Editor, Commentary XXXVI (October, 1963), p. 272.

41. Lewis, op. cit., p. 37.