'All the world´s a stage': Acting and role-playing in 'Who´s afraid of Virginia Woolf'

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Anglophonie), course: Kulturwissenschaftliches Seminar, language: English, abstract: The famous playWho´s afraid of Virginia Woolf?,written by Edward Albee in 1962, is the subject of this essay. Albee, one of the most important American playwrights of the second half of the 20thcentury, is the link between the nearly elderly generation of playwrights such as Eugene O´Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and the playwrights from the 1970´s and modern drama. Albee writes plays about the traditional American dreams and myths. But unlike O´Neill or Williams, he tells stories about people and their lies, illusions and the destruction of some of their lifelong lies, which helped them to survive. WithWho´s afraid of Virginia Woolf?,he created a drama about love, hate, truth, and illusion. It is nearly a mixture between a 'livingroomcomedy and a naturalistic tragedy' (Eisenmann 93). The play is not a pure realistic play, it contains absurdist elements- for example the games, rituals and metaphors which are used by the protagonists. In this essay, I will give an overview of the games between the protagonists Martha and George, Nick and Honey and the battles between them. In this context, I will show how the protagonists act and which roles they have to underline and to support the cruel intentions of the others. For this purpose, the child, the imaginary son of Martha and George, gets an important role in the play. In this regard, the issue, whose purpose the games and the individual roles that the protagonists have, is to be questioned. Why do Martha and George act in the way we know and which role do Nick and Honey have in the battles between Martha and George? Which purpose shall be served by the son? With this following essay I will try to emphasize the individual roles and the acting and behaviour of the protagonists and I will give an explanation for the games and their meanings in Who´s afraid of Virginia Woolf?.