Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)
STUDIES - Péter Egri: From the British Grotesque To the American Absurd: the Dramatist's Dilemma
required by law; it is also an expression of personal warmth prompted by appreciation. Initial stage directions: the Americanization of locale and the doubling of stage space. The fusion of the réal and unreal The first set of differences between Cooper's and Albee's versions appears at the first description of the stage-set. Cooper's representation of the sittingroom of a British suburban house is relatively long; Albee's presentation of its American counterpart is considerably shorter. Cooper enlists a number of objects (a television set, magazines, just a few books, the absence of pictures in the room and the presence of playing-fields at the bottom of the garden) which constitute a milieu determining and characterizing people; Albee cuts these out and concentrates on dramatically functional detail (a lawnmower, empty packets of cigarettes, etc). Cooper's emphasis on the environment sometimes leads to a kind of phrasing which not only turns to an actor or director but also to a potential reader: "It is a tine evening in late April though cool enough for a tire to be burning in the grated Albee has deleted the fire, the grate and the narrative turn of "though cool enough ', and has restricted his stage instructions to a dramatically necessary minimum. The practical lack of stage directions in Sophocles and Shakespeare indicates autonomous characters who create their conditions and dominate their surroundings even if in the last resort, at the peak of the tragic or comic conflict, they cannot disregard and avoid what makes them fall or err. The abundance of factual detail in the scene descriptions of the Ibsen —Shaw —Hauptmann —O'Neill period suggests the domination of circumstances over characters even if they make an effort to oppose them. Cooper's "aggressively normal" 7 set links him with the naturalist-realist tradition. Albee's sketchy set signals a provisional, playful, imaginary and imaginative disregard of heavy determinism which the characters are 6 G. Cooper, Everything in the Garden, in New English Dramatists 7 (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 143. 7 Ibid. 27
