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

exposed to but momentarily

—from moment to moment

—try to dodge and strive to suspend. The dramatic situation in Albee is an inheritance from Cooper. Its treatment, however, is different. The difference is dramatically expressed not only by the substantial extenuation, the breaking up and thinning down in Albee of the thick crust of the objective environment, but also by the reinterpretation of whatever has been left of that environment. Albee not only drops out a number of objects but also changes their character. A case in point is the lawnmower which in Cooper's description is a motor-mower heard going to and fro on the grass of the garden, but in Albee's presentation is a hand-mower heard and seen through the glass door of the sunroom. Since the protagonists of Albee's drama, Richard and Jenny (called, with American informality, by their first names even when they first appear)

, are obviously better off than are the main characters of Cooper's play, Bernard and Jenny Acton (introduced to the audiences and readers, with British reservation, by their Christian and surnames)

, it is unlikely that the American couple could not afford what the British couple could, and Richard should only dream about a power mower (neatly ironized by the mumbling nursery rhyme of its name)

, while Bernard is day-dreaming about a king-size motor-mower, a real Monarch (also ironized by the royal connotations of its trade mark). Richard, in fact, complains that he is the only natural-born citizen east of the Rockies who has not got a power mower.

8 Cooper builds his world on actual reality. Albee anchors his on the border-line between what is likely and unlikely, what is real and unreal. The reality and unreality of Albee's initial scene is simultaneously increased by doubling, as it were, the visible space of the stage. The audience is watching Jenny in the foreground frame of the stage, while Jenny is watching Richard in the background frame of the glass doors which serve as a "picture window".

9 She is in an immediate theatrical space; he is in a mediated, withdrawn region. As Richard passes the picture window, mows, stops, mops, mows again, and cannot hear what Jenny tells 8 E. Albee, Everything in the Garden, in The Plays IV (New York, 1982), p. 8. 9 Ibid., p. 3. 28