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

and his neighbour, Jack), "nice-looking" (like Roger, Richard's son), and "attractive"

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6 (like Jenny), to the repeated point of patterned parody.

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7 The Americanization of Cooper's theme involves not only a change of place (from the outskirts of London to the suburb of an American city) but also a raise of stakes: Mrs Toothe throws on the burning logs of the fireplace a thousand dollars rather than fifty pounds; Jenny is supposed to get a hundred dollars rather than twenty-five guineas for an afternoon; Richard is a research chemist, while Bernard, his counterpart in Cooper, is employed as a clerk at a firm making office furniture; Jenny's admirer, Jack, in Albee is a rich painter, who is going to leave more than three million dollars to the couple and can afford making irreverent, if irrelevant, remarks about the colours of Jenny's panties, while Jack in Cooper makes his living by contributing to fashion magazines and drawing strip cartoons. In Albee's drama Jenny's trapping by the brothel-keeper is a less transitional and more abrupt matter than it is in Cooper's play. The American dramatist has cut out much of the British playwright's circumstantial evidence (including references to the pimp's past and drinking habits as well as Jenny's advertisement)

, and has replaced Cooper's often understated conversations by a more direct, incisive and dynamic dialogue.

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8 Albee also makes the dramatic texture more closely-knit by focusing the leading motive of the garden as a symbol of social status more emphatically, and finishes his exposition with Richard wondering about the cost of a greenhouse. Imbroglio, culmination and dénouement the Americanization of form. Dual ending. Cooper and Albee: from incongruity to absurdity 1

6 Ibid. 1

7 In an interview M. E. Rutenberg had with Albee on 7 August 1968, the dramatist explained his reasons for changing I^eonie Pimosz into Mrs Toothe like this: "I wanted a symbol of something that Americans would be terribly impressed by. Since Americans are terribly impressed by money and by the English, it seems that the offering of money should come from the British." M. E. Rutenberg, Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest, p. 228. 1

8 Cf. E. Albee, Everything in the Garden, p. 38. 32