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

Albee's dramatic form.

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9 Hence is derived Cooper's importance for Albee: Cooper has provided him with the traditional frame which he could adopt and adapt, use and change, follow and reinterpret at the same time. Albee's difficulties in weaving a dramatic plot and building a firm structure in the traditional sense after his adaptations (in, for instance, All Over 1975, Listening 1976, Counting the Ways 1977 or The Lady from Dubuque 1978— 79) point in the same direction. For all these reasons, the dramatic validity of Jack's unexpected and grotesquely absurd resurrection at the end of Albee's Everything in the Garden largely depends on how persistently the American dramatist has been able to combine the adoption and relativization of dramatic tradition as he found it embodied in the British playwright's work. Scenic and reading evidence shows that Albee has, in fact, been doing this throughout his play. A case in point is dialogue in Cooper and Albee. In Cooper's play Jenny defends her wish to take a job by a timid reference to Strindberg. She says she would like to be a useful person rather than a mere slave in the house like "that woman in that play"

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0 by Strindberg. This is no more than a thematic element in a casual and natural conversation. With Albee the corresponding dialogue also seems to be real and actual, but at the same 2

9 For the relationship of Pinter, Beckett and Albee compare: R. Dutton, Modern Tragicomedy and the British Tradition: Beckett, Pinter

; Stoppard, Albee and Storey (Brighton, 1986), pp. 114, 123. For a graphic "distinction between the European absurdist stance and Albee's" see: C. W. E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama 2, pp. 160, 263.—As G. Cooper's example also suggests, the dichotomy of ending a play idealistically or realistically is not unknown in Europe either. But the duality became especially acute in twentieth-century American drama. In E. O'Neill's Days Without End

—a play which has eight draft versions and a number of different endings

—the question of how to finish the work is the central problem both for the protagonist and the author. The final solution makes the ideal stand out victoriously with a loud gesture. In O'Neill's greatest play, Long Day's Journey Into Night, the conclusion is quiet, and the ideal is realistically mediated by a tragic situation which renders its manifestation indirect. At the end of T. Williams's The Glass Menagerie the ideal appears directly in Tom's sentimental and nostalgic reminiscence. By contrast, in the "Requiem" section of A. Miller's Death of a Salesman, Happy's sentimental pledge is effectively counterpointed by Biffs realistic position. 3

0 G. Cooper, Everything in the Garden, p. 150. 36