SOURCE: "Edward Albee: Playwright of Evolution," in Essays on Contemporary American Drama, edited by Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim, Max Hueber Verlag München, 1981, pp. 33-53.

In the following essay, Worth examines Albee's treatment of evolution in his plays.

Albee is a playwright whose great distinctiveness is peculiarly hard to name and define. He has been claimed for the Absurdists and linked with Ionesco on the strength of his early plays, The Zoo Story (1958) and The American Dream (1960); comparisons with Strindberg have been prompted by his relish for comic/ferocious sex battles, as in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961); and his use of polite social rituals to convey psychological malaise has called up thoughts of T. S. Eliot and Noel Coward. He has strong affinities with some of his American predecessors, notably with the O'Neill of Dynamo and Welded, and with Thornton Wilder, who has the same feeling...