SOURCE: "The Process of Dying in the Plays of Edward Albee," in Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1, March, 1973, pp. 80-85.

In the essay below Vos examines Albee's treatment of death in his plays.

In Edward Albee's play of 1967, Everything in the Garden, one of the major characters comments:

You should have been in London in the war. You would have learned about death … and violence … All those nights in the shelters, with the death going on. Death and dying. Always take the former if you can.

Albee has not been following this advice in his own dramaturgy, for his plays, culminating in his most recent contribution, All Over, have centered largely on the process of dying.

The settings, characters, and actions of his plays are haunted by death, both natural and violent. Indeed, as Ruby Cohn has commented, "the shadow of death darkens all Albee's plays."¹ In the...