SOURCE: McCray, Suzanne. “The Unrelenting Pessimism of Joe Orton.” Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 10, no. 2 (fall 1984): 37-47.

In the following essay, McCray discusses the cynicism of most of Orton's work, suggesting that much of it derives from Orton's own life experience.

I assure you that it is possible to draw poison from the clearest of wells.

Joe Orton to Glen Loney, March 25, 1966

On Jan. 2, 1967, Joe Orton, London's then most promising young playwright, who shocked, instructed, and entertained the theater-going public of the town, wrote in his diary: “In the evening P. Willes rang. … I told him about the [Orton's mother's] funeral. And the frenzied way my family behave. He seemed shocked. But then he thinks my plays are fantasies. He suddenly caught a glimpse of the fact that I write the truth.”¹ The truth, according to Orton, seems to be that people do not feel love or...