Coy is an esteemed authority on drama who has contributed to numerous publications. His essay praises the power of Albee's dialogue and the class dischord that it illustrates. Coy also addresses the religious imagery in Albee'splay.

There is very little action in Edward Albee's The Zoo Story: two men meet, they exchange information, and one dies at the hand of the other. But to a framework of action which any writer might have imagined, Albee brings a master's sense of the ways in which, psychologically, some people are able to dominate and manipulate others, and a frankness and grotesqueness of language which are startling even now, almost forty years after the play's premiere.

Albee opens with an impressive display. Peter, the quiet, insular, middle-class publisher, is reading abookon "his" bench in New York's Central Park. Along comes Jerry, who (as we will see) is not out for...