The Thing that Anguishes Us All: The Recurring Social Themes in Edward Albee’s Plays

Abstract

Edward Albee is considered one of the four greatest playwrights of American Drama. His oeuvre cannot be pinned down to any one school of thought alone. He has been holding up the mirror against his society through his writing. What distinguished him from other playwrights of this period was his relentless experimentation with the themes that he always dealt with in his plays. Albee has used a wide range of theatrical settings and devices to present realistic and satiric images of human predicament. The paper here attempts to highlight some of his recurring themes that “anguish us all” in his aesthetic of drama throughout his career.