Delicate Balance, A | Anita Maria Stenz (essay date 1978)
Anita Maria Stenz (essay date 1978)
SOURCE: "A Delicate Balance," in Edward Albee: The Poet of Loss, Mouton Publishers, 1978, pp. 71-87.
[The essay below examines A Delicate Balance's characters, "who, for all their symbolic resonances, are so disturbingly real in their ability to repel as well as arouse sympathy."]
Time happens, I suppose. To people. Everything becomes too late, finally. You know it's going on … up on the hill; and you can see the dust, and hear the cries, and the steel … but you wait; and time happens. When you do go, sword, shield … finally … there's nothing there … save rust; bones; and the wind.1
In A Delicate Balance, a drama about marriage and aging, there is little shouting and no breaking of bottles—just a modicum of hysterics. In fact, decorum and propriety are the rules of the game in this play which takes place during...
[The entire page is 7524 words long]
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