SOURCE: "A Delicate Balance," in Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest, DBS Publications, Inc., 1969, pp. 137-64.

Notwithstanding the fact that Edward Albee received the Pulitzer Prize for A Delicate Balance, it still remains, aside from Tiny Alice, his most underrated play. Premiered on September 12, 1966, at the Martin Beck Theatre, its generally mild reception generated immediate controversy over Albee's continuing talent as a first-rate playwright. Martin Gottfried, reviewing for Women's Wear Daily, called the play "two hours of self-indulgence by a self-conscious and self-overrating writer."¹ Robert Brustein, now Dean of the revitalized Yale School of Drama, said the writing was "as far from modern speech as the whistles of a dolphin."² Conversely, John Chapman called it "a beautiful play—easily Albee's best and most mature."³ And Harold Clurman considered it "superior to the more sensational Virginia Woolf."⁴

While the critics could not agree on the play's merits, they seemed to be in general agreement on its theme, which they stated in various ways as man's responsibility to man. Albee had hinted at the theme before the play's opening (he wasn't going to be misunderstood again) when he revealed that the new work was about "the nature of responsibility, that of family and friends—about responsibility as against selfish ness, self-protectiveness, as against Christian responsibility."⁵ In their reviews the critics simply paraphrased what Albee had said about the responsibilities of friendship since a major plot episode concerns the protagonists' best friends.

Norman Nadel claimed that the "delicate balance" was between "the right of privacy and the obligations of friend-ship."⁶Vogue's reviewer echoed the other critics when he remarked that it is "when our friends make demands on us that we fail them."⁷ Leonard Probst, reviewing for nbc-tv, said in his one minute critique that "the delicate balance is the balance between responsibility to friends (when they're in trouble)… and the conflict with our own reasonable desires."⁸ John Gassner, in analyzing the play's structure, concluded that it was most concerned with saying "if we do not want to betray a friendship, we do not really want to carry it very far."⁹ With this general agreement on its theme, the critics turned out an onslaught of reasons why the new play was not well written.

Norman Nadel, referring to the neighboring couple who decide out of a private fear to stay on indefinitely, com mented that their personal problem split the play into two parts which "do not relate as they should."¹⁰ John Gassner, writing for the Educational Theatre Journal, concluded that Albee had brought too many other elements into the play to simply resolve the friendship theme.¹¹ Perhaps the most out-spoken criticism of the play's structure came from the Village Voice. Michael Smith wrote that the play's crisis had "not been resolved but uncreated… [because]… Harry and Edna, quite on their own, simply go away… Balance has been restored not by the called for heroic leap, but by removal… this play is a cop-out."¹²

Each critic's evaluation was based on the premise that Albee had not carefully thought out the play's events as it related to the problem of friendship and its ensuing responsibilities. Professor Gassner, concentrating on what he considered Albee's intention, went so far as to say that certain major characters should not have been included in the play—specifically, that the alcoholic sister's appearance seemed somewhat arbitrary and the daughter's sudden homecoming uncalled for."¹³ Walter Kerr complained that "there are no events—nothing follows necessarily from what has gone before, no two things fit, no present posture has a tangible past."¹⁴ The critic for Newsweek summed up all the adverse criticism when he said there was a division between theme and procedure.¹⁵

But the play examines more levels of our existence than the need for truer friendship among men. Once properly under-stood, the play's events are perfectly sequential (though I am not categorically against a plotless play as we shall see in the chapter on Box-Mao-Box), revealing an analysis of the modern scene that goes deeper than the reviews imply. One of the elements not discussed in any of the reviews is a continuation, and I believe culmination, of a major Albee theme.

From the very first Albee drama, through this play, two characters continually make their appearance: that domineering, man-eating, she-ogre of the American family—Mom—and her playmate, that weak-willed, spineless, castrated, avoider of arguments—Dad. Together these two have woven their way through every single play of Albee's with the exception of Tiny Alice—although some critics have made an incorrect case for the existence of this sadomasochistic pair there also. Mom and Pop first showed up obliquely in The Zoo Story when Jerry began explaining his orphaned status to Peter. They next appeared as characters in both The Sandbox and The American Dream, its extention, playing out their roles of emasculator and emasculated, with Mom doing her part with such zest and relish that it made her male audience cringe with empathic pain. Even Bessie Smith, Albee's supposed civil rights play, got out of hand when his obsession with the battle of the sexes allowed the play's original theme to get away from him. It did, however, plant the seed of Daddy's fight for survival which came to fruition in the highly successful Virginia Woolf. The play's huge success is directly attributable to both the rich verbal texture and the fact that for the first time Albee gave Mom a formidable antagonist. This time Daddy would fight to the death before acquiescing to Mom's husband-destroying intentions.

Many critics have been quick to insist that Albee was really writing about his own foster parents and not about a typically American condition. A look into the many sociological texts on American life would negate that analysis. One such treatise, examining Dad's position in the American home, bluntly asserts that "in few societies is the role of the father more vestigial than in the United States."¹⁶ This same text vividly points out that the success of such comics as Blondie (now seen on television) or its home-screen predecessors, The Honeymooners and The Flintstones, is that the American public is convinced that the American father is a blunderer and has given up authority, because with him at the head "the family would constantly risk disintegration and disaster."¹⁷ One further example, this time analyzing Mom, should suffice as a preamble to the conflicts set forth in A Delicate Balance. The following condensed statement on Mom can be found in a standard sociology textbook sold in most college bookstores across the country:

'Mom' is the unquestioned authority in matters of mores and morals in her home… She stands for the superior values of tradition, yet she herself does not want to become 'old.' In fact, she is mortally afraid of that status which in the past was the fruit of a rich life, namely, the status of the grandmother… Mom—is not happy: she does not like herself; she is ridden by the anxiety that her life was a waste.¹⁸

A Delicate Balance is a continuation of the Mom and Pop relationship as they enter the age of retirement. Through a rather bizarre event, Albee has forced the famous couple to re-examine the sum total of their lives with conclusions startlingly similar to the ones reached by the above socio-logical analysis. Albee wrote this play on boat trips to Europe.¹⁹ The relaxed slow pace of the ship's journey fit the needs of the playwright as he began to write his most introspective play. This particular style, not common to the American stage since it isn't filled with obvious physical action, was alien to many of the critics. Walter Kerr, in particular, reacted traditionally when he claimed that the play was "speculative rather than theatrical, an essay and an exercise when it might have been an experience."²⁰ In spite of Kerr's criticism, Albee went on to develop the introspective technique further until he completely broke from theatrical narrative in Box-Mao-Box.

Mom and Pop begins Delicate Balance in "the living room of a large and well-appointed suburban house." The couple, it will be remembered, started their careers as typically middle-class, later moved on to the university as intellectuals, and have now become well-to-do as they prepare for retirement. Placing Mom and Pop in the privileged class at the end of their lives is quite correct, because it is the symbolic end—the fitting reward for the dedicated American life. The American dream has come true; Mom and Pop have enough money now to isolate themselves from people and avoid any commitment to society. At one point in the play, Mom (Agnes) remarks, "I have reached an age, To-bias, when I wish we were always alone, you and I, without… hangers-on… or anyone." We find the two, self-isolated at the beginning of the play, as Agnes speaks to her husband, having quietly contemplated the possibility of going mad:

Agnes: … that it is not beyond … happening; some gentle loosening of the moorings sending the balloon adrift.

There is a death wish in her thought of insanity. Not verbalized yet, it's subliminally in her very description of madness. A recent movie, Charlie Bubbles, commenting on our society today, used the same imagery to suggest the death or suicide of its hero. At the end of the film, Charlie, totally alienated from his society and unable to live alone, performs the ultimate retreat from life as he steps into a balloon and sails out of this world.

Death is not a new concern in Albee's writing. The Zoo Story states that only at the supreme moment of death is there any human contract. The Sandbox and The American Dream are noticeably concerned with the death and removal of grandma from the American home. The title of The Death of Bessie Smith speaks for itself. Virginia Woolf builds to the death of the imaginary child which symbolizes the demise of all illusions. Finally, Tiny Alice examines the death and subsequent martyrdom of a lay brother. This everpresent concern with death is continued in A Delicate Balance and is instrumental to the deepest meanings of the play.

Agnes is reassured by Tobias (Pop) that "there is no saner woman on earth," but unwilling to reciprocate her husband's support, she replies in her typically emasculating way that she "could never do it—go—adrift—for what would become of you?" Once again, as in all the past plays, Pop is reminded of his ineffectualness and total reliance on Mom. Presumably his life would disintegrate should Mom suddenly expire. Agnes continues her preoccupation with insanity, admitting now that thoughts of old age motivate her:

Agnes: Yes; Agnes Sit-by-the-fire, her mouth full of ribbons, her mind aloft, adrift, nothing to do with the poor old thing but put her in a bin somewhere, sell the house, move to Tucson, say, and pine in the good sun, and live to be a hundred and four.

Ironically, in an earlier version of Mom, notably The Sand-box, she put her mother in a bin to die—which grandma promptly did. Agnes now wonders when it will be her turn to inherit the fate of our senior citizens. Tobias, too, is aware of his coming old age for he says a moment later, "I'm not as young as either of us once was." Agnes, still unnerved over her future, asks Tobias to tell her what he'd do if she really did go insane:

Tobias: (Shrugs) Put you in a bin somewhere, sell the house and move to Tucson. Pine in the hot sun and live forever.

Agnes: (Ponders it) Hmmmm, I bet you would.

Tobias: (Friendly) Hurry, though.

Tobias is presumably joking, but under the friendly kidding is the same hatred that made George pull out a phony rifle in Virginia Woolf and shoot Martha. Agnes, somewhat taken aback by Tobias's admission that her senility and eventual death would not disturb him in the least, retaliates by assuring him that the perpetual blandness of her emotions would never lead to the psychological disintegration of insanity. She says, "I can't even raise my voice except in the most calamitous of events." Actually she makes the case for eventual psychosis even stronger by admitting that her personality doesn't allow her to respond normally to most events that circumscribe her life. She begins to consider various chemical ways to induce psychosis, and there is a hint that she would like to try lsd or its narcotic equivalent to induce the excitement needed to bring about a drastic change in her day-to-day boredom. She quickly gives up this idea of chemical madness when she realizes it isn't permanent:

Agnes: Ah, but those are temporary; even addiction is a repeated temporary… stilling. I am concerned with peace… not mere relief.

Here, Agnes unconsciously wishes for death, the permanent peace, because it has begun now "to mean freedom from the acquired load and burden of the irrational."²¹ Still unable to rid her mind of its chronological inheritance, she resumes describing the dreary picture of their remaining years:

Agnes: You have hope, of growing even older than you are in the company of your steady wife, your alcoholic sister-in-law and occasional visits… from our melancholy Julia. (A little sad) That is what you have, my dear Tobias. Will it do?

Tobias: (A little sad, too, but warmth) It will do.

Ted Hoffman, reviewing for New York radio station wins, was completely correct when he realized that so much of A Delicate Balance "deals with the loneliness and corrosion of growing old."²² This theme, introduced early in the play, propels the play's action and is directly related to its resolution.

This first section of the play ends as Claire, Agnes's alcoholic sister, enters and apologizes for her somewhat inebriated condition. She nevertheless accuses her sister of mistreating her because she is a drunk. Agnes defends herself in a way that Albee's heroine has never done, foreshadowing the change that will take place in her by the time the play ends:

Agnes:… If I scold, it is because I wish I needn"t. If I am sharp, it is because I am neither less nor more than human.…

Only in this play does Mom apologize for her unpleasantness. This gnawing self-awareness later becomes a factor in her surprising decision to step down, at the end of the play, and relinquish her long-held role as head of the family. She leaves Claire and Tobias together in order to call her daughter Julia who is far enough away from her mother to effect a time differential of three hours. No sooner has Agnes left the living room than Claire asks Tobias why he doesn't kill Agnes. Tobias replies "Oh, no, I couldn't do that," intimating that he doesn't have the guts for an act of bloody passion.

Albee uses Claire periodically as a quasi-narrator, sardonically commenting on the action. I find this practice unnecessary and her peripheral position alienating and at odds with the otherwise tight entanglement of his characters. One illustration of this annoying practice should be sufficient. When, in the midst of family crises, father, mother, daughter, and audience became deeply involved with the situation at hand, Albee breaks this involvement and, using Claire, gets cute:

Claire: (TO Tobias, laughing Crisis sure brings out the best in us, don't it, Tobe? The family circle? Julia standing there… asserting; perpetual brat, and maybe ready to pull a Claire. And poor Claire! Not much help there either, is there? And lookit Agnes, talky Agnes, ruler of the roost, and Maitre d', and licensed wife—silent. All cozy, coffee, thinking of the menu for the week, planning. Poor Tobe.

Ostensibly, Claire's monologue is supposed to alienate the audience, in the Brechtian sense, by describing the moment while it's happening. Claire, in giving us information that is not necessary to the plot, serves no purpose other than to hold up the action while the viewer is jolted out of his empathy. Albee has used the aside as far back as The Sandbox, where Grandma talked to the audience and commented on the action. He used it again to less advantage in Every-thing in the Garden, but in these examples the aside was presentational in that the characters talked directly to the audience. It is clear now that Albee's periodic experiments with presentational speeches was a long-time predisposition, which eventually found its form in the later Box-MaoBox. However, A Delicate Balance is structured representationally and periodic comments on the action from the sidelines does not work well in a post-Ibsen play.

Claire does serve another purpose, and it is here that her presence is effective. Claire tells the truth. She sees (clairvoyant) and tells it like it is. Perhaps this is why she drinks. She cannot cope with what she perceives and rather than kill herself or go insane, she drinks. When she isn't commenting sarcastically on the action, her propensity for the truth prods the characters on toward the play's resolution. The first truth emerges when Claire forces Tobias, now retired, to examine the genuineness and durability of his past business friendships.

Claire:… With your business friends, your indistinguishable if not necessarily similar friends… what did you have in common with them?

Tobias: Well, uh… well, everything. (Maybe slightly on the defensive, but more vague) Our business; we all mixed well, were friends away from the office, too… clubs, our… an, an environment, I guess.

Claire: Unh-huh. But what did you have in common with them?

Claire asks the question twice more, but all Tobias can answer is "please, Claire." Claire's insistence serves two purposes: first, it reveals the relative superficiality of most friendships because Tobias cannot think of one thing he has had in common with his friends except proximity. An eminent sociologist came to the same conclusion when he noted that "Americans change both residence and job with the greatest of ease; and with each change of either, friends are changed, too."²³ Second, this brief revelation foreshadows and prepares the audience for the final tragic event concerning Tobias's closest friends.

Claire has made her point and is soon on to a new subject. She asks Tobias why he's switching from anisette to brandy. Tobias replies that the effects of anisette don't last as long. We realize that quiet, well-mannered Tobias looks to escape his surroundings by dulling his mind and memory for as long as possible. It is interesting to note that while Claire is said to be the alcoholic, Tobias drinks as often and as much as she does. Tobias is not off the hook though, because Claire will not let him forget. Reminding him of the time he was unfaithful to Agnes, she builds more evidence to dispel the image of tranquil, thoughtful Tobias, happily spending the final years of his life as the devoted, loving husband.

Claire then lies on the floor, arms outstretched in what Albee calls "a casual invitation." Tobias only moves away; he is not interested. Later we find out that he's not sexually interested in his wife either. Years of constant emasculation have debilitated his sex drive until he is now like George in Virginia Woolf: impotent.

Impotency in Dad is a recurring theme in Albee's plays. We first hear of it in The American Dream (though Mommy and Daddy have no children in The Sandbox) when Mommy refers to Daddy's impotency as a result of a recent operation. The theme again appears in Virginia Woolf if we consider the inability of George and Martha to have a child. Impotency suggests loss of manliness as well as depletion of physical strength—both characteristic of the American daddy, according to Albee. It also implies sterility or the in-ability to produce a new generation. We do not create anything new; we only perpetuate the old. At one point in the play Agnes corroborates this indictment. Talking about her only daughter she admits: "We see ourselves repeated by those we bring into it all…" At another moment Claire makes the same observation when she says: "We can't have changes—throws the balance off."

Claire's remark also clarifies the title of the play, which is meant to mean the delicate balance of the status quo, whether it be in reference to an existing relationship within the family, a friendship outside, or the general state of affairs within the country or, for that matter, the world. Each and every relationship hangs in the balance of time, doggedly resistant to change. This difficulty of change within our lives is dramatically depicted as the play progresses, developing into the major theme of its denouement.

Unwilling to recognize Claire's open invitation to have sex with her, Tobias changes the subject, confessing that he can't remember the last time he saw his wife cry, "no matter what," indicating she is as dried up emotionally as he is sexually. Tobias asks Claire why Alcoholics Anonymous never helped her. She replies, in a rather descriptive monologue, that she could not accept a belief in God—the first tenet of the organization. Besides, she doesn't admit to being an alcoholic. Agnes re-enters and stuns Tobias with the news that their daughter, Julia, is coming home after the dissolution of her fourth marriage. Apparently everyone has been aware that the breakup was coming, except Tobias. He offers to talk to his son-in-law in an effort to save the marriage, which seems, from Agnes's reaction, to be a new role for her husband:

Agnes: (AS if the opposite were expected from her) I wish you would! If you had talked to Tom, or Charlie, yes! even Charlie, or… uh…

Claire: Phil?

Agnes: (NO recognition of Claire helping her)… Phil, it might have done some good. If you've decided to assert yourself, finally, too late, I imagine.

This sudden turnabout for Tobias is structurally important because it represents the first manifestation of an inner crisis that will grow during the course of the play, finally forcing Tobias to act contrary to his nature, in a last-ditch attempt to hold together his fast disintegrating ego. Agnes's remark, "too late, I imagine," foreshadows the tragic failure of his attempt.

Claire breaks in and alters the mood temporarily by singing a little ditty about Julia's ex-husbands, which is Albee's way of reintroducing the death theme. This time it is to inform us of the death of four marriages, the stigma of which, Julia carries with her:

Claire: (A mocking sing-song)

Philip loved to gamble.
Charlie loved the boys.
Tom went after women,
Douglas.…

It seems that Julia has a knack for picking marriage partners who must fail her. Unconsciously she doesn't want these marriages to work because she needs a reason to return home to the protection of her parents and to resume the old parent-child relationship. Whatever happened over the years, we can only know that Julia feels deprived of something in that relationship and keeps coming back to get it. Agnes rein-forces Julia's neurosis by taking her back into the house and allowing her to resume the mother-daughter premarital kin-ship because it gives her the illusion she is still young enough to have an unmarried daughter.

Cued by Julia's homecoming, Tobias obliquely gives us the needed information about Julia's years at home. He does this by confessing to a rather pathetic and apparently unrelated incident in his past. It seems that for many years before his marriage to Agnes, he and a pet cat enjoyed a mutual af fection. One day Tobias realized that his pet cat no longer liked him; it would not come to him when called, and retreated whenever he approached. The cat's unexplainable rejection made Tobias all the more anxious to win back his pet's love. Finally, after many overtures, in desperation and utter frustration, he shook the cat violently yelling, "Damn you, you like me; God damn it, you stop this! I haven't done anything to you." Frightened at the outburst, the cat bit him, and Tobias, in retaliation, viciously smacked it. Tobias describes the outcome:

Tobias: … She and I had lived together and been, well, you know, friends, and… there was no reason. And I hated her, well, I suppose because I was being accused of something, of… failing. But I hadn't been cruel by design; if I'd been neglectful well, my life was… I resented it. I resented having a… being judged. Being betrayed.

Claire: What did you do?

Tobias: I had lived with her; I had done… everything. And… and if there was a, any responsibility I'd failed in… well… there was nothing I could do. And, and I was being accused

Claire: Yes; what did you do?

Tobias: (Defiance and self-loathing) I had her killed.

Almost every critic referred to the "cat story." It is obviously Albee at his best. The critics likened it to the dog monologue in The Zoo Story, maintaining that the telling of it meant more than the unfortunate experience of one man and an animal. Henry Hewes thought it meant that Albee was trying to puncture the myth that "people who are sufficiently happy together and are enough in love to get married will forever remain in love."²⁴ Other reviewers thought the account was a lesson on friendship and tied the monologue to what they thought was the major point of the play. This is not at all the case. What Albee wanted, in having To-bias relate the tale, was to have the audience realize Tobias's sense of failure as a father. The thought is so unbearable that he is unable to confess it directly. The narrative implies that like the cat, Julia once loved and related to her father and that despite his attempt to provide a home for his daughter, she inexplicably withdrew from him until they now no longer communicate. The last thing Tobias says before he begins the cat story concerns his failure to relate to her. Filled with anxiety, he reneges on his earlier offer to talk to his daughter about reconsidering the dissolution of her marriage:

Tobias: (Not rising from his chair, talks more or less to himself) If I saw some point to it, I might—if I saw some reason, chance. If I thought I might… break through to her, and say, "Julia…" but then what would I say? "Julia…" then nothing.

Tobias blames himself for his failing relationship with his daughter and her resulting inability to develop a satisfactory and durable relationship with a man. The results of his ineffectualness are all around him. Guilt ridden because of his failure as husband and father, he privately yearns for change.

Unexpectedly, the scene is interrupted by the arrival of Harry and Edna, their closest friends. At first the call seems nothing more than the routine visit of lifetime friends, but after ignoring a question put to them four times, the family begins to sense that something is terribly wrong. Finally, after a little prodding from Claire, Harry and Edna tell their story:

Harry: (Looks at Edna) I… I don't know quite what happened then; we… we were… it was all very quiet, and we were all alone. (Edna begins to weep, quietly; Agnes notices, the others do not, Agnes does nothing)…and then… nothing happened, but…

Edna: (Open weeping; loud) we got frightened. (Open sobbing; no one moves)

Harry: (Quiet wonder, confusion) We got scared.

Edna: (Through her sobbing) we were… fright ened.

Harry: There was nothing… but we were scared.

Agnes: (Comforts Edna, who is in free sobbing anguish, Claire lies slowly back on the floor)

Edna: We… were… terrified.

Harry: We were scared. (Silence; Agnes comforting

Edna. Harry stock still. Quite innocent, almost childlike) It was like being lost; very young again, with the dark, and lost. There was no… thing… to be… frightened of, but…

Edna: (Tears, quiet hysteria) we were frightened… and there was nothing. (Silence in the room)

Harry and Edna then ask if they may lie down in one of the bedrooms because they are too fearful to return home. Agnes admits them to Julia's room as Claire, in her clairvoyant role, predicts that something ominous is about to happen. Not until the next day, after Julia has come home, do Harry and Edna reveal just what it is they are up to. They have decided (without consulting Agnes or Tobias but in the name of friendship) to move into the house and live in Julia's bedroom; the thought of living alone another day is too terrifying for them. Julia hysterically screams that they have no right and demands that they leave. Harry and Edna refuse, and Julia looks to her parents to throw them out.

Much has been written about Harry and Edna and much has been suggested. In fact most of the adverse criticism has centered around who and what these people represent. Perhaps the most misguided interpretation of the intruders was that they are a questionable plot device to initiate conflict between Mom, Dad, and their daughter. The re-viewer felt that the play concerned "the difficulty rich, emotionally immobilized parents faced with a daughter who at 36 is still an adolescent."²⁵ It is, of course, true that Agnes and Tobias are affluent and emotionally alien to the events in their lives, and that Julia is immature, but this situation is only a result and not the core of a much larger issue still to be resolved.

While most critics did not try to explain what it was the couple feared or why this fear had come about—even though the death imagery is quite clear in Harry's description of being "very young again, with the dark, and lost"—they did complain that the fear was not transferred to the audience. Walter Kerr, in an article printed after his review of the play, explained that Albee only talked about fear; he never showed it. He then went on to cite Harold Pinter as an example of a playwright who can frighten his audience without using the word fear.²⁶ Kerr, however, has missed the point concerning the frightened couple. It was not Albee's intention to put his audience into moral trepidation. All he wanted to do by introducing Harry and Edna was to exhibit two people traumatized by the sudden realization that death was not only a certainty, but close by. Psychologists would agree that fear of being lost in the dark is a symbolic death fear and that this "belief in one's death is an acquired and usually a late belief."²⁷ With the realization that most of their life is over (Edna specifically mentions it), it is natural that their thoughts should turn to wondering how much time there is left and whether they have wasted what time has already been given them. Relating the story of their sudden and inexplicable fright leads Harry to sum up his life with Edna:

Harry: (Subdued, almost apologetic) Edna and I… there's so … much … over the dam, so many … disappointments, evasions, I guess, lies maybe … so much we remember we wanted, once… so little that we've settled for … we talk, sometimes, but mostly… no…

Harry looks into his memory and finds little, almost nothing, to comfort them in their mature years, underscoring the fact that both continually mention that "nothing" was there when they became frightened. Clurman described Harry and Edna's state very well when he wrote that there is "no past to sustain them or future to which they aspire… It is as if they were survivors of some devastation of the moral order… They hardly know to what universe or society they belong, the old having been so decimated that their memory apart from ache and disgust has become fragmentary, leaving them without sufficient energy to reconstruct anything new."²⁸ Clurman's vivid description points up rather clearly how completely alienated Harry and Edna are. They have no past, no forseeable future, and almost nothing in their present to hang on to except friendship with Agnes and To-bias. It is precisely this sense of "nothingness" that terrifies them. Erich Fromm recently wrote that "the alienated person… is lacking in a sense of self. This lack of self creates deep anxiety. The anxiety engendered by confronting him with the abyss of nothingness, [italics mine] is more terrifying than even the tortures of hell."²⁹ Fromm also mentions the way friendship are created in this country: "It is only another aspect of the alienated kind of interpersonal relation-ship that friendships are not formed on the basis of individual liking or attraction, but that they are determined by the location of one's own house or apartment in relation to the others."³⁰

Harry and Edna, in the throes of personal anguish, try in the only way they know to refute their sense of nothingness, of alienation. They demand that Tobias and Agnes become more than superficial in their friendship to them. They try, in their demand for sanctuary, to refute the neutralness of the relationship by forcing it to take on more meaning than it has. Fromm again underscores Harry and Edna's feelings when he writes "mere is not much love or hate to be found in human relationships of our day. There is, rather, a superficial friendliness and a more than superficial fairness, but behind that surface is distance and indifference."³¹

Albee's concern with modern man's sense of isolation and abandonment led him first to examine the possible truth of the Nietzschean "God is Dead" theory in Tiny Alice. Now, in A Delicate Balance he has dropped the metaphysical probings and returned to a more sociological explanation, which seems to assert that it is the death of friendship that produces these feelings of alienation. Evidence of this theme grows as it becomes clear that the weekend's episode has wrecked what superficial relationship the two couples had:

Edna: I'm going into town on Thursday, Agnes. Would you like to come? (A longer pause than necessary, Claire and Julia look at Agnes

Agnes: (Just a trifle awkward) Well… no, I don't think so, Edna; I've… I've so much to do.

Edna: (Cooler; sad) Oh. Well… perhaps another week.

Agnes: Oh, yes; we'll do it.

Edna tries pitifully to hold on to the severed friendship, but it's dead. The image of death, which has permeated this play from its first act until its conclusion, is reflected again in the final destruction of the forty-year friendship.

Perhaps the most devastating criticism of Harry and Edna concerned the diffusion of focus the interlopers caused. Evidently the strangeness of the couple's undisclosed fear and their apparent vulnerability to it, plus the outright daring of their demand to the right to disrupt another's privacy in the name of friendship, created a most impelling effect on the critics. Many felt that instead of remaining peripheral characters designed to upset the delicate balance of "the family armed truce,"³² they took hold and pushed the protagonists right out of focus. Harry and Edna suddenly became the characters to write about, and the critics began tactfully suggesting that Albee rewrite his play because "those two people who are afraid of their own house are worth a play."³³ Norman Nadel was the most articulate in his analysis of the intruders:

And this becomes the element of the play we want to know most about. We all have known the nameless fears, the terrors without shape or identity, that unexpectedly invade our lives. Yet only obliquely does Albee return to that theme. Fear is never even the tangible presence in the play that it should be… The drama's insights impinge on this element of fear, without ever quite penetrating it… And therein lies its weakness.³⁴

Nadel's analysis presupposes that Albee was most concerned with writing a play that explored the nature of fear. If this were the case, there would be justification to his critique. Albee, however, uses fear as a by-product of other issues. As we have seen, he is most concerned with the ramifications of growing old in an alienated world. Agnes and To-bias should easily keep the audience's interest because their friends' demands have created enough of a turmoil within the household to jolt these two out of their emotional cocoons. The family crisis that takes place should be compelling enough to keep even Harry and Edna in their place as catalysts.

Tobias believes Harry and Edna are right when they say he must allow them to remain or admit that a forty-year friend-ship is meaningless and symbolic of his entire life. Yet To-bias is not used to making decisions; he has always deferred to Agnes. But this time Agnes will not accommodate him. Why she suddenly abandons her role as "ruler of the roost" is not at first clear. Perhaps she has finally seen a glimpse, a reflection, of her aliented life with Tobias as she watches her friends attempting to fill the "nothingness" in their lives. Edna does say to her, "Our lives are… the same." As she realizes that her marriage is much the same as her friends, it is conceivable that she will try to change it by forcing To-bias to assume a role he long ago abdicated. If she can get him to commit himself to accepting his traditional place as head of the household, this reaffirmation of the historical role might alter the present course of their lives and close the chasm that has isolated one from the other. She attempts the change:

Agnes: (Quiet, calm and almost smug) We follow. We let our… men decide the moral issues.

Tobias: (Quite angry) Never! You've never done that in your life!

Agnes: Always, my darling. Whatever you decide… I'll make it work; I'll run it for you so you'll never know there's been a change in anything.

Tobias does not feel that it's necessary for him to make the decision. He tries again to resume the old relationship, maintaining it is Agnes's place to admit Harry and Edna. He asks her again to make the choice:

Tobias: (Quiet, rhetorical) What are we going to do?

Agnes: What did you decide?

Tobias: (Pause; they smile) Nothing.

Agnes: Well, you must. Your house is not in order, sir. It's full to bursting.

Tobias: Yes. You've got to help me.

Agnes: NO. I don't think so.

Tobias is upset now; he wants an explanation for his wife's contrary behavior. Agnes tries to explain. In the ensuing dialogue her reasons for stepping down become clearer. We find out that she is convinced the marriage is a failure. Apparently she spent the night reviewing her life, for she approaches the subject by first telling Tobias that what she has to tell him stems from having "revisited our life, the years and years."

This is an important moment for Agnes and Tobias. In the early plays Mom was perfectly content to be king of the mountain. As a matter of fact she wouldn't have it any other way. She did all she could to insure her continued domination of the household—even if it meant the destruction of Dad's identity. In Virginia Woolf, Mom is still content to let everybody who'll listen know that Daddy is a "bog" incapable of accomplishing anything worthwhile. Only at the end does she submit to him at all, but we wonder if it occurs simply out of sheer exhaustion. This is an historic moment for Mom, because only in A Delicate Balance does she actively attempt to return the family unit to what it originally was—and only after a total re-examination of her history with Dad. It has taken Albee seven plays and two adaptations to allow Mom to come to the conclusion that her life with Dad is empty. Unfortunately, as we shall see, the decision to change has come too late for Mom. For the moment though, Agnes is unaware that her historic change of heart will be in vain. She again attempts the reversal of roles by a recapitulation of their lives, starting first with remembrances of Julia:

Agnes: Each time that Julia comes, each clockwork time… do you send her back? Do you tell her, "Julia, go home to your husband, try again?" Do you? No, you let it… slip. It's your decision, sir.

Tobias: It is not! I…

Agnes:… and I must live with it, resign myself one marriage more, and wait, and hope that Julia's mother-hood will come… one day, one marriage (Tiny laugh) I am almost too old to be a grandmother as I'd hoped… too young to be one. Oh, I had wanted that: the youngest older woman in the block, Julia is almost too old to have a child properly, will be if she ever does… if she marries again. You could have pushed her back… if you'd wanted to.

It is here that Agnes tries to show Tobias that the emptiness of their lives is symbolized in the discontinuance of the family line. She tries to explain that Tobias never wanted to see himself perpetuated in his grandchildren—that he is the one who all these years has chosen isolation and sterility as the symbols of their life together. Tobias's refusal to accept the blame forces Agnes to turn to a more brutal example of his wish to kill any chances of living on through a son. The death motif that hovers over this play emerges once again:

Agnes: (Remorseless) When Teddy died? (Pause) We could have had another son; we could have tried. But… No… those months—or was it a year—?

Tobias: No more of this!

Agnes:…I think it was a year, when you spilled on my belly, sir? "Please? Please, Tobias?" No, you wouldn't even say it out: I don't want another child, another loss. "Please; Please, Tobias?" And guiding you, trying to hold you in?

Tobias: (Tortured) Oh, Agnes! Please!

Agnes: Don't leave me then, like that. Not again, To-bias. Please? I can take care of it; we won't have another child, but please don't… leave me like that… Such… silent… sad, disgusted… love.

It is clear now that it was Tobias who first removed himself from the intimacies of marriage. Tobias may have felt he could not bring himself to risk another loss, but it may be more realistic to assume that his self-evaluation would not allow his seed to be continued into the next generation. Tobias on his own accord withdrew from the responsibilities of a father and husband, content to let Agnes take his place.

Agnes pleads for him to return to her as she plays out her part in the evolution of the American family unit. One glimpse at a standard source book in sociology corroborates her predicament:

American mothers stepped into the role of the grandfathers [sic] as the fathers abdicated their dominant place in the family, in the field of education, and in cultural life. The post-revolutionary descendants of the Founding Fathers forced their women to be mothers and fathers, while they continued to cultivate the role of freeborn sons.³⁵

Unquestionably, it is the first time in an Albee play that the blame for whatever mess the American family is in, is placed with the father. Mom is not the usurper she was in the early plays; she has simply responded all these years out of a sense of duty, filling a position that has been vacated. Agnes even says to her husband, when she tries to define the woman's job in the home, that she "assumes whatever duties are demanded—if she is in love, or loves; and plans." And since she has always thought of herself as the "fulcrum" within the family, she will continuously adjust to wherever the new balance places her. Agnes continues her exposition, linking their present alienation to past sexual problems, implying that the isolation that now exists need not have occurred had he sought her help or at least confided in her:

Tobias: (Numb) I didn't want you to have to… you know.

Agnes: (Laughs in spite of herself) Oh, that was thoughtful of you! Like a pair of adolescents in a rented room, or in the family car. Doubtless you hated it as much as I.

Tobias: Yes.

Agnes: But wouldn't let me help you.

Tobias: No.

Agnes: Which is why you took to your own sweet room instead.

Tobias: Yes.

It is interesting that while Agnes confesses to having "hated" sexual intercourse as much as he did, she earlier admitted to missing him when he left her bed: "I shall start missing you again—when you move from my room… if you do,"she says. (They are temporarily together again because Tobias has given Julia his room while Harry and Edna remain in the house.) This seeming paradox is perhaps more widespread among "happily" married couples than might be expected. An internist, practicing in well-to-do suburbia, recently told me that the majority of his women patients, and to a lesser degree the men, ask him to write notes to their spouses requesting that for medical reasons they cease having intercourse. The reason given is that they are too tired to"accommodate" their mates. What doubly amazed me was that my friend felt this request was not symptomatic of any serious neurosis, but an understandable, rather normal request, not at all indicating these couples no longer love each other.

Agnes's talk of having been aware all these years of the mutual revulsion each felt about the sex act shames Tobias into asking just what she will do now that the truth is out. Determined, however, to abandon her place as dominator, she replies "Whatever you like, naturally."

Claire and Julia interrupt the colloquy but the topic continues. It is up to Tobias to make the final decision concerning Harry and Edna. Julia flatly states that she will leave the house permanently unless the invading couple are put out. Tobias, frustrated and in a rage, screams at his daughter that "harry and edna are our friends." Julia, undaunted, equals him with "they are intruders." Tobias, very upset but still unable to commit himself to standing by his friends without his family's support, tries to make them realize that friendship based on any condition is empty. Agnes responds, warning him that Harry and Edna have brought with them a disease. The disease is terror and if Tobias allows them to stay, the family is in danger of infection. Nevertheless, it must be his decision alone. Finally seeing that Agnes will no longer fight his battles, Tobias summons his courage, and in the most stirring moment of his life, he jars himself loose of old and ingrained ways by telling Harry and Edna they may reside in his home for as long as they wish whether his family likes it or not.

It is too late, however. The tumult within the family, the momentous decision, were all for naught. Harry and Edna have changed their minds. They realize now it is impossible to alter forty years of pleasant indifference by force. Harry feebly tries to apologize for his and Edna's presumption:

Harry:… you're our best friends, but… I told Edna upstairs, I said Edna, what if they'd come to us? And she didn't say anything. And I said; Edna, if they'd come to us like this, and even though we don't have… Julia, and all that, I… Edna I wouldn't take them in. (Brief silence) I wouldn't take them in, Edna; they don't… have any right. And she said; yes, I know; they wouldn't have the right.

Tobias cannot accept Harry's realistic appraisal of their friendship and the vacuity it symbolizes; he is determined to take the interlopers in, in order to negate what both Harry and Agnes have intimated in their separate evaluations. In a three-page, orchestrated monologue, Tobias spills his guts out to Harry, first ordering him to stay, then begging him through tears of futility as he slowly realizes it is too late for any of them. A moment later Edna bleakly sums it all up:

Edna: (Pause. Slight smile) It's sad to come to the end of it, isn't it, nearly the end; so much more of it gone by… than left, and still not know—still not have learned… the boundaries what we may not do… not ask, for fear of looking in a mirror. We shouldn't have come.

Agnes: (A bit by rote) Now, Edna…

Edna: For our own sake; our own… lack. It's sad to know you've gone through it all, or most of it, without… that the one body you've wrapped your arms around… the only skin you've ever known… is your own—and that it's dry… and not warm.

Harry and Edna, like George and Martha, are childless and isolated. Whereas George and Martha had to create an imaginary child to appease their loneliness and in the end had to kill it and the illusion it carried, Harry and Edna, in their attempt to bring solace to the same feeling of alienation, create an imaginary depth in a life-long friendship that doesn't exist. At the end, as in Virginia Woolf, the illusion must be destroyed.

In talking about A Delicate Balance, Albee has said that it "is about the fact that as time keeps happening options grow less. Freedom of choice vanishes. One is left with an illusiono f choice."³⁶ The experience has been as crushing for Tobias and Agnes. They too must live the remaining years without illusion. But their reality is somewhat different from learning that their closest friendship was at best superficial; what they learn is that there comes a time in every life when hope of change no longer exists. What they have made of their lives must now stand because it is too late for undoing. Tobias cannot change his skin. Even his impassioned plea to Harry is an indication not of strength but continued weakness because of its uncontrollable hysterics. Tobias a long time ago chose passivity; he must now accept its outcome.

It is interesting to read Harold Clurman's analysis of To-bias, based on his belief that the play had only to do with that "insuperable difficulty of loving one's neighbor."³⁷ He feels that the character of Tobias should have been played not as a little man but rather as an "outwardly imposing figure, a very 'senator' of a man, a pillar of our business community in whom the springs of sensibility have begun to dry through disuse. The welling up of his being in the play's crisis would then become more stirring and, what is more important, exemplary."³⁸ What Clurman has neglected to see, however, is that Tobias does not succeed in his attempt at rescuing his life from the quicksand of indifference. What is exemplary is not his sudden feelings of remorse for a life of aloofness, but his realization that despite his willingness to change, the patterns of his past are forever stamped in the anguished memories of a wasted life and in the knowledge that choice ceases to exist as we approach the termina tion of our lives. Tobias was, and must remain always, small. This theme is summed up rather movingly by Agnes at the end of the play:

Agnes: Time. (Pause. They look at her) Time happens, I suppose. (Pause. They still look) To people. Everything becomes … too late, finally. You know it's going on … up on the hill; 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.

Despite the mixed reception A Delicate Balance received from the critics, on May 1,1967, Albee was given the Pulitzer Prize. The next day he officially accepted the award, but remembering the controversy over the Pulitzer Advisory Board's decisions to overrule John Gassner and John Mason Brown when they proposed that Albee be given the prize for Virginia Woolf, he warned that it "is in danger of losing its position of honor and could foreseeably, cease to be an honor at all."³⁹ The following day, speaking at a news conference, he reiterated his feelings, listing exactly why he accepted the award:

I have decided to accept the award for three reasons: First, because if I were to refuse it out of hand, I wouldn't feel as free to criticize it as I do accepting it. Second, because I don't wish to embarrass the other recipients this year by seeming to suggest that they follow my lead. And finally, because while the Pulitzer Prize is an honor in decline, it is still an honor, a considerable one.⁴⁰

Originally underrated by the majority of New York critics, yet heralded by the Pulitzer Committee as the best play of the year, A Delicate Balance has shown Edward Albee at his most sympathetic, his most gentle. There is more delicateness and maturity in this play than any of his other works, and it will prevail "not only [as] a brilliant and searching play but [as] a strangely beautiful one."⁴¹

Notes

¹Women's Wear Daily, Sept. 23, 1966.

²New Republic, Oct. 8, 1966.

³Daily News, Sept. 23, 1966.

⁴Nation, Oct. 10,1966.

⁵New York Times, Aug. 16, 1966.

⁶Herald Tribune (Paris) Sept. 23, 1966.

⁷Vogue, Nov. 1, 1966.

⁸NBC-TV News, 11:15 PM, Sept. 22,1966.

⁹John Gassner, "Broadway in Review," ETJ (Dec, 1966) pp. 450-452.

¹⁰Herald Tribune, loc. cit.

¹¹Gassner, ETJ, loc. cit.

¹²Village Voice, Sept. 29,1966.

¹³Gassner, ETJ, loc. cit.

¹⁴New York Times, Oct. 2, 1966.

¹⁵Newsweek, Oct. 3, 1966.

¹⁶Geoffrey Gorer, The American People: A Study in National Character (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1964), p. 54.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 49.

¹⁸Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1963), pp. 290-291.

¹⁹New York Times, Aug. 16, 1966.

²⁰New York Times, Oct. 2, 1966.

²¹William Ernest Hocking, "Thoughts on Death and Life," in Inquiry and Expression ed. by Harold C. Martin and Richard M. Ohmann (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1963), p. 582.

²²WINS Radio, Aug. 23, 1966.

²³Gorer, p. 131.

²⁴Saturday Review, Oct. 8,1966.

²⁵Toronto Daily Star, Sept. 24, 1966.

²⁶New York Times, Sept. 23, 1966.

²⁷Hocking, p. 580.

²⁸Harold Clurman, "Introduction," The Playwrights Speak, ed. Walter Wager (New York: Delacorte Press, 1967), pp. xx-xxi.

²⁹Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1962), p. 204.

³⁰Ibid.,p. 160.

³¹Ibid.,p. 139.

³²New York Post, Sept. 23,1966.

³³Commonweal, Oct. 14, 1966.

³⁴World Journal Tribune, Oct. 2, 1966.

³⁵Erikson, p. 295.

³⁶Newsweek, May 29,1966.

³⁷Nation, loc. cit.

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹New York Times, May 2,1967.

⁴⁰New York Times, May 3, 1967.

⁴¹New York Post, Oct. 8, 1966.