ABSTRACT
Used to classic 1950s American living room dramas, theatre audiences and readers in the 1960s faced a shock which was largely due to how Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was seen as a vile display of everything that is dark and abhorrent about humans. This chapter places this play in its theatrical and historical contexts to help the reader understand why the play was initially received the way it was and how the play fits into (or departs from) its theatrical and historical moment. This introductory chapter lays out the thesis for the rest of the book that Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is straight out of the grand tradition of the living room drama: Ibsen, Chekhov, Glaspell, Hellmann, O’Neill, Wilder, Miller, Williams, and Albee.
