Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
By Edward AlbeeA great work of dark comedy, this play presents perhaps the most memorable of married couples - George and Martha - in a searing night of dangerous fun and games with a pawnlike other couple - Nick and Honey - who innocently become their weapons in the savaging of each other and of their life together. By the evening's end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climactic shock of recognition at the bond and bondage of their love. In its superlative construction, in its mastery of razor-honed dialogue and emotional crescendo, and above all in its power to strip away layer after layer of a social pretense to expose the naked nerve of truth, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of the most riveting and unforgettable experiences of American theatre.
In this monologue, George and Nick have been left alone together and George begins a drunken rambling rant.
GEORGE:
Oh! OH! You're the one! You're the one who's going to make all that trouble... making everyone the same, rearranging the chromosomes, or whatever it is. Isn't that right?
I'm very mistrustful. Do you believe... do you believe that people learn nothing from history? Not that there is nothing to learn, mind you, but that people learn nothing? I am in the History Department.
I am a Doctor. A.B... M.A... PH.D... ABMAPHID! Abmaphid has been variously described as a wasting disease of the frontal lobes, and as a wonder drug. It is actually both. I'm really very mistrusting... Biology, huh?
I read somewhere that science fiction is really not fiction at all... that you people are rearranging my genes, so that everyone will be like everyone else. Now, I won't have that! It would be a... shame! I mean... look at me! Is it really such a good idea... if everyone was forty-something and looked fifty-five? You didn't answer my question about history.
That's very upsetting... very... disappointing. But history is a great deal more...disappointing. I am in the History Department.
I know I told you... I shall probably tell you several more times. Martha tells me often, that I am in the History Department... as opposed to being the History Department... in the sense of running the History Department.
Your wife doesn't have any hips, does she?
Later, George explains his bizarre fear to the entire group.
GEORGE:
It's very simple, Martha, this young man is working on a system whereby chromosomes can be altered... the genetic makeup of a sperm cell changed, reordered, to order, actually... for hair and eye color, stature, potency... I imagine... hairiness, features, health... and mind. Most important... Mind. All imbalances will be corrected, sifted out... propensity for various diseases will be gone, longevity assured. We will have a race of men... test-tube-bred... incubator-born... superb and sublime.
But, everyone will tend to be rather the same... Alike. Everyone... and I'm sure I'm not wrong here... will tend to look like this young man here.
It will, on the surface of it, be all rather pretty... quite jolly. But of course there will be a dank side to it, too. A certain amount of regulation will be necessary... uh... for the experiment to succeed. A certain number of sperm tubes will have to be cut.
Millions upon millions of them... millions of tiny little slicing operations that will leave just the smallest scar, on the underside of the scrotum but which will assure the sterility of the imperfect... the ugly, the stupid... the... unfit... with this, we will have, in time... a race of glorious men. I suspect we will not have much music, much painting, but we will have a civilization of men, smooth, blond, and right at the middleweight limit... a race of scientists and mathematicians, each dedicated to and working for the greater glory of the super-civilization.
There will be a certain... loss of liberty, I imagine, as a result of this experiment... but diversity will no longer be the goal. Cultures and races will eventually vanish... the ants will take over the world.
And I, naturally, am rather opposed to all this. History, which is my field... will lose it's glorious variety and unpredictability. I, and with me the... surprise, the multiplexity, the sea-changing rhythm of... history, will be eliminated. There will be order and constancy... and I am unalterably opposed to it. I will not give up Berlin!
There is a saloon in West Berlin where the barstools are five feet high. And the Earth... the floor... is... so...far... below you. I will not give up things like that. No... I won't. I will fight you, young man... one hand on my scrotum, to be sure... but with my free hand I will battle you to the death.
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