There are certain similarities that are obvious in the writings of Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett. The most obvious is that they are both writers of theater of the absurd. Albee’s plays deal with the discrepancy between illusion and reality and Beckett’s plays normally are concerned with the occupation with the intellectual over the physical. In Beckett’s plays, however, his characters exist only in the mind. They are free to imagine other characters this way who assure them of their own reality. However, at the same time his plays focus on this need for expression through language as a means of rational stability, they also illustrate that language is a basically meaningless form of communication because of its flaws.
Perhaps the main differences between the two authors is their atmosphere and mood and characterization. Albee’s plays are serious and psychological dramas where characters cruelly manipulate one another. In Beckett’s plays there is a comedic pessimism that pervades the character’s lot in life, usually characters who are somewhat comedic themselves in their own foibles, “All of Beckett’s pieces create a comically pessimistic allegory of man’s condition. In some, the traditionally farcical gestures of the circus clown and the vaudeville actor are used to portray human weakness, frustration, and helplessness,” (Baker Siepmann, 1987: 81).
These characters and this mood is in stark contrast to Albee’s darker view of mankind, “Most of Albee’s work deals with questions of illusion versus reality, possession versus communion, violence as an aspect of love, and domination versus submission. His characters tend to be desperate players in cruel psychological games: as manipulated as they are manipulating, as destructive as they are destroyed; when female, they are likely to be domineering emotional vampires,” (Baker Siepmann,
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