GETTING ALBEE'S GOAT: 'Notes toward a Definition of Tragedy'

Scene Two is the confrontation scene. About Sylvia, it centers attention on Stevie, 'The Woman in Deep Woe' [ii; 77]. Good old best friend Ross has sent a tell-all letter to Stevie, which she has read and reads again aloud to Martin and Billy-mocking in turn Ross, herself and Martin. With Billy gone, she insists they talk about "it," his romance of the goat. he chooses to begin with his extensive search for "our country place"-more difficult "if you're after Utopia." Her idea, desire-"Verdancy: flowers and green leaves," says the architect, "against steel and stone." "OK. And it's lovely. Now get to the goat\" "I'm getting there. I'm getting to her." "Stop calling it her\" [ii; 64-65] What to Martin is love, perhaps Utopia, is to Stevie simply "bestiality" [ii; 59], beyond the bounds of anything she could have anticipated or was prepared to handle. While the dialogue is often humorous in its off-point reactions or turns of phrase, it provokes an impatience on behalf of one, then the other, Stevie or Martin, between "Get to the goat" and "Try to understand." Trying to assure her that his action was not unique, he mentions a group he found and decided to go to

MARTIN: When I realized something was wrong. I mean, when I realized people would think something was wrong, that what I was doing wasn't . . .

STEVIE: I am going to kill you. [ii; 65]

On hearing that the group's leader had been "cured" of using a pig, Stevie smashes a "big ceramic table plate" [ii; 66], which brings Billy in to ask, "You two OK?" and to rescue a small vase he'd given his mother [ii; 67-68]. After the brief interruption Martin blunders on.

As he recounts the personnel of his therapy group, whose partners ranged from dog to goose, each new coupling is funnier to the audience and more infuriating to Stevie [ii; 66, 68-73]. Martin tries to explain to Stevie why he entered therapy and why he left. he finds the others' desire to be "cured" odd:

MARTIN: ...most of the people there were having problems, were . . . ashamed, or ... conflicted . . . needed to talk about it while ... I went there, I guess, to find out why they were all there. ... I didn't understand why they were ... all so unhappy; what was wrong with . . . being in love . . . like that. . . . And I was unhappy there, for they were all unhappy. ... And I didn't know why.

STEVIE: Really? I think we've hit upon why I'm going to kill you. [ii; 70, 73-74]

In both instances this 'killer' line must have its joke-delivery, though it's no joke, and Martin remains ingenuously earnest. Through this second scene Martin is still persuading himself that "No one got hurt" [ii; 71]. The Lawyer in Tiny Alice offers a phrase for such self-deceptive locutions: "How to come out on top, going under" [Act III: 148]. Since farmboys "naturally" took up with piglets, "It was what they did. Maybe it was better than . . ." Than what? Stevie mocks his implication: "with each other . . . their sisters . . . their grandmothers?" "No one got hurt," he proclaims. Stevie's and our immediate response is "HUNH!!" Except, of course, in the case of Stevie's feelings and her very identity, does Martin's loving Sylvia actually deprive Stevie of love or directly hurt her or anyone else?. To her mind they are talking about her hurt right now and throughout Scene Two. But Martin is seeking to be understood, not to justify or be forgiven. Nevertheless Martin offers biographical tidbits for the pig-man, the German-Shepherd-woman and the goose-man to suggest that these animal lovers sought and found comfort and healing in their pet partners. he partly justifies and explains their behavior as psychologically deriving from habit, deprivation and trauma [ii; 72-73]. he offers no psychological explanation or excuse for his relationship with Sylvia. That is neither explainable nor forgivable; it happened.