Introduction

Abstract

The Drama of Marriage is a study of performances of marriage in modern and contemporary British and American drama. While for the most part, it examines works that are about heterosexual relationships, it is written from the point of view of a gay male individual and will focus on depictions of marriage by gay playwrights. Of course, marriage has always been a central theme of drama, from the troubled, usually fatal, marriages of Greek kings and queens (no divorce necessary in classical Athenian tragedy!) to the turbulent marriages in the plays of Edward Albee with their ritual sacrificial deaths; from the shrewish wives and henpecked husbands of classical farce to the clever wives and outwitted husbands of television sitcoms and commercials. In British and American drama of the past century and a half, marriage has been presented as an ideal, an impossibility, and a measure of the morality and limitations of the parties involved. Do marriages fail because couples fail or because the ideal of marriage is impossible to realize? Is true understanding between two people possible? Is monogamy unrealistic? These are some of the questions asked in the plays I shall discuss in these pages.