III.    Tennessee Williams

　　1.life

　　2.point of view and themes

　　He writes about violence, sex, homosexuality （taboos in drama）. Some of his plays rooted in southern social scene. The characters are often unhappy wanderers; lonely, vulnerable women indulged in memory of the past or illusion of the future. He was attracted to bizarre characters and their predicament. He looked deeply into the psychology of the outcasts of society. He saw life a game which cannot be won. Almost all his characters are defeated.

　　3.his plays

　　（1）The Glass Menagerie

　　（2）A Streetcar Named Desire

　　（3）Summer and Smoke

　　（4）Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

　　4.style

　　（1）combination of coarseness and poetry

　　（2）vivid southern speech

　　（3）He helped to break taboos, long imposed on the American literature.

　　IV.     Arthur Miller

　　1.life

　　2.theme: dilemma of modern man in relation to family and work

　　3.his plays

　　（1）The Man Who Had All the Luck

　　（2）All My Sons

　　（3）Death of a Salesman

　　（4）The Crucible

　　（5）A View for the Bridge

　　V.  Theatre of the Absurd

　　1.introduction: existentialist philosophy, mainly in Europe

　　2.four founders: Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov

　　3.What is ※absurd§?

　　Humorous and meaningless

　　4.features

　　（1）The basic assumption: human life lacks coherence and is chaotic. Life operates without any rules.

　　（2）The world is meaningless, so the play appears meaningless.

　　（3）It examines the problems of life and death, of isolation and communication.

　　（4）It satirizes people who are unaware of the ultimate reality （death）.

　　（5）In absurd drama, situation is more important than characters and events. The dramatist wants to show people what their situation in their life is. Therefore, he constructs a play which presents a picture of the universal situation. One result of these is that the characters are often comic and humorous.

　　5.Edward Albee

　　（1）Life

　　（2）Works

　　a. Zoo Story

　　b. Who＊s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?