R.I. P. Edward Albee

[Danik 2016]

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/16/edward-albee-dies-playwright-whos-afraid-virginia-woolf

[spikepipsqueak]

He wrote “To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love.”

Can't help thinking he had a good 88 years.

[YesNo]

I saw the film version derived from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but nothing else by him. I don't remember much of the movie.

I sometimes wonder if dark domestic comedies are really comedies, but it might be worthwhile to see the movie version again.

[Danik 2016]

It impressed me very much when I read it, but not in a comic sense.

[Pompey Bum]

"Ah-putaputaputaputa, that's Albee, folks!"

--Porcius Pig

[YesNo]

It impressed me very much when I read it, but not in a comic sense.

I saw "Cousins" recently. It is a US version of "Cousin Cousine". The French version is rather dark, but the US version is lighter and might be a real comedy. Sometimes a comedy gets to the heart of the matter faster than a darker drama. It certainly teases the audience to listen longer to the message.

If I read Albee's plays, I doubt that I will get the full effect, but I may have to read a few of his plays to get a feel for what he actually wrote.

[Danik 2016]

I´ll sure have a look at the text, Yes/No if I can find it in the Net. I used to go to a very good English library here but it was substituted by an Internet Center.

[YesNo]

Cousins and Cousin Cousine were not by Albee. They are examples of stories of family situations that reminded me of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf that I happened to see recently.

Cousins (the US version) would be a comedy. It had the expected happy ending. The good guys are happy and the bad guys are forgotten, but it is expected the bad guys will learn their lessons and behave better in the future. The French original is much darker. There are scenes of alienation that appear to be central to the message. The bad guys are not so easily forgotten at the end and their future happiness is not as likely.

I'm not sure which technique gets closer to reality.

[YesNo]

I read Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and I kept recalling what I saw in the movie long ago.

It seemed to me that Nick, the new faculty member who was married to Honey and who went to George and Martha's home, was the critical character. I kept asking myself would I have acted like him in similar circumstances? I suspect I would not have gone to George and Martha's home in the first place, but supposing we did? I suspect I would not have told George much about Honey. But supposing I did? I suspect I would not let Martha kiss me, let alone have sex with her. However, the dialogue at each of the points where Nick failed was so well done that it made me wonder over again, what would I have done?

So, for me, Nick is the most puzzling of the four characters, not that the others aren't odd in their own ways. I did wonder if I would have acted like George, but not as seriously.

In the end there was an "exorcism" (the title of the third act) that seemed to nicely resolve things for George and Martha and perhaps justify this as a kind of "comedy". Nick and Honey didn't get any such resolution and Nick will likely be in a lot of trouble once Honey stops forgetting what happened and once the rest of the faculty finds out what he did.

[Danik 2016]

It´s a long time ago that I read the play. I remember George and Martha being a middle aged frustrated? academic couple (at least he is a professor at the university) and Nick is new at the university. The younger couple might be a more naive version of the older one. The older one lives a sort of love/hate relationship and they involve the young couple in their mutual provocations that don´t exclude infidelity. And than there is the story of the child. They couldn´t have a child so they invent one and one of the most terrible provocations is the symbolical killing of that child.
After that hellish night Honey says (if I remember well) that she wants to have a child. So I don´t think it ended so badly for the young couple. They learned something that night. Probably the kind of couple they didn´t want to be in the future.
I looked up "Cousins". "While We´re Young" reminds me a bit of Albee´s play but is much, much lighter,

[YesNo]

You remember the story better than I did. I didn't remember Nick and Honey at all except that I knew there was a young couple involved, but with all the verbal abuse coming from George and Martha, they seemed secondary. Although I remembered the part about the imaginary child I also remember that it puzzled me in the past. It makes more sense after reading the play today, that is, it seems like something they might do.

I think it might be because I was reading the play that made Nick stand out for me. I could slow down the dialog when I wanted. On the surface Nick seemed to be the most sane and intelligent of the four as well as the one most in control of himself, but then he got himself into a very damaging situation without knowing much about his new surroundings. In a murder mystery I would want to know who the killer was and it is not one of the usual suspects. I think something similar is going on here. The character to focus on was not one of the most vocal ones.

I'll see if I can find "While We're Young". "Cousins" had an infidelity theme also. I forget the characters names, but the one married to the daughter of the bride stood out as the "bad guy" very clearly unlike Nick who seemed to be a good guy most of the time which is what makes him so interesting to me. He's the good guy and the bad guy.

[Danik 2016]

You probably identified with Nick, while he seemed "sane and intelligent" at the beginning of the play. We readers resist in being drawn into that kind of story. I think the protagonists are George and Martha, but the focus is on their destructive kind of relationships that involves the younger couple. The play doesn´t tell anything about it and characters are made of pen, ink and paper, but it is easy to imagine them repeating the situation with other couples. For me it is a relentless picture of a couple who have to wound each other deeply to keep their love alive.
I didn´t interest myself for the other plays of Albee. For me he will remain for ever the author of "Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

[YesNo]

The library also has "A Delicate Balance", but I am still thinking about "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". It occurred to me today that I got the overall point of the play wrong. Nick is still the bad guy, but as you mentioned the play is about George and Martha.

This is what I think the play was about:

George and Martha went to a routine faculty party. George stayed by himself and Martha flirted with the people around her. The male faculty had their wives with them who knew Martha and so she couldn't tease them as easily as she could the newcomers, Nick and Honey. Nick enjoyed her flirtatiousness and Honey wanted to continue drinking and so they accepted her invitation to continue the party at her place and that was their first mistake.

The play started at home with George and Martha engaged in verbal abuse. George found out that they would have guests and that annoyed him. When the guests arrived they noticed the verbal abuse and should have left but Nick wanted to flirt with Martha and Honey wanted to have another drink so they made their next mistake and went inside the house.

The verbal abuse escalated through games called "Humiliate the Host", "Get the Guests" and finally "Hump the Hostess". Honey was drunk by that time and so she wasn't able to stop Nick as other faculty wives might have done who might have been more sober. Honey's main mistake was she did not realize she was a potential alcoholic. Nick's mistake was that he thought he knew what was going on. He just met Martha less than 10 hours ago. How could he know? She was his boss's daughter and a fellow faculty member's wife. Still he found himself somewhat righteously having sex with Martha to further humiliate George.

This is the part I just realized today based on the way George and Martha were acting: That was the first time Martha was unfaithful to George. Sure she was flirtatious, but it didn't go any further than that. George gave her the opportunity to betray him. In her anger she took the opportunity but not after pointing out to George what she might do. While they were upstairs Honey recovered somewhat and George wanted to know if she knew what was going on. It was at that time he thought of the idea of killing off their imaginary child.

When Martha and Nick came back Martha called him a "houseboy" and bossed him around. She said the only man she ever loved was George. George wanted to know if they actually had sex: was Nick a "houseboy" or a "stud". Martha at Nick's prompting confirmed that he was not a houseboy. Then George with Honey's unwitting assistance brought up the death of the imaginary child. Nick and Honey left after that and Martha wanted to know why he had to kill their child. But by that time heir marriage was beyond that and the question now was whether their marriage would survive.

I think the point of the play is to get the audience to imagine what should happen next to these four people? I imagine George and Martha would have some sort of separation and the news of why they were separating would become known. Nick would likely be made so uncomfortable he would have to find a new job. Honey would seek a divorce from him.

----------------

Anyway, I could drag this out longer, but the play must have been good if it kept me thinking about it so long.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for bringing up a lot of the details I had forgotten. For example that Martha was the daughter of the boss. The characters are destructive and self destructive as well.I think the play highligths the unhealty yet deep aspects of a certain form of marital relationship. It´s not only about betrayal, but also about power, ambition and frustrated prospects.I think that if there was a sequel to the play the characters would patch up their lives and just go on as they could.
I´m glad the play gripped you, it is powerfull, but I wouldn´t think too much about it because it is also depressing.

[YesNo]

Hopefully today I will be thinking about other things. There is more going on besides betrayal. That would be only George's primary perspective. Nick might also symbolize a view of science that Albee is opposed to by making Nick a biologist and having George bring up the idea of test tube babies.

[Danik 2016]

The baby again! I guess at that time it was not usual to adopt children when you couldn´t have your own.
I was a bit worried yes, as you seem to live in a much saner world than Albee´s characters. And I remember how impressed I got when I read the play for the first time. The proof of the pudding is that, so many years later I still remember more or less the central plot(but not the details you are bringing up).
Many of the great writers, I think most modern and postmodern ones, prefer to tackle the ugly aspects of life and of the human mind.

[YesNo]

The play reminds me of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi". In that story the husband sells his watch to buy his wife a comb for her hair and at the same time she sells her hair to buy him a chain for his watch. I think that is what was going on in Albee's play.

George and Martha did not understand why they were fighting with each other, but they could not find a way out and they did not want to subject the other to further abuse that they could not control. Nick and Honey weren't mature enough to help matters that evening, but there they were. They could have been the children that George and Martha did not have.

George gave Nick to Martha so she could have her freedom from him. Martha took Nick so George could have his freedom from her.

Nick doesn't deserve any sympathy that he was used by both George and Martha. He and Honey might have been able to break George and Martha from their patterns of verbal abuse by becoming their friends and giving them a sense of self-worth.

[Danik 2016]

I don´t remember having read this story by O. Henry, but somehow it sounds familiar. Maybe I´ve read a similar story.
But in the play of Albee, if I remember rightly it is a provocation and not a gift. They use the younger couple to hurt each other. I think they are chained to each other because both need that kind of love. The young couple could have acted differently, but then it would have been another kind of play. I don´t think Albee wanted to redeem his characters, he just wanted to show a kind of love which consisted in creating a hell for each other.

[YesNo]

I mentioned the O. Henry story because it could be classified as almost the opposite of Albee's play. O. Henry's story would be sentimental while Albee's play would be quite a bit less sentimental.

George and Martha's love did create a hell for each other, but only at that point in their lives. Albee also seemed to deliberately get the audience to have a distorted view of George and Martha from the beginning and then change it at the end. The way Nick sees them is the way the audience sees them and then Nick is surprised to find out at the end that the only man Martha ever loved was George and Nick (and the audience) becomes the fool (or houseboy).

I might have the play all wrong. When I was trying to make sense out of it, I was matching the characters to people I've known trying to imagine how they might have acted in similar circumstances. The whole thing snapped into place (for me) when I was trying to decide how many affairs I could expect Martha to have had seeing Martha from Nick's perspective. At one point I thought over five, then no more than five, then one and finally when I realized it was none the tension of the play became even more extreme. After I stopped approaching them through Nick's eyes, I saw them as normal human beings who were going through a period of insecurity about themselves that went out of control.

I agree that the play would have been different if Nick and Honey were more like George and Martha. I only mentioned that to emphasize that the major character flaws were with Nick and Honey not George and Martha. Nick and Honey were innocent and nice until one got drunk and the other got in bed with Martha. If the roles were reversed and George and Martha were the newcomers, they would have befriended Nick and Honey.

Of course as I mentioned, I could have this all wrong and I am already forgetting details of the play. It might be worth while to reread it again a year from now.

[Danik 2016]

My interpretation may be wrong too, Yes/No. It´s more than thirty years that I read the play and what´s more its more than thirty years that I had the opportunity to echange views about it.
And it´s natural that you want to match the characters to people you know and that you want to extract the positive aspects of the story.
For me the positive aspect is that it is an intense love story after all, although a crooked one. George and Martha can´t do without each other.
But I am very much afraid of Virginia Woolf.

[YesNo]

I agree it is a love story. I was even thinking it was like Romeo and Juliette with the warring families being replaced by George and Martha who were also Romeo and Juliette. That would make it a tragedy. Any couple that would create an imaginary child must have been very close.

Anyway, I might start Albee's "A Delicate Balance" this weekend if I get the time. I'm glad you started the thread. His plays are more interesting than I thought they would be.

[Danik 2016]

That´s an interesting interpretation Yes/No, because they give expression to their love by warring constantly. Thank you for your interest. It is years since I last discussed this play and it made me want to read it again. I must look if I have it here.
I hope you enjoy "A Delicate Balance" as well (though enjoy is a strange word to use with Albees texts). I don´t remember if I read this one.

[YesNo]

I finished "A Delicate Balance" and I realized that I read this many years ago but almost completely forgot it.

There are six characters in this play. The play is mainly about Tobias who had an affair once. He sleeps in a separate room from his wife, Agnes, and their sexual relationship is minimal. For some reason he didn't want her to get pregnant after their young son died long ago. Also long ago he took his pet cat to the vet to be killed because he didn't think the cat loved him anymore. He has some sort of hand gun. Other than that he's pretty normal except for the problem with his friend Harry which is what the play is about although you don't figure that out until the end.

Tobias has a wife Agnes who does a lot of talking and in the process distracts the attention of the audience to herself in a negative way. She has a much younger sister Claire who is living with them and unmarried. Claire has had multiple male lovers but they are married. She is also an alcoholic or maybe she just drinks too much. She is annoyed by her sister Agnes and hopes Tobias kills Agnes (or all of them). She reminds Tobias' about his affair but doesn't tell her sister. I assume all this negative attention toward Agnes is Albee's attempt to get the audience looking at her while he sets something else up.

Tobias and Agnes have a daughter Julia, 36, who comes home because her fourth marriage is failing. Julia is in a foul mood especially when she finds that Edna and Harry, friends of Tobias and Agnes, are staying indefinitely in her room where she usually goes in between marriages. She also has tense moments with her mother Agnes further distracting the audience to Agnes.

Harry and Edna stopped by to see Tobias and Agnes and said they felt some terror. They expected Tobias and Agnes to put them up in a bedroom since they were best friends. They also informed Tobias that they would be staying indefinitely. This unusual situation comes as a kind of shock, but Tobias plays along.

Agnes ultimately describes this "terror" as a "plague" and wonders if it is appropriate to let people infected with a plague into their house. She insists it is Tobias' decision. She just implements the decisions. Tobias didn't think he was making any decisions. Luckily Harry and Edna realize that if Tobias and Agnes had done to them what they did to Tobias and Agnes they wouldn't let them stay, friends or no friends. So Harry and Edna decide to leave on their own and this further confuses Tobias. They made the decision for him that Agnes suggested he should have made at the beginning.

With Harry and Edna gone, they all live happily ever after. At least the play ends.

Albee has his characters in drinking scenes and expressing anger just like in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", but they seem like distractions from the main point of the play. The play might have something to do with inadequate male protection of the family especially with the focus shifting from Agnes to Tobias at the end. That there might be a problem with Tobias brings to mind his earlier affair, his current inadequate relationship to Agnes and even that cat. But I don't know.

[Danik 2016]

I enjoyed your summary of the play, Yes/No. I don´t remember if I myself read the play a long time ago, so I looked for a free version of the play in the net but I didn´t find it yet.
I found though this review of a London performance in 2014 that may be of interest:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/21/edward-albee-a-delicate-balance-review
From what you and Alexis Soloski write I suppose the play is dated. Maybe it can still hold an audience if well performed but it lacks the intensity and the dolorous contrast between the love story of "Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and the destructive way in which this love is expressed. When it was written in 1966, I think the happy burgeois family was still much celebrated, so plays that tore it to piece were a novelty. But fifty years later, when this same burgeoisie has been much exposed and much of its self assurance and fascination is, when in several count lost. The concept of privacy has changed and that of invasion has gained wider boundaries. And the initiative of families welcoming unknown refugees into their houses is an issue in several countries. I think that in our present context the argument of Albee´s play could hardly have the same impact it had in the sixties.

[YesNo]

The setting and plot of the play seemed strange to me. I assume the moments of anger are not an everyday experience for these families, but are periods of crisis.

However, it does make me wonder about bonding on various levels. The central question seemed to be who should consider Tobias and Agnes' home their home as well. Agnes' sister and their child feel it can be called their home, but can their best friends view it as their home? Should even Tobias and Agnes consider it their home?

It reminds me of Frost's "Death of the Hired Man". An old farm hand, Silas, comes back to his employer's, Warren and Mary, so he can die. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, /They have to take you in.” : https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/death-hired-man

I am reading "Three Tall Women" because it is also in the library. This is a story of Albee's adoptive mother whom he didn't like. The three women are her at three periods of her life.

[Danik 2016]

You seem to be in an Albee phase and that is the best posthumuos homage one can make the author. And you have a library well provided with English literature there.
It seems Albee was a master in depicting negative family and bonding situations which even include animals. It probably is related to his own situation. I read somewhere that he felt an outsider during his whole life. But this personal situation made him look more critically at supposed happy bonding situations.
It reminded me of Tenessee Williams, who did the opposite. His plays often show the outsiders "the fugitive kind" trying to reach out to each other. I suppose you know him, but anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams

[YesNo]

The local library is quite large and it is walking distance from where we live. I usually walk there every day for exercise.

I remember reading Tennessee Williams, but I forget the details. There is a lot of unhappiness in Albee's plays. "A Delicate Balance" doesn't make as much sense to me as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", but I might be reading in too much of what I think the plays should be about.

[Danik 2016]

Your library reminds me of the library I visited in the seventies. It was at walking distance from where I lived too. It had a wonderful collection of books, beautiful complete works editions. I remember the Dickens edition and the one of Henry James.Later the library moved to another district. When I, years later, moved to the same district it was coincidently at walking distance again. I went there until it was closed to make room for a PC room and the books moved to the library of the British Council. There I went only once: they must have given away more than half of the books. The small reminder looked out of place on the half empty shelves.
I`ll have a look if there are any free e-books of Albee's plays. About the "Tall women" I only remember that the play was recently cast here in Brazil.

[YesNo]

I saw "Spanglish" last night: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371246/ It is about a Mexican woman, Flor, and her daughter who move to the US. Flor gets a job as a housekeeper for a wealthy family who have multiple relationship problems that reminded me of Albee's families.

It occurred to me that I enjoyed the movie more than I enjoyed "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". I had to find some intellectual pattern in Albee's play before I found it interesting, but the movie didn't require me to come up with a theory about what it was about before finding it entertaining.

[Danik 2016]

I found the film in the net, spoken in Portuguese, but the end was missing:sad:. I enjoyed the film and the acting. There are family relationship problems but the approach is lighter than in Albee´s play. For example the alcoholism of the old lady is very moderate indeed. A graver problem is when Debbie tries kind of substitute her own daughter by theMexican girl. Interesting too is the Mexican perspective. The scene where Debbie learns to pronounce the name of the Mexican is very significant. Because of her insecurity there is a kind of inversion of the rules there. Flor dominates the interview situation.
The infidelity with the house vendor (nobody else at hand) I found somewhat forced.

[YesNo]

I was surprised the grandmother could stop drinking for so long if she were an alcoholic. The movie ended with Flor and the chef acknowledging their love but separating. The chef and his wife have a brief conversation, but he sleeps in another room. Their daughter, afraid and in tears, comes to talk to him. It looks to me like he will stay with his wife for the sake of his daughter at least until she is older. The wife's manic-depressive behavior made me wonder why she would have an affair at all and her interest in Flor's daughter seemed too excessive to be realistic. But I did find the movie entertaining.

The reason I brought this up is because the writer-director James L Brooks (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000985/?ref_=tt_ov_dr) may be more influential in terms of the number of people who have seen his work although he is not as well known as Albee. Brooks also did "As Good As It Gets" and "The Simpsons". In a sense Albee might be overrated, but that doesn't mean he is not worth reading.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for telling the end I probably lost only some minutes of it. I specially liked the actress that played Bernice, though it was a smaller part. I looked Brooks up in Wikipedia, because I wondered at the sympathetic representation of the Mexicans. I personally don´t like that kind of cynical humour of the Simpsons but they are very popular here too.
Comparing Albee and Brooks I would say they are different kinds of artists and the time factor plays a role too. Albee was an outsider in his time. He uncowered some very harsch truths in a time when concepts like "love", "family life" and "frienship" were still much idealized in U. S. and elsewhere. But in our post post modern times much of his work is probably dated and maybe that´s why one feels he is overrated.
As for Brooks, who also sarted his life as somewhat of an outsider, he seems to be a typical TV man, who after several highs and down seems to have hit on an at once popular and critical formula with "The Simpsons".
Something both artist have in common: growing up in a difficult family environment.

[YesNo]

I have only rarely watched The Simpsons. I usually have better things to do. I kind of liked "As Good As It Gets", but "Spanglish" is my one favorite work by Brooks. I suppose "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" would be my favorite work of Albee.

I finished "Three Tall Women" today. The three characters were the same person at different ages. Supposedly they were Albee's adoptive mother whom he didn't like. There was a silent son in the play who came to visit the older version when she had a stoke in the second act. The theme expressed at the end is the happiest part of life is finishing it which the older version of his mother was doing. I guess I didn't like this play. It left me with little to think about unlike "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" which kept me wondering what was implicitly going on.

[Danik 2016]

I liked "As Good As It Gets" even more as "Spanglish"maybe because I like Jack Nicholson and I watched it in the cinema.
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" is a favourite with me, but I don´t think I would like the other plays of Albee. They are not so easy to find because they aren´t in the public domain yet.
Did you have a look at "Nathan, The Wise" from Lessing? It´s an impressive play too,

[YesNo]

I forgot about "Nathan, the Wise". I might read that this weekend now that you mention it. Jack Nicholson was pretty good in "As Good As It Gets".

[Danik 2016]

I think you will like it. Even if you don´t, you will apreciate the insight of a German of the end of the 18th Century.
Here the Wikipedia presentation of Lessing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthold_Ephraim_Lessing
What Wikipedia doesn´t state is that Lessing was one of the first German authors to discover the plays of Shakespeare. He wrote that they had much more to do with the German mentality than the French plays that were the fashion at that time.

[YesNo]

Although I downloaded the online version, I found it in the library with a translation by W. A. Steel. The iambic pentameter sounds odd, but it is understandable.

After the first scene, we find out that Nathan's adopted daughter was saved from a fire when his house burnt. The Knight Templar who saved her mysteriously avoids them. I sense there will be a religious tolerance theme developed as mentioned in your Wikipedia link.

[Danik 2016]

I didn´t mention the iambic pentameter, because I didn´t know how the translator dealt with it. Lessing actually introduced this form into the German dramaturgy. He calls it a dramatic poem. He alleged that for him it was easier to write the play in that form.

As to the content, no spoilers;). But my respect for your local library is growing. I don´t think that that this play will be found so easily in an American library.

[YesNo]

I haven't had time to read any more of it today, but I hope to finish it tomorrow.

The library is pretty good. If I don't know anything about a subject I check out the books they have to offer first. After reading or skimming them, I know where to go next for information if I want to know any more. And it is walking distance (10 - 15 minutes) from where we live which gives me an excuse to walk.

[Danik 2016]

Sure, Yes/No! I hope you like it.

I live close to a big library in my city. But the selection of English/ American literature in English is very limited.

[YesNo]

It was a nice ending. Not only was Recha not a Jew she wasn't a Christian either since her father was Muslim. It is interesting that the Patriarch would even consider burning Nathan at the stake for raising a baptized Recha in his Jewish household.

I agree with the religious tolerance and that story of the ring that Nathan told Saladin was pretty good. It had two parts, first the creation of the three rings so that each of the three brothers could have one and then the best part that when they started arguing about who had the true ring the judge told them they had to prove by their actions that they had the true ring.

[Danik 2016]

Im glad you liked the ending. The interesting thing about Recha is that she was meant to be a mixture of races and religions. As for the Patriarch wanting to burn Nathan I don´t know what where the laws at the time of the Cruzades and if Lessing had a look at them before writing his play. Lessings Germany was very antisemitic so he went back to the conflicts of the Cruzades to make his point.
A curiosity about the story of the rings. Lessing took it from The Decameron by Boccaccio and it is possible that Boccaccion took it from some older tradition.
What I like about it is this idea that men aren´t in a position to judge which is the best religion (or the best form of belief if you include atheism).

[YesNo]

The burning of Nathan seemed to parallel the stories in the Christian gospels of Jewish leaders for some mysterious reasons sending Jesus to Pilate for crucifixion. In this case the Patriarch would be sending Nathan (the Jesus figure) to the Sultan.

I'll have to look for the story of those rings in the Decameron.

I agree with Lessing that we can't judge which is the best religion. Even if we put all the religions together (including atheism) we would not get a complete representation of reality. Individually, none of them completely represents reality, but as human subjects, naturally inclined to be religious, we have to live with and improve on what traditions we've got.

I'm thinking of reading other plays. Do you have any recommendations? I was thinking of Euripedes.

Edit: I found a Wikipedia summary of the Decameron tale (Day 1, Tale 3): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_of_Decameron_tales#First_day

[Danik 2016]

Religious and political persecutions use to be controversial. The Patriarch is the villain of the play, but fortunatelly not a very effective one.
I am not very religious myself but I think religion only works if it helps people to better themselves and better endure sufferness.
Most of the Greek plays are first rate. If I remember rightly Euripides was considered the most realistic of the tragic playwriters.
Here is a whole list of them. I probably have read Orestes or Electra and I have a DVD of The Trojan Women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euripides
Then there is the irreverent Aristophanes .

[YesNo]

I found a book at the library containing The Trojan Women and I'll start with that one.

[Danik 2016]

All I know is that it is about the Trojan women imprisoned by the Greeks when the war of Troja is over. I hope you enjoy it.

[Pompey Bum]

All I know is that it is about the Trojan women imprisoned by the Greeks when the war of Troja is over. I hope you enjoy it.

@danik: They threw them off the walls. The play's a bit static, but the absurdists used to love it.