Albee, Edward: 1928 - 2016
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1962 - Title
- Main Title
- It seems that it is difficult to explain why Edward Albee chose this title. Even he himself explains it differently. So let's just enjoy the play.
- The title itself is a play on words that Albee saw scrawled on a mirror in a Greenwich Village bar one night in 1954, according to an interview with Albee in the Paris Review:
“I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who’s afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke.”
from Triad Stage - Edward Albee explains the title in a mail sent to SwissEduc on January 10, 2002:
"I chose the title Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because it's a very good title. There is an intentional reference to "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf" which can be said to be the fear of living life without false illusions. While the play has nothing to do with the author Virginia Woolf, if you read her work you will find similar enthusiasms to mine."
- Edward Albee explains to Neal Conan how he got to the title "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" NPR; March 6, 2002
- The reference is to a popular American children's song which is based on a story called "The Three Little Pigs". In this story, three pigs attempt to outsmart a wolf and they sing " Who's afraid of the big bad wolf" the whole time.
- Why Is It Called Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- Titles of the Acts