In the following essay, the author analyzes Albee's A Delicate Balance not in terms of personal relationships, as it is usually discussed, but in terms of its politics, which, he writes, makes the focus of the play "a moral and intellectual one."

W. H. Auden in The Dyer's Hand lists six functions of a critic, the fourth being: "Give a 'reading' of a work which increases my understanding of it." In giving a new reading of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, I hope to increase the reader's understanding of this play by making him more aware of its ambiguities and by pointing out to him new associations within it. Although no one reading of A Delicate Balance, however careful, can reveal or distil or explain its full meaning simply because no work of art can ever finally be fully understood, a new reading does provide a new...