Early in the twentieth century, American theater critics and drama scholars wondered where the native modern dramatists were--the American equals to Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov--and why the United States had failed to produce a theater tradition as literary and artistic as those of Great Britain, France, and Scandinavia. By the end of the century the first question, at least, could be answered: Eugene O'Neill was the first great American dramatist, followed by Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee. Subsequently, scholars have made the case that Albee, having sustained a career in the American theater for more than six decades, has joined Williams as a serious challenger to O'Neill's status as the great American playwright. Comprising more than twenty-five plays, his body of work is as extensive as Williams's, as varied in subject and form as O'Neill's, as experimental as Wilder's, and as...