SOURCE: Burke, Sally. “Precursor and Protege: Lillian Hellman and Marsha Norman.” In Southern Women Playwrights: New Essays in Literary History and Criticism, edited by Robert L. McDonald and Linda Rohrer Page, pp. 103-23. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 2002.

In the following essay, Burke examines the influence of playwright Lillian Hellman on Norman's body of work.

In October 1974, Israel Horowitz told of a conversation with Samuel Beckett during which Beckett expressed admiration for a line in Horowitz's new play, a line about something having occurred “in the space of a closing window.” Excited, Horowitz began to discuss the scene; then came the flash in which he realized—and said—“Oh, hell, I got it from you.” To which Beckett replied, “That's alright. Mine was a door, and I got it from Dante” (Horowitz “Address”). Apparently such an admission from the younger male artist and such amiability on the...