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By way of introduction, I shall state the commonplace that Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf took audiences at the Billy Rose Theatre by storm on October 12, 1962, and then shocked the nation in general four years later when it was produced by Warner Brothers. Yet, some thirty years later, it appears that there is a line of inquiry in this area that remains to be fully developed, and it has mainly to do with what has happened to the play in between. What, in other words, are the forms of dramatic license that Hollywood's Warner Brothers has seen fit to exercise upon this play, and what is the change in its significance by virtue of this transition?
The tentative answers I bring to these questions and the ensuing investigation are threefold: first, the selection of the infamously intriguing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for the lead roles has implications for the cultural reception of this play that greatly alter its "original" way of meaning; second, various alterations in the screenplay itself-particularly in the area of textual omissions-have the effect of denying sympathy and understanding for the character of Martha; and third, the film's inability to remain in the play's setting-"the living room of a house on the campus of a small New England college"-attests to the repressive power of Martha's sphere even while refusing to inhabit it. I shall attempt to discuss these issues separately and in order, but of course, they are inevitably intertwined, as will become evident.
To deal with the casting of Taylor and Burton-particularly of Taylor-first is to address a certain cultural editing that the play can be said to have undergone; for Martha is both like and unlike one-time pop-idol Elizabeth Taylor. In suggesting this, however, I do not mean to echo the complaint that the actress is merely "playing herself," which biographer Brenda Maddox suggests has "dogged Taylor's career" (77). On the contrary, it seems as if Martha's character and Taylor's public image are mutually enriching in some ways, even while being mutually limiting in certain other ways, as I shall demonstrate.
By 1966, in fact, Taylor herself had something of a sexual curiosity, having thumbed her nose at her native bourgeois culture with a sixteen-year...