Wit A Play
Wit A Play by Margaret Edson, published by Macmillan in 1999, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that explores profound themes surrounding mortality and the significance of human relationships. This first edition spans 85 pages and presents a nuanced examination of what makes life meaningful through the lens of its central character, Vivian Bearing, a professor of English diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. The play invites readers to reflect on the complexities of life and death, emphasizing the importance of kindness and compassion amidst the challenges of illness.
In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions about the nature of existence, the value of interpersonal connections, and the role of language in our lives. As Vivian navigates her illness with a rational and methodical approach, she ultimately confronts the deeper truths about living and dying. The play’s clarity and elegance make it accessible to a wide audience, while its exploration of themes related to biography, drama, and the human experience resonates with readers interested in the intersection of art and life.
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Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer Award.
Adapted to an Emmy Award-winning television movie, directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson.
Margaret Edson’s powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence’s unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships. What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.”
In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end?
The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson’s writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader.
As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
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