The text in American Buffalo has the feel of overheard street talk—it would be easy to assume that David Mamet simply pulled phrases from his Chicago wanderings and threw them onto a page, replicating crude city phrases and cadences. But the reality is the opposite: Mamet labors over his plays with an exacting hand. Turns out he can structure shit with the best of ’em.

For an example, here is one of the coarser lines
in American Buffalo: 

“From the mouth of a Southern bulldyke
asshole ingrate of a vicious nowhere
c— can this trash come.”

This bears a striking resemblance to another effusive and vicious oath: 

“Thou…art nothing but the composition
of a knave, beggar, coward, pander,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.”

Recognize the line? It belongs to Kent, from Shakespeare’s King Lear.

So what makes it possible to relate Mamet’s text to Shakespeare’s? Mamet employs a wide variety of literary tools in order to heighten the rhythms of his text, to make the mundane and profane poetic. Many of Mamet’s sentences are metered, such as “It makes no earthly difference in the world.” This particular line is in iambic pentameter, which means there are five iambs in the sentence (iamb: an un-stressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). With the stressed syllables highlighted, it looks like this: It MAKES no EARTH-ly DIFF-erence IN the WORLD. Someone else is famous for iambic pentameter—Shakespeare.

Another of Mamet’s tools is repetition. For instance, Teach’s first line in American Buffalo is “Fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie.” It too mirrors a line from Lear. While cradling the dead body of his daughter, Cordelia, Lear exclaims “Never, Never, Never, Never, Never.” It is one of the most heartbreaking lines of the play, deepening Lear’s sorrow and emphasizing the finality of death. Despite the disparity of circumstances, this shared technique of repetition intensifies the impact of both lines. Adding to this impact is the fact that both lines are trochaic rather than iambic. Because the trochaic meter inverts the standard rhythm of the text, stressing the first syllable instead of the second (FUCK-in RUTH-ie), the effect is disruptive, even jarring. This rhythmic shift calls attention to the lines and correlates with the heightened emotional moment and loss of control. As he does throughout the play, Mamet gives poetic structure and weight to the seemingly prosaic. This helps elevate the everyday to the level of high art, suggesting the junk shop owner’s story can be as tragic as the ancient king’s.

To demonstrate Mamet’s rigor further, let’s look
at the text that follows one of the examples above: 

“It makes no earthly difference in the world. You know how much nutritive benefits they got in coffee? Zero. Not one thing. The stuff eats you up. You can’t live on coffee, Bobby. (And I’ve told you this before.) You cannot live on cigarettes. You may feel good, you may feel fine, but something’s getting overworked, and you are going to pay for it.”

As I mentioned before, the first sentence is in iambic pentameter. The words “nutritive benefits” each start with a stressed syllable, followed by two un-stressed syllables, (NUT-ri-tive BEN-e-fits), called a double dactyl. There are also two iambic tetrameters (a metrical line containing four iambs): “But SOME-thing’s GET-ting OV-er WORKED,” and “you MAY feel GOOD, you MAY feel FINE.” Mamet indicates that this second phrase should be spoken iambically by italicizing “good” and “fine” in the script. There is a particular kind of repetition here, structuring the sounds further: 

“You can’t live on coffee… You cannot live on cigarettes. You may feel good, you may feel fine.”

This repetition of words at the beginning of a sentence or phrase is a rhetorical gesture called anaphora.

These assorted literary devices demonstrate the playwright’s extensive use of the tools in his toolbox. Among other things, David Mamet is like a carpenter: he constructs a complex system of language to create a sturdy, accomplished structure. Or, to use another simile, he’s like a musician, combining and repeating different rhythms to create his own percussive music. As you listen, see if you can hear his beats. @#!