Book cover (Methuen)

The Goat, or, Who is Sylvia? is a play by Edward Albee, written in 2000 and premiering on Broadway in 2002 to a very mixed reception, although it received that year's Tony Award for Best Play. It opened in London in 2004, where it was a smashing success. A four-person play about an architect whose life crumbles when he falls in love with a goat, the focus is on where the limits of an ostensibly liberal society are and how incommunicable such inclinations are. It has been argued (and Albee himself has confirmed this) that the play is less about zoophilia, as of course it seems to be, but rather about homosexuality, which is too acceptable in today's liberal society - the one depicted in the play - to display and dissect reactions against outsider positions as Albee, once again pushing the limits of its audience, wants to do.

The play also features many language games and grammatical arguments in the middle of catastrophes and existential dispute between the characters.

The name is a reference to the song "Who is Silvia" from Shakespeare's play The Two Gentlemen of Verona which Proteus sings hoping to woo Silvia. Franz Schubert's setting of the song contributed to its popularity outside of Shakespeare's play.