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Chapter 3

Plays

Waiting for Godot 29

Endgame 43
Radio plays: All That Fall and Embers 51
Krapp's Last Tape 58
Happy Days 65

Waiting for Godot

The scene, and the action (or lack of it), are unmistakable: a bare country
road with a mound and a tree, two elderly tramps wait for their appointment
with a man called Godot, who never comes. This spare, nondescript setting
for Beckett's first performed play has become one of the iconic images not
just of modern drama but of the twentieth century itself. The meaning of the
play is less certain. One of the first questions that spectators of the play often
ask is who (or what) is Godot? Perhaps he represents 'God'? The boy who
appears at the end of each act claims that Godot has a long white beard, like
some pictorial representations of God in the West (or like a child's image of
God) and that he keeps sheep and goats. (According to the Gospel, God will
separate the righteous from the damned by putting the 'sheep' on his right
side, 'goats' on his left (Matthew 25: 32-3).) After all, Godot gives Estragon
and Vladimir a sense of direction and purpose in their lives (however
misplaced), in a manner analogous to religious belief. Could the play, then,
be an allegory for a post-theistic existence? Written in the shadow of the
Second World War, God/Godot seems to have deserted a world mutilated by
barbarism, mass destruction and genocide. His absence has left a hole which
unavailing desire and expectation vainly try to fill.
But caution is required here. Beckett's work always resists singular explan
ation. Beckett's answer to the question 'Who is Godot?' was always, 'If I
knew, I would have said so in the play.' When the eminent actor Ralph
Richardson, a prospective Vladimir in the first London production, inquired
of Beckett if

29
 The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plays 31
30

Godot was God, Beckett responded that had he meant God he would have
1 fulfilment, the terrible destructiveness of time, the inevitability of death from
said God and not Godot. Godot's name resembles, but at the same time is
the very moment of birth ('the grave-digger puts on the forceps' (90-1)).
more than, 'God'. Given that the play is replete with biblical allusion and
At least three features of the play, however, redeem this bleak and pessim
deals with fundamental issues of time, desire, habit, suffering and so on, it is
istic view oflife. First, there is a fellow-feeling and kindness between
not too extravagant to recognise a religious element to the play, and to the
Estragon and Vladimir. Second, the play is extremely funny, with that
figure of Godot, while still drawing back from a complete identification.
distinctly Beckettian comedy - dark, daring, intelligent and disturbing - that
There might be a lesson here as to how we might read the play as a whote.
has the same roots as tragedy, rather than simply providing comic relief from
Waiting for Godot is full of suggestion, but it is not reducible to exact
it. As Nell remarks in Beckett's next play, Endgame, 'nothing is funnier than
allegorical correspondence. Beckett described it as 'striving all the time to
unhappiness' (20). Third, the writing and theatrical structure are meticu lously
avoid definition'.2 The play will not be pinned down or located, a dear
poised and often beautifully crafted. It is frequently the case in Beckett's
meaning will not arrive for us, just as Godot does not arrive for Vladimir
work that the form, which is always so scrupulous, precise and painstaking,
and Estragon. They can be confused and uncertain about where they are,
has a symmetry and a serenity which brushes against the seem ingly chaotic
where they were and where they will be, and the audience, by extension, can
and miserable life conditions that are being described. Waiting for Godot
feel bewildered by the elusive themes of a play which, while orbiting around
does not have the quasi-musical shapes and patterns of Beckett's later
philosophical and religious issues, tends to keep them at a distance, to keep
us in a state of interpretative suspension.
minimalist 'dramaticules'. But the dialogue and the action here have a
precision and a spare beauty that, one could argue, counters the ostensibly
To tie Waiting for Godot too closely to the religious metaphor might be
pessimistic subject matter. Without these finely honed techniques, Beckett
to restrain its suggestive power. There are philosophical and psychological as
could not have taken drama into the unexplored territory of boredom and
well as theological dimensions to Godot's non-arrival. He can be seen to
stasis, while still maintaining theatrical energy. This is a play after which
stand in for all striving, all hope, the tendency for us to live our lives geared
world drama would never be the same again. Many commentators would
towards some prospective attainment. Most human beings live in a constant
now hold it up as the most important play of the twentieth century.
state of yearning (low- or high-level) and fix onto some hope or desire for the
Deservedly or not, it is the single work for which Beckett is most well known
future: the holiday just round the comer, the right job, the well-earned
and the work that transformed him, at forty-seven years of age, from
retirement. Once that hope is achieved or desire fulfilled, it moves on to
a relatively obscure experimental novelist into a figure of global cultural
some other object. As.Beckett puts it in Proust,
importance.
We are disappointed at the nullity of what we are pleased to call The question of what or who Godot might be is only one of the perplex
attainment. But what is attainment? The identification of the subject ities in a play replete with meanings withheld and explanations denied. It is
with the object of his desire? The subject has died - and perhaps many a play which can still confound students and theatre-goers, just as it did
times - on the way. (P 13-14) many of the initial audiences, who often responded with bewilderment and
According to the pessimistic philosophy advanced in Beckett's early essay hostility. Why do the men seem incapable of leaving this spot? What separ
(heavily influenced, as it is, by the nineteenth-century German philosopher ates the two acts? Why are there leaves on the tree in the second act but not
Arthur Schopenhauer), the self is fragmented and distended through time the first? Why does Lucky allow himself to be so abused by Pozzo? What are
and is better understood as a series of selves. Once one ambition or urge is we to make of the allusions to the crucifixion and to the Garden of Eden?
fulfilled, desire shifts promiscuously on to another prospective attainment. It might be worth bearing in mind that the audience's lack of certainty is also
lfltimately it cannot be fulfilled: 'whatever the object, our thirst for posses shared by the two leads:
sion is, by definition, insatiable' (17). Life then becomes about a vain, future ESTRAGON: We came here yesterday.
orientated expectation of a Godot who does not arrive. We fill our days with VLADIMIR: Ah no, there you're mistaken.
routines and habits in expectation of this arrival, rarely stopping to confront ESTIV,GON: What did we do yesterday?
the desperate situation in which we live - the scarcity and provisionality of VLADIMIR: What did we do yesterday?
 32 The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plays 33

l,STRAGON: Yes.
VLADIMIR: Why . . . (Angrily) Nothing is certain when you're and, since neither is available in Beckett's plays, there is little action on his
about. (14) stage. Estragon's famous description of the play in which he appears - 'Noth
ing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!' (41)- is wryly summed
The desperate unreliability of memory is reinforced in Act II, as Estragon and
up by the critic Vivian Mercier's pithy quip that this is a play in which,
Vladimir once again falteringly try to figure out whether they were there the
'nothing happens, twice', probably the most commonly quoted critical remark
day before or not. Estragon, who is less certain and less interested in the past
than Vladimir, can't recognise his boots in the middle of the stage. Vladimir about Waiting for Godot.3
is discomfited by the leaves that have appeared on the tree. It is partly as an But on the other hand is 'waiting' itself not a sort of action? To be sure the
notion of action is here extended into an area previously deemed ineffective
antidote to this bewilderment that they embrace the one guiding principle of
in the theatre. Inertia, punctuated with inconsequential dialogue, sustains a
which they can be sure: 'What are we doing here, that is the question. And we
large part of the play. But, against Mercier, it is clearly not the case that
are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense
confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting fur Godot to come-' (80). nothing happens here. Even apart from the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky,
From the audience's point of view, one effect of the lack of definition, the which brings a welcome injection of energy into both acts, a range of
withholding of a dear meaning, is to shift the attention on to the dramatic movement and activity takes place: playing with boots, exchanging hats,
qualities of the play rather than the significance of its message, its function trousers falling down, characters running on and off. Moreover, the
rather than its meaning. It is clearly an innovatory and experimental play, conversation and phys ical exchanges between the two leads constitutes a sort
removed from the conventions of naturalist drama. The notion of plot is of dramatic activity. Surely interaction cannot be so wholly severed from
fairly routed here. A dear relationship between cause and effect, the sequence action? Yes, there is much that is trivial and uneventful - mocking the
of exposition, complication and resolution, is thwarted, as we would expect gestures towards religious and philosophical profundity - but there is action
ina play which makes withheld knowledge not only its theme but also its in this play. Not just action, but a lot of rather vivid farce occurs on
method. That the second act is so suggestive of a repetition of the first stage, pratfalls and antics that we might associate with the music hall or
(together with intimations that both 'days' might be part of an endless cycle) vaudeville (one of the acknowledged popular influences on which the play
complicates the relationship of cause and effect, or the progression from draws).
beginning to middle to end, that audiences weaned on the well-made-play Realist drama hides its fictive, theatrical nature in its efforts to reproduce
the appearance of the 'real' world. But Waiting for Godot is theatre which
would expect. And the tightly knitted plot, where all the strands of the play
continually declares its own theatrical artifice. The idea of play and of
are tied neatly into an intricate and satisfying pattern, is far more ragged here,
play acting operates within it on a number of levels. First, we have many
with jokes and stories left unfinished, information continually withheld and
self conscious performances, the idea that the dialogue between Vladimir
events occurring with no seeming cause or connection. By whom and why
and Estragon is a kind of a 'game': 'Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't
does Estragon get beaten every night? When did the two men make their
you, once in a way?' (12). The performative quality is especially evident in Act
appointment to see Godot? Or is this just a figment of their unreliable
II, when, to pass the time as usual, the pair 'play' at being Pozzo and Lucky. This
memory? Why does Godot beat one of the boys but not his brother? Why
metatheatrical element - the play's awareness of itself as a play- refuses
was one of the thieves saved, but not the other? Why does Godot not come?
the suspension of disbelief central to realism on the stage. If Vladimir and
We too will wait in vain for definitive answers to these questions.
Estragon can pretend to be Pozzo and Lucky, then how can we be sure
In order to make theatre of this condition, Beckett must rewrite the rule
that Pozzo and Lucky are not just doing the same thing? Given that this is
book, strive for a new grammar of the stage, more anti-dramatic than dra
a play, we know of course that they are doing so - actors are playing all five
matic, which will resist exposition, climax and denouement and incarnate
parts and will do so again and again until the end of the run. There are
boredom, inaction and opacity. In order to understand his method, one
several suggestions that the two acts are part of an ongoing cycle, and
could point at the very first line of the play, 'Nothing to be done' (9).
not just
Action presupposes a reasonably autonomous self and a world ofintelligible
because of the many similarities between both days on which the acts sup
causality,
posedly take place. At the end of Act I, Vladimir remarks that the appearance
of Pozzo and Lucky has changed, as if he and Estragon have met them before.
At the end of Act II, he anticipates that they will be returning to the same
34 The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plars 35

spot tomorrow. So, in a sense, the repetition in the play, the suggestion that VLADIMIR: The music-hall.
the activities are part of an ongoing cycle, reproduces the repetition of the ESTRAGON: The circus. (34-5)
play, the fact that the play is put on night after night. This exchange is a comment on the sort of play-acting that the two vagrants
Most people's lives involve a cycle or a routine of some sort, whether this is get up to in order to pass the time while waiting for Godot. But at the same
as prosaic as the working day or the rituals of getting up, eating and going to bed. time as it passes judgement on these exchanges, it also forms a part of them -
Most of us develop habits or recurring patterns of behaviour that we follow it is just such a music hall exchange itself. Furthermore it humorously
rather unreflectively until some crisis or unusual event in life breaks through operates as a parody of the sort of snobbish conversation that might take
them. 'Habit', Vladimir declares, 'is a great deadener' (91). So the idea of place in the bar of the theatre during the interva.l. This brings the perform
repetition resonates with a certain aspect of day-to-day life at its most remorse ance on stage, with all its inherent pretence, into alignment with the pretence
lessly mundane. However, at the same time it obviously reflects what actually and affectations of the world off-stage. So, again, the stage here is not
happens in a play: actors turning up night after night to deliver lines that they passively seeking to reproduce 'real life' in the manner of naturalist drama.
have delivered before and will deliver again. In this way Waiting for Godot Rather it is demonstrating how the pretences and repetitions of drama are
brings themselves reflections of life. So Waiting for Godot is a play that does
its own status as a piece of theatre into thematic alignment with a pessimistic
something more radical than simply bringing reality into a performance -
view of life as repetition and habit. If conventional realist drama strives to I it is showing the performative, theatrical and repetitive aspects of what we
mirror life, then this play, by contrast, shows how much life mirrors drama. .
!- There are other metatheatrical techniques in the play subtly integrated into 't Often these metatheatrical aspects to the play take on the quality of
r

I
the action and texture of the language. So we do not have characters parody, especially when aimed at the jaded theatrical traditions that are being
marching on stage from the auditorium (as we do, say, in Beckett's Eleutheria, overturned. So, for instance, Pozzo's attempt at an elegy for the setting sun
the Pirandellesque play he wrote just before Waiting for Godot, unpublished seems like a send-up of portentously lyrical or poetic language:
during his lifetime and as yet unperformed), but we do have lots of activity
within the play which self-reflexively borrows theatrical language. So, for I It is pale and luminous like any sky at this hour of the day, (Pause.) In
instance, Vladimir runs off-stage in answer to one of the urgent calls of his l these latitudes. (Pause.) When the weather is fine. (Lyrical) An hour
ago (he looks at his watch, prosaic) roughly (LyricaQ having poured
defective bladder and the two actors playfully pretend to be fellow spectators
fourth ever since (he hesitates, prosaic) say ten o'clock in the morning
of a performance:
(LyricaQ tirelessly torrents of red and white light it begins to lose its
effulgence, to grow pale (gestures of the two hands lapsing by stages)
i. pale, ever a little paler, a little paler until (dramatic pause, ample gesture
End of the corridor, on the left of the two hands flung wide apart) ppptffi finished! it comes to rest.

I
ESTRAGON:
VLADIMIR: Keep my seat. (37-8)
(Exit Vladimir) (35) The intertwining of the pretentiously lyrical and the mundanely prosaic, here
reinforced by the shifting stage directions, comically deflates this elegy. As
Throughout the play the characters make remarks, usually pejorative, about
Pozzo will bitterly come to realise when he himself is devastated by the
ravages of time, loss and degeneration cannot be sweetened by pat lyrical
t
i, eloquence.
I
the way their exchanges are going: 'This is becoming really insignificant,'
I

i
Vladimir disdainfully points out at one point (68). We also have more overt
self-reflexive exchanges such as the following:
VLADIMIR: Channing evening we're having.
Unforgettable.
I There is a sense in which any language which strives to be over-expressive,
ESTRACON:
VLADIMIR: And it's not over.
f whether in the lyricism of Pozzo or the philosophising of Lucky, is derided.
£STIUGON: Apparently not. Lucky's 'think' is a parody of academic rhetoric and the blunt instrument of

I
VLADIMIR: It's only beginning. theological and philosophical inquiry:
ESTRAGON: It's awful.
VLADIMIR: Worse than the pantomime Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and
ESTRAGON: The circus. Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard
 36 The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plays 37

quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of

divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia . . . (42-3) [... ]
VLAIJIMIIC They make a noise like feathers.
Showy soliloquy and bluntly abstract philosophical ideas are ungainly EST RAGON; Like leaves.
expres sive mechanisms for Beckett. The key Beckettian principle, which will VI.ADIMJR: Like ashes.
lead to the ever greater diminution and 'purification' of his work as he gets ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
older, is that expressive language is not to be trusted, that shape and silence (Long silence.)
are where artistic impact lies. Even as early as 1937, long before his post-war VLADIMIR: Say something!
revelation, Beckett has registered his dissatisfaction with language, his desire ESTRAGON: rm trying.
to find expressiveness in the spaces in between words. In a famous letter to (Long silence.)
Axel Kaun, he speaks of his quest to tear holes in language: 'more and more VLADIMIR: (In anguish.) Say anything at all!
my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to EST What do we do now?
get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it' (D 172). Not surprisingly,
RAGON: Wait for Godot.
VLAIJIMIR: Ah!
then, the most expressive moments in his plays often occur in the pauses and
ESTRAGON: (Silence.) (62-3)
silences,
indicating, at turns, repression, fear, anticipation or horrified inarticulacy. The economic rhythms of this passage and the careful combinations of
This pressing reality of the silence in Waiting for Godot is, as Beckett put repetition and variation combine with a soothing susurration to eke out a
it, 'pouring into this play like water into a sinking ship'.4 Much of what compelling dissonance between the language and the characters' guilty tor
Beckett has to say in his drama lies in what is omitted, when his characters ment. Vladimir and Estragon are too close: they listen to the dead voices
cannot muster the words or the play-acting to forestall the encroaching while we listen to the poetry. Hence Vladimir's desperate 'Say something!'
silence, or the 'dead voices' that haunt Vladimir and Estragon when they stop after the long silence at the end of the exchange. The passage does not
speaking: express
ESTRAGON:
In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are their torment directly, but rather catches those dead voices elliptically, in the
incapable of keeping silent. excruciating pauses.
VLADIMIR:
You're right, we're inexhaustible. Here as elsewhere the exchanges have an eerie, pre-ordained quality,
ESTKAGON:
It's so we won't think. reinforcing the point about the performative, repetitive, self-consciously
VLADIMIR:
We have that excuse. theatrical dimension to the play. It is as if when Vladimir says something
ESTRAGON:
It's so we won't hear. Estragon's reply has already been decided (which of course it has, since both
VLADJM!R: We have our reasons. speak from a memorised play script). Their exchanges are often constituted
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices. of one- or two-word utterances, carefully shaped into repetition and vari ation,
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.
ESTRAGON;
giving them a poetic, estranging quality that unsettles the colloquial banality.
Like leaves.
Nonetheless, performance in a theatre renders the unsaid as present as the
VLADIMIR: Like sand.
ESTRAGON:
Like leaves. said, and, for all their spare beauty, these carefully pruned exchanges are
(Silence.) scarcely enough to block out an encroaching and terrifying silence. This is
VLADIMIR:
They all speak together. why, presumably, Estragon and Vladimir are so desperate to keep the conver
ESTRAGON:
Each one to itself. sation alive, to block out the sound of the dead voices. Or perhaps to keep
(Silence.) back the realisation that the silence brings: their conversations, like the
VLADIMIR:
Rather they whisper. waiting games they play, are a futile distraction from the destructiveness of
ESTll.AGON:
They rustle. time and the insatiability of desire. They are merely a 'habit' which protects
VLADIMIR:
They murmur. them from the stricken awareness of their own abjection and solitude:
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
(Silence.) VLADIMIR: All I know is that the hours are long, under these condi
tions, and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings
38 The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plays 39

which - how shall I say - which may at first sight seem

reasonable, until they become a habit. (80) but even from Vladimir and Estragon the impulse to exploit emerges on
occasion. When Pozzo reappears in Act II, Vladimir is intrigued to see his
'Habit', once again, is a 'great deadener'. It deadens the suffering that too incapacity: 'You mean we have him at our mercy?' (78). The master-slave
much awareness, too much reflection on the conditions of existence would opposition between Pozzo and Lucky, the material exploitation of the latter
bring. The daily routines, the various distractions of conversation and play by the former, is so elaborate that one is tempted to see it as a parody of the
acting, are forms of self-protection. sort of social domination of which political radicals and reformers might
There are clear differences between the two tramps. Estragon is preoccu complain. So exaggerated is Pozzo's maltreatment of Lucky, so
pied with physicality, the body, the earth. Not insignificantly, he tends to sit hyperbolically and gratuitously brutal, that the niceties, formality and scrupul
down far more than Vladimir. He is obsessed with his boots, whereas usness of his conversation with the two tramps seems comically anomalous.
Vladimir often inspects his hat. Vladimir thinks, Estragon feels. At rehearsal, For all the refinement he shows to them - and in contrast to the utter
Beckett remarked of the pair: 'Estragon is on the ground; he belongs to the inhumanity he shows to the hapless slave - he is aware of the difference in
stone. Vladimir is light; he is oriented towards the sky.'5 It is Vladimir who his own social rank and that of the two tramps: 'Yes, gentlemen, I cannot go
wonders about the two thieves crucified alongside 'Our Saviour', he who for long without the society of my likes (he puts on his glasses and looks
reflects on the nature of time at the end of the play. He who always answers at the two likes) even when the likeness is an imperfect one' (21). The two
Estragon's question about the purpose of their attendance at this spot: vagrants also recognise social superiority when they see it. Pozzo is
addressed as 'Sir', while Lucky only merits the less deferential 'Mister'. Such
locutions as 'Oh I say!' or
ESTRAGON: Let's go. 'My good man' identify Pozzo as well-to-do English or, possibly, Anglo-Irish.
VLADIMIR: We can't. Another facet of the power dynamic worthy of note here is that Lucky, while
ESTRACON: Why not? clearly standing in as an oppressed servant or slave, may also be the artist and
VLADIMIR: We're waiting for Godot.
intellectual figure. In the relationship of Pozzo and Lucky can be discerned a
ESTRAGON: Ah! (78)
shadow of class relations between the land-owners or the wealthy and those
It is Vladimir who addresses the young boy at the end of each act, who that provide them with intellectual and aesthetic diversions: 'But for him
experiences the philosophical insights. Many spectators record the impression all my thoughts, all my feelings, would have been of common things
that the two tramps feel like an old married couple, who bicker and quarrel (Pause. With extraordinary vehemence.) Professional worries!
- 'but for me ... where would you be ... ?'; Tm tired telling you that' -and (Calmer) Beauty, grace, truth of the first water, I knew they were all beyond
even threaten to leave each other. But underneath their irritations and me. So I took a knook:6 (33)
impatience there is a close bond, and a recognition of their shared plight. Pozzo remarks at one point that he could have been in Lucky's shoes, and
'We don't manage too badly, eh Didi, between the two of us?' (69). Vladimir is vice versa, 'lf chance had not willed otherwise' (31). It is a telling use of this
generally the protective one in the relationship. It was he who, they cliche. How can chance 'will' something? Of its nature, chance is will-less,
recollect, saved Estragon from drowning in the Rhone many years before, and inanimate, outside the operations of even a blind determinism. If
and he who, in one of the tenderest moments in the play, wraps his coat something happens by accident or chance, then an act of will has nothing
over the shoulders of the sleeping Estragon before walking up and down to do with it. But Waiting for Godot is a play which, from the beginning, seeks
swinging his arms to keep warm. There are few enough consolations in a to probe the 'why' of suffering. Or, perhaps more accurately, seeks to
play about the futility of hope and desire, but these small moments of dramatise the condition of not knowing the answer to this question. It
kindness, frail and unavailing though they may be, reveal shards of fellow- begins, after all, by asking why one of the thieves was saved but not the
feeling and human decency that are at some level redemptive. other. On what basis was the selection made? At the end of Act I, we discover
But if the play recognises moments of kindness brought on by adversity, it that Godot beats one of the boys but not his brother, but for what reason?
also highlights the brutality and domination that so often characterises The boy does not know. The refrain within Lucky's speech, a parody of
human relations. Most obviously this occurs in Pozzo's treatment of Lucky, academic or philosophical attempts to understand the source of human
suffering, is that human beings suffer 'for reasons unknown'. Here is
another echo of
40 The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plays 41

the non-arrival of Godot. Vladimir does not receive an answer to his initial
There is little uncertainty about the tone of Proust which, as the disdain for
questions about the crucifixion. The mystery remains unsolved.
the merely 'local' above attests, assumes a universal validity for its pessimistic
It is not enough simply to declare that Beckett's characters are 'innocent'
pronouncements. 'Life' itself, marred as it is by destructive time and insati
sufferers. The problem is rather that their crime, the source of their guilt, is
able desire, is about boredom, habit and suffering. Blaming the debased
elusive. Punishment and damnation are dished out for seemingly
condition of humanity on any political or social arrangements would be
inscrutable reasons. In Western culture the ultimate source of guilt, the
equivalent, to borrow a phrase of Vladimir's, to blaming on the boots the
primal transgres sion, is Original Sin. This is the stain with which,. in the
faults of the feet. From the earliest critical reception of Waiting for Godot,
Judeo-Christian tradition, each person is born. Waiting for Godot, as we have
seen, playfully alludes to this Edenic source but simultaneously deflates it. many commentators claimed that it had something fundamental to say about
Early in the play, the pair consider what it is they should repent: what it means to be human. In other words, the play does not imply have
to do with particular people at a particular moment in history - it says
VLADIMIR: Suppose we repented. something about the 'human condition' as a whole, outside history or
ESTRAGON: Repented what? politics, or any particular social situation.
VLADIMIR: Oh . . . (He reflects.) We wouldn't have to go into
The seeming withdrawal of Waiting for Godot from a world of specifics
the details.
gives succour to this ahistorical view. The play is so bare and shorn of
ESTRAGoN: Our being born?
recognisable geographical reference that one might be tempted to read this
(Vladimir breaks into hearty laugh which he immediately
stifles, his hand pressed to his pubis, his face contorted.) (11) as a sort of an archetypal space that can stand in for everywhere or anytime.
The sparseness of the setting and the simplicity of the narrative suggest the
Years before, in Proust, Beckett has made another allusion to the sin of birth play might be dealing with elemental truths. Admittedly there are a few scant
as part of a definition of tragedy: references to particular places - to the Eiffel Tower, or to the River Rhone -
which betray the original French in which the play was written. Lucky's
Tragedy is not concerned with human justice. Tragedy is the statement
of an expiation, but not the miserable expiation of a codified breach of reference to the 'skull in CoMemara' gestures towards Beckett's Irish roots
local arrangement, organized by the knaves for the fools. The tragic (though this is 'Nonnandie' in the original French version). Similarly Estra
figure represents the expiation of the original sin, of the original and gon asks Pozzo for ten francs. But at the same time there is a careful
eternal sin ... of having been born. (67) rootlessness in the staging and presentation. [f Estragon's name has a French
quality {it means tarragon), Vladimir's sounds more Russian. Pozzo's name
This excerpt is fulJ of philosophical confidence to the point of pomposity: sounds like a down's and Lucky's like a household pet. In terms of their
true tragedy is original and eternal and not at all concerned with 'local' issues dialect, the two tramps speak English with an Irish cadence. So the national
such as justice or history. This disdain for politically motivated art in cues come from the various different parts of Europe with which Beckett was
Beckett's early critical work would seem to strengthen the hand of those familiar. It leaves a plurality of sourcing that encourages the notion that this
commentators who read Waiting for Godot as about a universal human is everyplace. V1adimir ponders on Pozzo's call for assistance· when he is
condition. However, there are important differences between the notion of prostrate in Act II: 'To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help
birth as sin in Proust and its recurrence in Waiting for Godot. In the later still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind
instance the assertion that original sin ought to be 'expiated' (how the
is us, whether we like it or not' (79). A little later, Estragon remarks of
expiation is effected is not explained in Proust, though the implication is Pozzo, 'He's all humanity' (83), just after the latter has answered to both the
that it has something to do with the catharsis of tragedy) has become a joke. names Abel and Cain. We might remember that in the first act, Estragon has
The grandiosity of the aspiration is immediately undercut first by Vladimir's
claimed his name is 'Adam', and of course one of the echoes of the lone tree
guffaw and then by his attempt, prompted by his painful urinary complaint,
on-stage is to the Garden of Eden. This association with the mythic origin of
to stifle it. Once again the 'big idea', that might give us an interpretative.hook
humankind allows the play to resonate, once more, with the elemental, the
on the play, is punctured as soon as uttered.
original and ultimately the universal. The answer, then, as to the
representative status of the characters on stage is given by Estragon:
42 Tlie Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett Plays 43

v1.ADIMIR: We have kept our appointment, and that's an end to that.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How been continually used as interpretative hooks. He felt, significantly, that 'the
many people can boast as much? early success of Waiting for Godot was based on a fundamental misunder
ESTRAGON: Billions. (80) standing, critics and public alike insisted on interpreting in allegorical or
symbolic terms a play which was striving all the time to avoid definition'.9
Lines like this are further encouragement to read the play as a sort of an
Waiting for Godot is all about this avoidance of definition. Like Vladimir
:lllegory of the human condition.
and Estragon, the audience and critics of the play are attendant on a meeting
The key word in my plays', Beckett told Tom Driver, 'is "perhaps". '7 It is
that is continually deferred.
paradoxical that a play with such an investment in the withholding of
certainty, in the processes of confusion and bewilderment, would make such
grandiose claims as to how things are. But, as ever, if this universal reading is
Endgame
suggested, it is like the idea of Godot as God, only one of many interpretative
possibilities, all of which contribute to the overall aesthetic effect. The Edenic
Endgame is set in a world even more unfamiliar than that of Waiting for
allusion is often so flagrant here that it teeters into irony, undoing through
Godot. All outside, if we are to believe the testimony of Clov and his
comic exaggeration any symbolic meaning it might hold. Moreover, how can .
telescope, is grey, deserted and lifeless. The characters have memories of a
we trust Estragon? His assertion that 'billions' keep their appointment is
world similar to our own, but the one they live in is depleted and belated.
rl·

contradicted by his ignorance in almost all other facets. He cannot even

remember what happened the previous day, so why should we take uncritic- ! Their memories are more attuned than the characters in Waiting for Godot,
ally his assertions of catholicity? He is Less reflective and intellectual than l so their awareness of current dereliction is all the more of a torment.
Physical debility is clearly a motif in the earlier play but in this world of the
Vladimir and is mostly motivated by his next carrot or chicken bone.
ampu tated, the paralytic and the blind, the sense of decrepitude and
[ Vladimir thinks about the Bible, whereas Gogo simply admires the illustra- '
tions of the Holy Land. Jt is telling that the references to Eden come from the I entrapment is far more oppressive. Outside, all is 'corpsed'. This desolate
landscape resem bles a post-apocalyptic scene, prompting some
unreflective Gogo, rather than the cerebral and contemplative Vladimir. f
From this source, the allusions to the mythic origins of humanity are no I commentators to speculate on whether some of the anxieties of the Cold War,
sooner uttered than ridiculed. I with the threat of nuclear extinction, can be felt in this play. The reason for
why the world is at this point of expiration, why all outside is grey and flat
The play is not translatable to a series of philosophical formulae nor, I"
and lifeless, is not given. Nor is the behaviour of the characters explained.
simply, to a pessimistic view of the human condition. Just as Beckett was
Why does C\ov do Hamm's bidding when he resents it so much? Why are
uncomfortable with the label of 'Theatre of the Absurd', he disowned the idea
Hamm's parents, the legless Nagg and Nell, confined to ashbins? What is the
that he had a systematically negative view of life, or any sort of synoptic .
relationship of Hamm's chronicle to the play? Does it, as many have
overview from which judgement could be made:
suggested, relate to the arrival of Clov in the house? At a production in the
If pessimism is a judgement to the effect that ill outweighs good, Riverside Studio in Hammersmith in 1980, directed by Beckett, Rick
then I can't be truced with same, having no desire or competence to Cluchey, playing Hamm at the time, asked Beckett directly if the little boy in
judge. the story is actually the young C\ov. 'Don't know if it's the story of the young
I happen simply to have come across more of the one than the other.s Clov or not,' was Beckett's characteristic response. 'Simply don't know.'10
Spectators on the look-out for a meaning in the play will encounter the
There is too much uncertainty in his work, too much doubt and bewilder
following metatheatrical snub: 'HAMM: We're not beginning to ... to ... mean
ment, for clear interpretations to provide pat certainty. This is a play in which
something? CLOv: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief
Godot does not arrive. Beckett renounced the abstract philosophical pro
nouncements of his younger self and, as we see from Lucky's 'think', came to laugh.) Ah that's a good one!' (27). If everything is corning to an end, if all
regard academic philosophy and theology with scepticism. One suspects that is run down and exhausted, this does not just apply to painkillers and
bicycles but to the less tangible qualities of meaning and clarity. The stage
Beckett was frustrated that the passages on time and habit in the play have
directions tell us that there is a picture facing the wall in the room where the