Unnameable (1953; 1958)?have been hailed as masterpieces and precursors of postmodern fiction; but he is best-known for his plays, especially Waiting for Godot (1952; 1954) and Endgame (1957; 1958). He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.
Not much happens in a Beckett play; there is little plot, little incident, and little characterization. Characters engage in dialogue or dialectical monologues that go nowhere. There is no progression, no development, no resolution. Rambling exchanges and repetitive actions enact the lack of a fixed center, of meaning, of purpose, in the lives depicted. Yet the characters persist in their habitual, almost ritualistic, activities; they go on talking, even if only to themselves. In spite of a reiterated theme of nonexistence, the characters go on existing?if minimally: a stream of discourse, of thought and will, a consciousness questioning its own meaning and purpose. In Waiting for Godot the main characters wait for an arrival that is constantly deferred. They inhabit a bleak landscape seemingly confined to one road, one tree; they talk of moving on, yet never leave. Subsequent plays restrict the acting space to a room, to urns, to a mound in which the actor is buried; characters are physically confined or disabled, until Not I (1973) presents the most minimal embodiment of human consciousness available to theatrical representation: a disembodied mouth.
Beckett focuses his work on fundamental questions of existence and nonexistence, the mind and the body, the self as known from within and as seen from the outside or in retrospect. Joyce's artistic integrity and stream- of-consciousness technique influenced him, but the minimalism of Beckett's plays and fiction contrast with the maximalism of Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. 'I realised that Joyce had gone as far
.
239 4 / SAMUEL BECKETT
as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one's material,' he told the biographer James Knowlson. 'I realised my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than adding.'
At the heart of Endgame is the vexed relationship between Hamm, the master, and Clov, his servant and nurse. These irritable, resentful, spiteful characters talk of leaving, dying, or otherwise ending, but they continue repetitively in their peevish ways. They live inside a room with two high windows that afford ambiguous views of an exterior world, where everything may or may not be dead. The play's only other characters are Hamm's parents, Nell and Nagg, but they live in two garbage cans and appear from the shoulders up; their relationship is hardly robust. Like other Beckett plays, this one juxtaposes vaudeville, slapstick, and other comic traditions with the intellectual and the grotesque. While denying the audience the comfortable security of a recognizable world, Endgame provides laughs, sometimes at the audience's expense. It shares its tragicomic quality with absurdist drama, which disrupts the conventions of realist drama, draws attention to its own fictionality, and refuses to provide hierarchies of significance. Reduced to bare essentials, the maimed, struggling, incomplete characters of Endgame?though often behaving as if they were the bumbling protagonists of a farce?raise unsettling questions about meaning and absurdity, power and dependency, time and repetition, language and the void.
Endgame1
For Roger Blin2
THE CHARACTERS
NAGG
NELL
HAMM
CLOV
Bare interior. Grey light. Left and right hack, high up, two small windows, curtains drawn. Front right, a door. Hanging near door, its face to wall, a picture. Front left, touching each other, covered with an old sheet, two ashhins. Centre, in an armchair on castors, covered with an old sheet, HAMM. Motionless by the door, his eyes fixed on HAMM, CLOV. Very red face. Brief tableau.
[CLOV goes and stands under window left. Stiff , staggering walk. He looks up at window left. He turns and looks at window right. He goes and stands under window right. He looks up at window right. He turns and looks at window left. He goes out, comes back immediately with a small step-ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes six steps (for example) towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes three steps towards window left, goes back for ladder,
1. Translated by the author. premieres of Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and 2. Frenchman (1907?1984), who directed the other Beckett plays.
.
ENDGAME / 2395
carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down, takes one step towards window right, goes hack for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down, goes with ladder towards ashhins, halts, turns, carries hack ladder and sets it down under window right, goes to ashhins, removes sheet covering them, folds it over his arm. He raises one lid, stoops and looks into hin. Brief laugh. He closes lid. Same with other bin. He goes to HAMM, removes sheet covering him, folds it over his arm. In a dressing- gown, a stiff toque3 on his head, a large blood-stained handkerchief over his face, a whistle hanging from his neck, a rug over his knees, thick socks on his feet, HAMM seems to be asleep, CLOV looks him over. Brief laugh. He goes to door, halts, turns towards auditorium.]
CLOV [Fixed gaze, tonelessly.] Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. [Pause.] Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. [Pause.] I can't be punished any more. [Pause.] I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. [Pause.] Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me. [He remains a moment motionless, then goes out. He comes back immediately, goes to window right, takes up the ladder and carries it out. Pause, HAMM stirs. He yawns under the handkerchief. He removes the handkerchief from his face. Very red face. Black glasses.]
HAMM Me?[H e yawns.]?to play.4 [He holds the handkerchief spread out before him.] Old Stancher!5 [He takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes, his face, the glasses, puts them on again, folds the handkerchief and puts it back neatly in the breast-pocket of his dressing-gown. He clears his throat, joins the tips of his fingers.] Can there be misery?[H e yawns.]?loftier than mine? N o doubt. Formerly. But now? [Pause.] M y father? [Pause.] M y mother? [Pause.] My . . . dog? [Pause.] O h I a m willing to believe they suffer as muc h as such creatures can suffer. But does that mean their sufferings equal mine? N o doubt. [Pause.] No, all is a?[Heyawns.] ?bsolute,
