Ga

bri
ela
Sz Masarykova univerzita
me Filozofická fakulta
ko
vá Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky
20
13

Bakalářská diplomová práce

2013 Gabriela Szmeková

Hřbet
 Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Gabriela Szmeková

Understanding Samuel Beckett’s Act

Without Words I
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D.

2013
 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
 I would like to thank my supervisor, Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.,
for his valuable advice during the whole process of writing the thesis.
I would also like to thank my fiancé and family for their support.
Introduction...................................................................................................................5

1 The Source and Nature of The Theatre of The Absurd.............................................8

2 Understanding Beckett.............................................................................................16

3 Understanding Act Without Words I........................................................................21

4 References in Act Without Words I..........................................................................25

4.1 Koheleth in Act Without Words I......................................................................26

4.2 Jesus in Act Without Words I............................................................................32

4.3 Tantalos in Act Without Words I.......................................................................35

4.4 Heidegger in Act Without Words I....................................................................37

Conclusion..................................................................................................................40

Works Cited................................................................................................................41

Resumé.......................................................................................................................44

4
Introduction

During one lecture of my second year at the Department of English and

American Studies Samuel Beckett’s Act Without Words I was discussed. I have found a

great interest in this play and decided to write my thesis on it. When I started doing

research for writing the thesis I was astonished by how little attention has been given to

this piece in academic literature I could reach. Act Without Words I is by many critics

seen as a piece of minor importance and therefore they do not deal with it in their

works. Interpretation of this mime is viewed as a simple one and thus not worthy of

further study.

The focal aim of this thesis is to present more than one interpretation of Act Without

Words I and oppose critics who in this way underestimate the meaning of this mime.

First chapter presents the nature and influences on the Theatre of the Absurd as

described in The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin. Esslin refers to various

traditions and authors that are seen as sources, predecessors or influences of this

phenomenon and therefore this chapter cites also Antonin Artaud, Stanislaw Ignacy

Witkiewicz, Theodor Adorno and others.

The second chapter is concerned with understanding Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre.

This chapter precedes chapter about reading of Act Without Words I and attempts to

prove that comprehension of Beckett’s works depends strongly on the individual

personality of the spectator. This argument is supported by Jadwiga Uchman in her The

Problem of Time in the Plays of Samuel Beckett. I follow this Uchman’s argument and

use it as a justification for presenting my interpretations of Act Without Words I in the

subsequent charter as possible ones. Beckett’s views on his work are presented in this

chapter and cited from James Knowlson’s Beckett Remembering, Remembering Beckett

5
to oppose the widely spred idea “that Beckett is difficult and, indeed, impenetrable”

(406) as presented by Esslin in his address “Who’s Afraid of Samuel Beckett?” and thus

understanding and interpretation of Beckett’s works belong only to scholars. Opinion of

Theodor Adorno is also included as Adorno is concerned with the meaning which he

presents in his essay “Trying to Understand Endgame” where he states that “not

meaning anything becomes the only meaning” (137).

The third chapter attempts to introduce broader context of comprehension of Act

Without Words I based on Esslin’s “Who’s Afraid of Samuel Beckett?” which is

concerned with the way this mime can be understood, not with the actual interpretation.

Opinions of Gontarski, Hassan, Cohn and others are introduced with the opposition to

Esslin’s.

Various interpretations will be mentioned at the end of the chapter, their argumentation

and sources they are based on will be presented in the following part of the thesis.

The final chapter will introduce a selection of possible interpretations of Act

Without Words I along with their source references.

First two interpretations are based on my own perception of the mime, action of

including my own interpretation is justified with the previous reference to Uchman and

Esslin. Interpretation of figures of Koheleth and Jesus in Act Without Words I and their

similarity to the man in the desert is based on the comparison of Beckett’s text to Bible.

Reference of Tantalos in this mime is based on opinion of Fletcher (113) and Nykrog

(138) and is explained on comparing Beckett’s text with the myth of Tantalos as

described by Rose in A Handbook of Greek Mythology and Parandowski in Mythology.

Last interpretation of the short mime introduced in the chapter is based on Uchman’s

claim which introduces Heidegger’s Dasein and Geworfenheit as a possible

interpretation of the mime. After further study of these two Heidegger’s notions is

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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy I have added a brief description of possible

employment of Heidegger’s notion of Stimmung in Act Without Words I with reference

to Barone’s claim that the name of the mime provides two possibilities of interpretation

– either with a verb or noun.

7
1 The Source and Nature of The Theatre of The Absurd

I’m not interested in the normal,

I’m only interested in the abnormal.

Samuel Beckett

“…the wide acclaim given to plays by Ionesco, Adamov, Pinter, and others,

testify that these plays, which are so often superciliously dismissed as nonsense or

mystification, have something to say and can be understood.ˮ (Esslin The Theatre 21).

By saing this, Martin Esslin vindicates the sense of plays by several dramatists who are

known as the authors in what he called the “Theatre of the Absurdˮ.

The aim of this chapter is to present a solid background for the tradition known

as the Theatre of the Absurd Samuel Beckett was writing in. The Theatre of the Absurd

by Martin Esslin who was the first to term this style of literary expression is presented

here as the major source to describe influences and historical development of the

Theatre of the Absurd. This source is supplemented by other reference works, such as

Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and Its Double or Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewcz’s On

Pure Form and Other Writings, to support or extend Esslin’s points.

Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter,

Vaclav Havel, Slawomir Mrozek, and others are described in Esslin’s book “The

Theatre of the Absurdˮ as authors whose plays “will, when judged by the standards and

criteria of another, be regarded as impertinent and outrageous imposturesˮ (21). In this

book, published in 1961, Esslin coined a term which serves as an umbrella term for

literature of Western Europe between 1940 – 1960. However, dramatists whose plays

belong to the Theatre of the Absurd do not form any school or movement. As Esslin

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says “on the contrary, each of the writers in question is an individual who regards

himself as alone outsider, cut off and isolated in his private worldˮ (The Theatre 22). In

their private worlds and with personal approaches the authors do not represent any mass

opinions of the twentieth century, “The Theatre of the Absurd, however, can be seen as

the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own

time ˮ (The Theatre 22, 23).

Esslin explains the Theatre of the Absurd by comparing it with features of ʻwel-

made playʼ theatre as understood by theatregoers.

If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no

story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged by subrety of

characterization and motivation, these are often without recognizable

characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; if

a goood play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly

exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an

end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the

manners and mannerisms of the age in finely observed sketches, these

seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play

relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of

incoherent babblings (The Theatre 21, 22).

Thus the difference between the traditional twentieth century theatre and the Theatre of

the Absurd is seen in the emphasis on the plot, the characters, theme, form, and

language.

Linear plot in a play carries development, growth, and changes. However, according to

Esslin, in the Theatre of the Absurd stress is put on the author’s “most intimate and

personal intuition of the human situation, his own sense of being, his individual vision

9
of the worldˮ (The Theatre 402, 403). Plot as an order of events and a situation as a

moment, a period of time which does not necessarily contain any sequence or expansion

of events, mark the difference between ʻrealisticʼ theatre and the Theatre of the Absurd.

The situation of the character who is, according to Ionesco, a French dramatist, “cut off

from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions

become senseless, absurd, uselessˮ (qtd. in Esslin The Theatre 23). Thus the character

fulfils the idea of the Theatre of the Absurd when neither instructing the audience nor

spreading morals. The role of the character is to present “the absurdity of the human

condition; it merely presents it in beingˮ (25). And thus, according to Esslin, a play of

the Theatre of the Absurd is “an answer to the questions ʻHow does this individual feel

when confronted with the human situation? What is the basic mood in which he faces

the world? What does it feel like to be he?ʼ ˮ (The Theatre 405).

A character placed in a situation without any explanation, “cut off from his religious,

metaphysical, and transcendental rootsˮ (Ionesco qtd. in Esslin 23) experiences

senselessness, absurdity of his existence. Loosing roots can emerge as the reason for the

character becoming fleeting. This can be seen as a depiction of life under capitalism,

which seeks to remove these “rootsˮ, because, as Adorno puts it in his essay “Trying to

Understand Endgame”: “The individual as a historical category, as the result of the

captalist process of alienation and as a defiant protest against it, has itself become

openly transitoryˮ (126).

“This sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition is (…) the

themeˮ (Esslin The Theatre 24) of the Theatre of the Absurd.

However, the purpose of life and its senselessness is also a subject-matter of the work of

dramatists like Anouilh, Sartre, and Camus who represent the Existential theatre. The

10
distinction between the Theatre of the Absurd and the Existential theatre is in the form

they employ to use their themes.

While Sartre or Camus express the new content in the old convention,

the Theatre of the Absurd goes a step further in trying to achieve a unity

between its basic assumptions and the form in which these are

expressed. In some senses, the theatre of Sartre and Camus is less

adequate as an expression of the philosophy of Sartre and Camus – in

artistic, as distinct from philosophic, terms – than the Theatre of the

Absurd (24).

Authors from the communist countries were facing double-speak of the regime in their

daily lives. So were the western dramatists exposed to the language of media and

advertisement. They all know what it means to ‘read between the linesʼ. And so is the

language of their plays. The purpose of the Theatre of the Absurd is not to provide

information or to tell the stories of the people from the outer world. The language is

adjusted to the need of the message of the Theatre of the Absurd – to present a situation

of an individual human being. As Esslin puts it, “The Theatre of the Absurd … tends

toward a radical devaluation of languageˮ (The Theatre 26) which means that the words

spoken on the stage by the characters contradict with the acting and so the content can

be included not in the words, but in the acts. Antonin Artaud, a French dramatist and art

critic, as cited by Esslin, says “It is not a matter of suppressing speech in the theatre but

of changing its role, and especially of reducing its positionˮ (384).This indicates that the

physical and plastic features of the theatre should become the tools to express what

words as a means of language are incapable of executing. Thus is Theatre of the Absurd

classed as the ʻanti-literaryʼ movement.

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 Charactersitics of the Theatre of the Absurd as mentioned above, or at least

some parts of them are, however, assigned to other literary traditions. As Esslin says:

“Avant-garde movements are hardly ever entirely novel and unprecedented” (327). The

Theatre of the Absurd employs old traditions in more contemporary way and thus

complies with this Esslin’s theory.

The tradition of the character of the Theatre of the Absurd goes back to the ancient

mime called mimus when the “clown appears as stupidus” (330). Middle Ages clowns

and court jesters as the descendants of ancient mimes kept the tradition alive in mystery

plays and farces of medieval literature. Continuing in the Renaissance, Shakespeare’s

plays are full of clowns and comic characters, too. Notable in Shakespeare is also his

“very strong sense of the futility and absurdity of human condition” (333). His vulgar

and spontaneous elements in the theatre continue in the tradition of Italian commedia

dell’arte. Italian authors “meet the same very human demand for fooling” (333) and

“many of the traditional (…) verbal and non-verbal gags of the commedia dell’arte bear

a close resemblance to those of the mimus” (333). Commedia dell’arte influenced

English harlequinades, which kept the tradition until the nineteenth century, and this

later transformed into the tradition of the English music hall and American vaudeville.

The silent film comedy of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others derived from the

vaudeville and music halls and according to Esslin it “will in all probability be regarded

as (…) the only great achievement in popular art” (The Theatre 335) in the twentieth

century. The influence the silent film comedy had on the Theatre of the Absurd is

inscribed to its

dreamlike strangeness of a world seen from outside with the

uncomprehending eyes of one cut off from reality. It has the quality of

nightmare and displays a world in constant, and wholly purposeless,

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 movement. And it repeatedly demonstrates the deep poetic power of

wordless and purposeless action (335).

Tradition in Cenral Europe after commedia dell’arte and Renaissance did not bring

music halls and vaudeville, but comic characters of folk origin that were found in the

seventeenth and eighteenth century. This tradition in Austrian folk-theatre combined

with baroque spectacle play and the Jesuit allegorical drama and thus emerged a genre

of allegorical imagery and clowning which also influenced the Theatre of the Absurd.

Verbal nonsense, a feature which influences tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd as

well, is, as Esslin claims, based on “the satirical and destructive use of cliché” (The

Theatre 348) of which pioneer is Gustave Flaubert “who was greatly preoccupied with

the problem of human stupidity” (348).

Allegorical elements, employed in the Jesuit allegorical drama, are strongly connected

to the literature of dreams and thus to the Theatre of the Absurd. August Strindberg was

the first to “put on the stage a dream world in the spirit of modern psychological

thinking” (352) and his plays served as a direct source for the Theatre of the Absurd. In

the form of a dream play is also written The Nightgown episode from Joyce’s Ulysses

and according to Esslin it is “one of the first early examples of the Theatre of the

Absurd” (The Theatre 353, 354). Another significant author to influence the Theater of

the Absurd was Franz Kafka with his novels and short stories full of nightmares and

obsessions.

This theme of man lost in a labirynth, without a guiding thread, is basic

(…) in Kafka’s work. Yet if man no longer has a guiding thread, it is

because he no longer wants to have one. Hence his feeling of guilt, of

anxiety, of the absurdity of history (Ionesco qtd. in Esslin 355).

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The major Expressionist predecessor of the Theatre of the Absurd is Yvan Goll

according to whom “the stage must not only work with ‘real’ life; it becomes ‘surreal’

when it is aware of the things behind the things. Pure realism was the greatest lapse in

all literature” (qtd. in Esslin 372). Jan Błoński in his essay “Introduction to the

Contemporary Theatre” claims that authors of Expressionism try to escape respected

forms and genres and thus break existing poetics and conventions. Their pursuit of

novelty is expressed by mixing of means and aestethic quality (56). Expressionism is

followed by Surrealism, which has a significant impact on the tradition of the Theatre of

the Absurd. In one of Roger Vitrac’s plays “the basic theme of the Theatre of the

Absurd, the problem of language, is squarely faced” (Esslin The Theatre 381):

The Author. Your words make everything impossible, my friend.

Patrice. Then make a theatre without words (Vitrac qtd. in Esslin 381).

Antonin Artaud, a director and producer, influenced the Theatre of the Absurd by his

theoretical writings. Artaud calls for plays that would not be based on written word, but

for plays that would give priority to physical aspects which are impossible to be

recorded in writing (Artaud 128) when gesture becomes the basic source and material

(125). According to Artaud giving preference to dialogue means to revolt against the

possibilities of stage (90). He questions the Western Theatre (theatre as known in

Europe) and its means where everything apart from the dialogue is eclipsed (58).

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, a figure of avant-garde Europe of the late nineteenth and

the beginning of the twentieth century, develops his own aesthetic philosophy called

"Theory of Pure Form" which in some respects resembles Artaud’s calling for

supremacy of gesture in theatre. According to Witkiewicz the essence of art is its form

(55) and form, not its content, should be perceived by spectators and induce their

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aesthetic satisfaction, and if this is achieved – it is the pure form, which is not a form

without a content but a form where the content constitutes the incidental element (56).

Thus both the Surrealists, Vitrac and Artaud, are concerned with the crucial element of

the Theatre of the Absurd – the language, and its minimalization.

“The Theatre of the Absurd is part of a rich and varied tradition” (Esslin The

Theatre 398). Its novelty lies in the way it is perceived by public. “Above all, it is the

fact that for the first time this approach has met with a wide response from a broadly

based public” (398). As The Theatre of the Absurd is a “part of a new and still

developing stage convention that has not yet been generally understood” (21) its

progress in the upcoming years may be quite different from its origin.

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2 Understanding Beckett
If I could tell you in a sentence I wouldn’t have written a play.

Samuel Beckett

This chapter presents several approaches to understanding Samuel Beckett’s

oeuvre. Fragments of statements made by Beckett himself or by others, his friends or

collaborators, considering reading of Beckett’s works is based on James Knowlson’s

book Beckett Remembering, Remembering Beckett. Approach based on the reader‘s or

theatergoer’s individuality is referred to Jadwiga Uchman’s The Problem of Time in the

Plays of Samuel Beckett and approach presenting profound simplicity of Beckett’s

works is referred to Martin Esslin’s address “Who’s Afraid of Samuel Beckett?”. Fear

of meaning in Beckett’s works is presented with reference to Theodor Adorno’s essay

“Trying to Understand Endgame”.

Lawrence E. Harvey, a close friend of Beckett, who prepared a book on the

playwright, says about him: “He himself makes no claims to universality and senses the

isolation of each individual and the precarious nature of communication” (qtd. in

Knowlson 134). Following this Beckett’s saying it is clear that Beckett himself views

each spectator as an individual and thus is aware of variety of perceptions his plays can

be subjected to. The concern of this chapter is to present how Beckett’s works can be

approached and how they are in fact approached by scholars. The focus is on the

individuality of each reader or theatregoer.

Alan Schneider directed American premiere production of Waiting for Godot,

and when he asked Samuel Beckett who or what was meant by Godot, he received the

answer, “If I knew, I would have said so in the play” (qtd. in Esslin The Theatre 44).

Esslin continues and develops his opinion on efforts made to reveal ʻthe meaningʼ of

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Beckett’s plays: “This is a salutary warning to anyone who approaches Beckett’s plays

with the intention of discovering the key to their understanding, of demonstrating in

exact and definite terms what they mean” (44). Thus he implies that any interpretation

of Beckett’s works does not necessarily have to be the only and right one. Esslin later

explains this on Hamlet, which has been subjected to much scrutiny to reduce its

meaning to a simple explanation, and praises its irreducible ambiguities and

uncertainties so that the play itself becomes its most concise meaning and the clearest

message (The Theatre 44 - 45). Trying to understand Beckett is describe by Adorno in

his essay “Trying to Understand Endgame” as “a chimera”. He used this term when

saying that

The interpretation of Endgame (…) cannot chase the chimera of

expressing its meaning with the help of philosophical meditation.

Understanding it can mean nothing other than understanding its

incomprehensibility, or concretely reconstructing its meaning structure –

that it has none (Adorno 120).

Adorno explains the notion of “meaning” in Beckett on the example of Hamm and

Clov, the characters of Endgame, who are afraid of meaning something.

Hamm. We’re not beginning to … to … mean something?

Clov. Mean something! You and I, mean something! [Brief laugh.] Ah

that’s a good one! (Beckett Endgame 108).

According to Adorno, the dramatic figures feel a mortal fear which is “the distortedly

comical fear that they could mean something or other” (138) and therefore he suggests

that “not meaning anything becomes the only meaning” (137). As mentioned before,

according to Esslin, the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd have “no story or plot to

speak of” (The Theatre 21), and therefore they do not present any linear progress of a

17
narrative. If the lack of plot is taken into account, it can be said that the plays of the

Theatre of the Absurd present, if not a plot, series of various images or statements

which constitute the play and thus should be comprehended as a whole. As Esslin puts

it, “they present their author’s intuition of the human condition by a method that is

essentially polyphonic” (The Theatre 45). Beckett himself said‚“My writing is pre-

logical writing. I don’t ask people to understand it logically, only to accept it” (qtd. in

Knowlson 109). This can be seen as a hint not to base analysis of Beckett’s works on

isolation but on entirety, on its impression as a whole. Ideas which seem mutually

exclusive, life – death, change – changelessness, are in Beckett’s world intrinsically

bound and interconnected and thus they constitute one entity. “That is why any

inquiring about what a given statement, character or object is supposed to denote in

Beckett’s output is meaningless if one expects to arrive at a concrete, unanimously

agreed upon interpretation”, says Uchman in her The Problem of Time (7).

In view of the fact that “people” can “accept” Beckett’s plays in various ways,

various interpretations can arise. In the mind of each spectator different thoughts

concerning a play arise. Each thought is individual in the way that each individual

spectator understands and perceives the play. Uchman supports this saying that

the srength of Beckett’s plays lies not in what they say to the world at

large, but in what they do to each spectator individually. Therefore, the

sometimes contradictory opinions are fully justified as the author

expects each member of the audience to draw his own conclusions, make

his own errors and find his own meaning and truth (The Problem of

Time 8).

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Richard Seaver, who was the first to bring in 1952 then virtually unknown Samuel

Beckett to the attention of English-speaking public, describes a conversation with

Beckett and his reaction to the analysis of his work.

Beckett’s work have been probed, dissected, analyzed, subjected to more

academic scrutiny than perhaps any other contemporary writer,

including Joyce. Often, when we met in later years (…) he bemoaned the

‘ridiculous exegesisʼ, ading, ‘It’s a wonder, all the things they’re finding

I never knew were there myself!ʼ (qtd. in Knowlson 102).

Esslin in one of his addresses, named “Who is Afraid of Samuel Beckett”

delivered in 1989 at the Mid-America Theatre Conference Annual Meeting in Omaha,

puts aloud what he calls “the idea that is so whidespread” (406) namely “that Beckett is

difficult and, indeed, impenetrable” (406). Great number of books is devoted to the

analysis of Samuel Beckett’s work, to search for allusions, symbols, metaphysical or

psychological references in it. Indisputably, much of what the books are devoted to is

present in Beckett’s works. Samuel Beckett was an extremely erudite man. He is an

expert on Dante, Racine, Corneille, and others, is knowledgeable in philosophy,

theology, and other different matters, he speaks fluent French and German, is gifted at

sports and many others. “No wonder then, that when his imagination starts working,

willy – nilly all the knowledge he has acquired, all the reading stored in his mind will

manifest itself in what quite spontaneously issues from his pen” (408). This does not

mean that Beckett’s writing is simplistic or banal. This is to say that that Beckett does

not write with the intention to express a philosophical idea, he writes to express how he

perceives life, what he experiences around – “He feels a deep inner necessity to express

himself ” (404). Esslin later continues his persuasion that Beckett is not difficult by

bringing an example from San Quentin prison in California. Waiting for Godot was

19
performed for inmates of this prison in 1957, and a year later The San Quentin Drama

Workshop began.

The prisoners in San Quentin had, most of them, never been to a drama

class or studied Aristotle’s Poetics, they had no troubles seeing what the

play was about. (…) To these unschooled lowbrows Waiting for Godot

was no problem. It was funny and it was true. What more do you want

(407).

What Esslin wants to state here is that to understand Beckket’s works it is not necesary

to be greatly educated and recognize all the references, quotations or allusions because

“they are not essential for the understanding of what the plays and novels tell us,

however enjoyable rooting them out may be for scholars” (409).

Beckett is known for his unwillingness when asked to illuminate his works by

providing any explanatory comments on the meaning of his novels or plays, or to give

any clues to them. Beckett’s objection of defining what his works are about and

inistence that his plays and novels mean what they say are to be taken into account.

J. MacGowran, a friend of Beckett, says how very annoyed Beckett was with “the

symbol-hunting scholars who seemed to be breathing down his neck all the time” (qtd.

in Uchman The Problem of Time 7).

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3 Understanding Act Without Words I

Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days - significant number of publications

is devoted to these and other Samuel Beckett’s works. However, Act Without Words I, a

short mime for one actor, is somehow neglected for in many publications concerned

with interpretation of Beckett’s works it is not included at all. If included, its study is

often very brief and does not provide much information on the content or possible

allusions or references. The usual reading of Act Without Words I is concerned with its

resemblance to the myth of Greek Tantalos.

The aim of this chapter is to provide broader context for understanding this

mime and to introduce its other possible interpretations. Opinions of several critics are

presented to prove very often simplified interpretation of Act Without Words I. Esslin in

his address “Who’s Afraid of Samuel Beckett?” later extends possible reading of this

mime and thus provides a leeway for various interpretations which will be mentioned at

the end of this chapter.

Act Without Words I is a short mime written in French as Acte sans paroles in

1956 with music by John Beckett, Samuel Beckett’s cousin. First published in 1957 in

Paris in the same volume as Fin de partie, and usually performed as an afterpiece with

Endgame. At about the same time a mime called Act Without Words II was written and

resembles Act Without Words I in terms of language which it was written in, length, and

attention it has attracted.

“The reaction of the critics has been as slender as the mimes themselves, largely,

it seems, because this first one in particular is usually performed as an afterpiece with a

difficult play which deflects the critics’ exegetical powers” (Fletcher 113).

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Act Without Words I is, indeed, a minor piece in length compared to other Beckett’s

plays, Film "Act Without Words I" directed by Karel Reisz for a project "Beckett on

Film" is only 14 minutes long, it “is one of the few slighted works in the Beckett canon”

(Gontarski).

Some literary critics have denounced this mime as banal. Ruby Cohn dismisses the

work as “almost too explicit” (qtd. in Gontarski), according to Ihab Hassan Act Without

Words I is “a little too obvious and pat” (Hassan 192), and Fletcher states that “ the text

is largely self-explanatory” (113). Harsh critique comes from John Spurling who

compares the mime to Waiting for Godot and says “Act without words I is . . . over-

explicit, over-emphasized and even, unless redeemed by its performer, so

unparticularized as to verge on the banal” (qtd. in Gontarski), and the circle of scholars

who concur Act Without Words I to be a self-explanatory play closes Stanley Gontarski

who claims “Admittedly, the mime is obvious in many respects”.

Martin Esslin views Act Without Words I in a different perspective. He admits

that this mime is “a very simple, unintellectual, lowbrow playlet” (“Who is afraid of S.

B.” 405), however Esslin concentrates on the way it can be interpreted.

So, if we go on interpreting that very simple (…) playlet, perhaps what it

tells us is that the wisest thing is to recognize that state of affairs and to

give up the pursuit of illusory objectives, and renounce ambition and the

vain pursuit of sensual gratifications. When there are no objectives being

pursued, there can be no disappointments (405).

By “disappointment” Esslin means a moment, when a spectator fails to recognize

allusions or philosophical references included in the play. Esslin also admits that this

mime

22
 does perhaps have profound religious, philosophical, mystical meanings.

But these are thoughts that arise in the mind of each individual spectator,

thoughts that are probably different for each such spectator. And if there

are spectators in whose minds no such thoughts arise, they’ll just have

had an amusing time in the theatre and a few good laughs, and they will

be none the worse for it (405).

Esslin as if presents two aspects both of the same significance but as well entirely

different. Literature critics try to root and identify philosophical or other metaphysical

references whereas common theatre goers who are not educated in literature along with

the convicts from San Quentin whom Esslin calls “unschooled lowbrows” (407) can

understand the play without any hidden references and may interprete it as Esslin

suggests: “We all wait for a lot of things to turn up in our lives, and they don’t. Simple,

isn’t it. And how true!” (407).

None of these two interpretations of this mime is thus correct or wrong as it can be

looked at from different perspectives. And such an approach, Esslin says, “is true of the

entire oeuvre of a great writer like Beckett” (405).

“The play’s directness is almost a source of embarrassment for critics and has

prompted some forced interpretation” (Gontarski). Stating this, Gontarski, again

highlights the fact that Act Without Words I, in his opinion, is a banal play. As “forced

interpretations” he considers opinions that see the play as an “obvious, unparticularized

mime about illusion or mirage” (Gontarski) and thus he denies Esslin’s and Cohn’s

interpretations.

According to Gontarski, “Beckett has created here one of his most compact and

concrete images of the birth of existential man, of the existential artist, with all the

ironies implicit in the coincidence of birth and death”.

23
Uchman, following Cohn’s example, also views Act Without Words I but in Uchman’s

case also Act Without Words II as plays which “can be treated as metaphoric statements

about human life – their beginning standing for the birth of a human being and the

middle for man’s life; their end, however, does not bring a solution, a death” (59 The

Problem of Time). Uchman concludes this from the ground of the setting of both the

mimes which is identical, namely a very bright light on the stage. In Act Without

Words  I there is a “dazzling light” (Beckett Act Without Words I 203), and in the second

mime the platform on stage which actors perform on is presented as “violently lit in its

entire length, the rest of the stage being in darkness” (Beckett Act Without Words II

209) and upon this evidence Uchman builds her interpretation as she views the bright

light “as an indication that the appearance of the characters on the stage is a symbolic

representation or image if birth” (59 The Problem of Time).

Fletcher writes: “This piece is a variant on the Greek myth of Tantalus, who was

punished for his sin” (113) and Nykrog goes further adding another Greek figure and

states that Act Without Words I is “the old familiar myths about Tantalos and Sisyphos

combined” (138).

The protagonist of Act Without Words I is also suggested to be similair to Adam, Jacob

or Everyman (Gontarski) or, according to Jan Kott in his book about Shakespeare, to

Hiob (121).

Certain similarity can be seen also to Jesus when tempted in the wilderness, or in the

desert, depending on the translation, and  Koheleth from the Book of Ecclesiastes who

has examined and described sense of life.

24
4 References in Act Without Words I

Act Without Words I has been interpreted by several critics in several ways. Aim

of this chapter is to provide a selection of references which can be seen in this mime

supported by texts which can be seen as the sources of the references.

Two biblical figures, Koheleth and Jesus, will be presented as a reference to Act

Without Words I because as Beckett says: “The Bible was an important influence on my

work, yes. I’ve always felt it’s a wonderful transcript, inaccurate but wonderful” (qtd. in

Knowlson 17).

Tantalos, a figure from Greek mythology, is recognized in this mime by Fletcher (113)

and Nykrog (138) and the evidence for this will be based on Rose’s A Handbook of

Greek Mythology and Parandowski’s Mythology.

A reference in Act Without Words I seen, according to Uchman in her The Problem of

Time in the Plays of Samuel Beckett, as “metaphoric statements about human life” (59)

will be briefly introduced concerning Heidegger’s Dasein and Geworfenheit.

25
4.1 Koheleth in Act Without Words I

Koheleth, author of the Book of Ecclesiastes which belongs to the canon of the

Old Testament, describes his investigations about the sense of human life and the best

way of living a life. Koheleth reveals the disappointment that inevitably results from

seeking happiness and contentment in worldly things and thus proclaims all actions of

human basically meaningless saying “ ʻMeaningless! Meaningless!ʼ says the

Teacher. ʻEverything is meaningless!ʼ ” (The Holy Bible: New International Version,

Ecc 12.8) unless they are done in the fear of God

Now all has been heard;

here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

for this is the duty of all mankind (Ecc 12.13).

Koheleth advises to focus on an eternal God instead of temporary pleasure because

everything in a man’s life and the life itself is transistory and unstable and as Koheleth

writes “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever” (Ecc 1.4).

The man in Act Without Words I and his acts in the dessert can be seen as deeds

of a man who the Book of Ecclesiastes is primarily aimed to: a man is born and in the

course of his life encounters various things and desires various things. During his life

the man works to gain the things he desires but he is not successful, what he desires is

beyond his reach. However things he yearns for may be use for good, they can be

misused for bad purposes. The man sometimes has to be shattered to learn that what he

was striving for actually is not necessary for his life.

The Teacher was a king over Israel in Jerusalem (Ecc 1.12) who explored many

of earthly pleasures as stated:

26
 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I

made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit

trees.  I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing

trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in

my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than

any who had been before me in Jerusalem.  I also gathered for myself

silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers,

both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of

man (Ecc 2.4 - 8).

Being thus experienced, trying to find meaning in temporary things which did not have

any meaning at all, leads him to express this piece of advice to accept the faith in God

as the only way of finding personal meaning.

The man in Act Without Words I, from the perspective of the Book of

Ecclesiastes, also longs for temporary and wordly things. It is not known what he was

before the moment he finds himself in the desert. With Beckettian characters it is as

Lawrence Held says: “(…) when the characters (if they could be called characters) left

the stage, they left the stage. They went nowhere but backstage. They ceased to exist.

Later they came back on and began to exist again” (qtd. in Knowlson 207).

Thus it becomes irrelevant to reflect upon what might have been before the man appears

in the desert, it is the time he spends there that is substantial.

Not knowing the man’s past but only his present, the focus is on his actions.The things

he is pursuing and trying to have are shadow, cubes, and water, the most essential of

them all.

The first thing the man possesses is the shadow of the tree. He is in the desert

and thus seeking a shelter.

27
 A little tree descends from flies, lands. It has a single bough some three

yards from ground and at its summit a meagre tuft of palms casting at its

foot a circle of shadow. (…) He turns, sees tree, reflects, goes to it, sits

down in its shadow, looks at his hands (Beckett Act Without Words I

203).

He does not, however go to the tree as soon as he sees it but he reflects first. This can be

viewed as if the man is considering whether he needs it or not. From this perspective the

man sees the tree as necesary as he decides to go to it. Koheleth, too, had trees which is

evident in Ecc 2.5 “I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in

them”. Apart from the Man, who finds a shelter in the shadow of the tree, Koheleth

finds the gardens he has created "meaningless" as stated in Ecc 2.11 “Yet when I

surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was

meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun”.

The next thing the man gets is a pair of scissors. “A pair of tailor’s scissors

descends from flies, comes to rest before tree, a yard from ground. (…) He look sup,

sees scissors, takes them and starts to trim his nails” (Beckett Act Without Words I 203).

The aim of the scissors at this level can be seen as absurd because the man, who is still

in the desert, uses them as a file. Later “the palms close like a parasol, the shadow

disappears. He drops scissors, reflects” (203). So far the man has all he wants that

appears in front of him in the desert but once one of the things is gone, he abandons also

the second item – without the shadow of the tree he realizes that to trim his nails is a

foolishness.

When both the things he desired are gone, the most important and desirable

object comes.

28
 A tiny carafe, to which is attached a huge label inscribed WATER,

descends from flies, comes to rest some free yards from ground. (…) He

looks up, sees carafe, reflects, gets up, goes and stands under it, tries in

vain to reach it, renounces, turns aside, reflects (204).

The man sees water, a needful thing in desert. The carafe is, however, beyond his reach.

To make the carafe accessible “a big cube descends from flies” (204). The man uses the

cube as a medium to reach his goal – the carafe. “He gets up on it, tries in vain to reach

carafe” (204) – this help does not draw him closer to his goal. Another two smaller

cubes descend from flies and the man tries to use them to get the water – in vain. He is

desperate which is seen in his attempt to take the bigger cube and place it on the smaller

one (204) - his eagerness influences his judgement.

Interesting thing is the reason why the man is trying to reach the carafe. Being in

the desert he may see it as his rescue but to survive in the desert one needs more than “a

tiny carafe, to which is attached a huge label inscribed WATER” (304). Thus his trying

can be seen as merciless prolonging of his agony. The pointlessness in his attempts to

reach the carafe which, from the perspective of The Book of Ecclesiastes, is useless can

be presented on what Koheleth says: “I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing

trees” (Ecc 2.6), “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no

pleasure” (2.10), “Everyone’s toil is for their mouth, yet their appetite is never satisfied”

(Ecc 6.7). The man’s striving for water can be seen, from Kohelet’s perspective, as

something pointless. Striving for anything without God being present is presented as

unhappy by Koheleth saying: “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and

find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God,  for without

him, who can eat or find enjoyment?” (Ecc 2.24 - 25).

29
 Having failed to reach the carafe with water by using the cubes, “a rope

descends from flies (…) with knots to facilitace ascent” (Beckett Act Without Words I

204). The man tries to use the opportunity given to reach his goal and is even “about to

reach carafe when rope is let out and deposits him back on ground” (205). He is not

discouraged by this fiasco either and takes the scissors and cuts the rope. “With length

of rope in his possession he makes a lasso with which he tries to lasso the carafe” (205)

and after this attempt “the carafe is pulled up quickly and disappears in flies” (205). The

object of the man’s desire has vanished, which is a stroke for him, and he decides to use

the cubes and the lasso to hang himself on the tree. “The bough folds down against

trunk. He straightens up with lasso in his hand, turns and sees what has happened”

(205). The man is thus not allowed to achieve another of his goals – a sucide. Koheleth

views suicide as a wicked act the man has no right to do - “As no one has power over

the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death. As no one is

discharged in time of war, so wickedness will not release those who practice it” (Ecc

8.8).

Later the man tries to leave the space but is not allowed to because he is

“immediately flung back on stage” (Beckett Act Without Words I 205). The cubes, tree,

rope and scissors are the left objects in the desert and since the tree is not suitable for

suicide anymore, the man decides to kill himself with the scissors.

He looks at his hands, looks around for scissors, sees them, goes and

picks them up, starts to trim his nails, stops, reflects, runs his finger

along blade of scissors, goes and lays them on small cube, turns aside,

opens his collar, frees his neck and fingers it (205 - 206).

Later when he looks back to take the scissors he sees they have disappeared along with

the cube and lasso which were on the cube as well. The impossibility of taking his life

30
even for the secod time evokes the notion of the right time for death: “Do not be

overwicked, and do not be a fool - why die before your time?” (Ecc7.17).

Later he sits down on the big cube but even this one is pulled away from him

and he falls. As he remains lying, the carafe with water appears again. “He does not

move. The carafe descends further, dangles and plays about his face. He does not move.

The carafe is pulled up and disappears in flies” (Beckett Act Without Words I 206). The

man does not attempt to reach the carafe anymore, he recognizes he does not need it.

The bough of the tree returns to horizontal and the shadow appears again but “he does

not move” (206). In the end the tree, the last object of his desire for shelter and later for

death, disappears. As Koheleth says: “ So I hated life, because the work that is done

under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind (Ecc

2.17)” and “All their days their work is grief and pain” (Ecc 2.23).

31
4.2 Jesus in Act Without Words I

Uchman in her book The Problem of Time in the Plays of Samuel Beckett says

that “Beckett’s "heroes", even though always lonely, are hardly ever alone” (4). The

man who is flung into desert is the only character played by an actor in Act Without

Words I. Solitude of the character of this one-mime play is constantly disturbed by a

whistle. Per Nykrog in his essay “In the Ruins of the Past: Reading Beckett

Intertextually” views the man in Act Without Words I as somebody “who is shown

trying to communicate with an almighty off-stage manipulator. And this almighty stage

manager is not to be trusted (…). The "universe" represented in Act Without Words (…)

is dominated by (…) an "evil spirit"” (139).

The whistle, which is identified here as the evil, draws man’s attention to various

objects that descend from flies and thus encourages the man to use them. The man

obeys the sound of the whistle and uses the shadow of a tree, pair of scissors, cubes and

rope. All these objects have been provided to give the man a delusion of taking

possession of a carafe with water. The man, however, does not succed in seizing the

carafe. If the whistle did not draw man’s attention to the objects and later to the water,

he may not have noticed them at all and thus not being disapponted for not being

successful in reaching them. The whistle takes advantage of the manʼs situation – he is

in the desert on his own, probably hungry and thirsty because of the “dazzling light”

(Beckett Act Without Words I 203). The whistle thus provides him with a lie and in the

end the man refuses to obey it any longer and instead of following its hints when he

hears “Whistle from above. He does not move” (206). As soon as the man abandond the

whistle’s guidance the rest of the objects, which were placed in the dessert to tempt the

man and later to lead him to suicide, are taken away. The last act of the mime is when

32
the man “looks at his hands” (206). Looking at his hands can be interpreted as a

preparation for prayer and hence the interpretation viewing some allusions to Jesus

tempted in the desert is to be described.

Depending on the translation, “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the

wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (New International Reader’s Version Mark 1.12)

or “the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness forty

days,being tempted by Satan” (The Holy Bible: New International Version Mark 1.12 -

13), a similarity of environment can be seen between the preseted situation of Jesus and

the situation of man from Act Without Words I.

Another similarity can be deduced from their physical condition. Jesus spent forty days

in the desert and “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The

tempter came to him (…)” (NIV Matt. 4.2 - 3). The tempter, in this case the devil,

comes to Jesus when he is physically deprived and the same takes place with the man in

Beckett’s mime because the whistle starts to draw his attention to several objects when

he is thirsty and thus also physically deprived. However, the method Jesus and the man

from Act Without Words I use to deal with their tempter differs. The man from the short

mime obeys the whistle even if it leads him to disappointment. He gives up his

subordination only when he has tried everything that could provide him with demanded

water and nothing seemed to be efficient. His approach is thus rather passive in contrast

to Jesus, who is active in his struggle with Satan by replying to his questions and so the

evil is refused resolutely. Satan tries to tempt Jesus attacking his hunger, a sensitive

spot, but Jesus puts him to silence by stating: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread

alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ ” (Matt. 4.4). The outcome

of bot his, however, identical again: the man in Act Without Words I does not respond to

the whistle and the last object the whistle has drawn attention to disappears and the

33
whistle itself becomes silent, and Jesus makes his tempter go away by actively saying:

“Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him

only’ ” (Matt. 4.10).

34
4.3 Tantalos in Act Without Words I

Between Tantalos and the character from Act Without Words I exists a “rather

obvious allegory: Tantalos punished, the offence uncertain” (Gontarski).

“Tantalos was feeling happy” (Parandowski 146). To commence a description of a

person’s life story (in Tantalos’ case of a fictional person) by describing his mood as

“happy” and to finish this story with uncompromising condemnation in Tartaros

emphasizes the difference between the beginning and the end of the story. To make the

difference more evident and provocative, Tartaros is described by Rose in his

Handbook of Greek Mythology as “the place of punishment of the wicked” (80) and is

situated “opposed to Elysion or the Islands of the Blessed” (80).

Tantalos was a man who enjoyed friendship with the Olympians and was often invited

by them to their table. In Mythology Parandowski states that in the beginning “he

behaved bashfully” (146) but later gained self-confidence and began to steel their

nectar. Tantalos’ sin, the reason why he was brought down to Tartaros was a murder.

Tantalos killed his son Pelops and since then is his family accursed. Gontarski uses the

term “the patriarch of the troubled house of Atreus” (Gontarski) but in the manner as

Rose puts it the notion of hereditary sin becomes more obvious as “family had been

acursed ever since the days of their ancestor Tantalos” (247).

However clear the reason for Tantalos’s punishment in Tartaros may appear, the truth is

that his sin is variously reported and thus not known exactly1.

If to compare Act Without Words I with the Greek myth about Tantalos, what they share

is the uncertain or unknown offence commited by the characters (with the assumption

that the Beckettian character commited a sin).

1
For further reference of Tantalos‘ sin see Rose, p. 70.

35
The way they are punished is extraordinarily similar.

Tantalos (…) is everlastingly hungry and thirsty. He stands in a pool of

water which plashes against his chin, but always vanishes when he tries

to drink it; overhead hang all manner of fruit-trees, which are always

tossed out of his reach by a wind when he tries to gather their fruit (Rose

81).

The man in Act Without Words I is provided with means to satisfy his thirst in the

desert, however, the water is beyond his reach. There is also a tree which can provide

him with a shelter against the “dazzling light” (Beckett Act Without Words I 203) but

“the palms close like a parasol, the shadow disappears” (203). How long their

punishment lasts is unknown. According to Rose Tantalos is “everlastingly hungry and

thirsty” (81), as to the man from Act Without Words I it is not clear. According to what

Esslin says about the works of the Theatre of the Absurd, that they “often have neither a

beginning nor an end” (The Theatre 22) and thus the duration of the man’s suffering is

unknown.

36
4.4 Heidegger in Act Without Words I

Jadwiga Uchman in her book The Problem of Time in the Plays of Samuel

Beckett views Beckett’s theatre as “an extraordinary and paradoxical Dasein” (3).

Dasein is a German word meaning "being here" (da – here, sein – to be) which can be

translated as being or existence. Dasein constitutes a fundamental concept in philosophy

of Martin Heidegger. Michael Wheeler in his encyclopaedia entry on Martin Heidegger

explains that as Dasein one ineluctably finds himself in a world that matters to him in

some way or another (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The word “matter”

can be considered a key word in Beckett’s attitude towards people for if his theatre is an

example of Dasein, the world that matters to Beckett and which he finds himself in is

the world of distress. Uchman writes that “Beckett is preoccupied with life as constant

suffering and distress” (The Problem of Time 5) and that people are in the centre of his

attention is not evident only from the fact that during his life Beckett was a generous

philantropist but also from an outrage caused by saying that Beckett was indifferent to

people. The situation is described by Lawrence Held, a former actor with the San

Quentin Drama Workshop, when being discussing Waiting for Godot with Beckett and

Rick Cluchey in a parisian hotel,

Sam begins recounting a story told to him by a friend. The punchline of

the story relates to an American academic saying of Beckett, ʻHe doesn’t

give a fuck about people. He’s an artist.ʼ At this point Beckett raise his

voice above the clatter of afternoon tea and shouted. ʻBut I do give a

fuck about people! I do give a fuck!ʼ ” (qtd. in Knowlson 206).

Existence, being in the world or Dasein of the man in Act Without Words I is in a

form of what Heidegger calls Geworfenheit. This phenomenon is translated as

37
thrownness and is explained as “a having-been-thrown into the world” (Wheeler). This

is deduced on the basis of the man being “flung backwards on stage” (Beckett Act

Without Words I 203). This thrownness onto the stage can be viewed as a resemblance

with being born as nobody is asked whether he or she wants to be delivered into the

world. This would support Uchman’s theory of interpreting Act Without Words I as the

metaphoric statement about human life – the beginning standing for the birth, the

middle for man’s life, and the end should logically stand for death, however, the end

does not bring a solution to this question (The Problem of Time 59). The man being

flung on the stage seen as the birth evokes certain extent of cruelty and power as the

external power or doer pushing the man onto the stage is evidently stronger. The part

standing to represent human’s life is full of disappointment, repetition leading to

another failures and thus describes the man’s distress – the notion Beckett is

preoccupied with (5).

Another Heideggerian term which can be applied in the interpretation of Act

Without Words I is Stimmung, or mood. According to Heidegger, a man is always in

some mood. If the man is depressed, the world opens up to him as a gloomy and sombre

place. The man is able to shift himself out of this mood, but only to enter a different one

that will open the world to him in a different way (Wheeler). Stimmung of the man in

the mime can be seen as a depression for he has treid to commit a suicide. Thus he

views the world as a hostile and unsuitable place to live as he finds himself in the desert

without any supplies of food or a shelter which would help him to survive in the world.

He experiences constant failures in his attempts to gain something which would help

him to survive and thus his vision of the world is not an optimistic one. Shift of

Stimmung is inconceivable for him as there is nothing to shift into. Dasein faces every

concrete situation in which it finds itself, or into which it has been thrown, as a range of

38
possibilities for acting (Wheeler). The man indeed tries to cope with his situation in the

desert, however, every possibility for acting is thwarted by his inability to be stronger

than the external power and therefore he gives up. Rosangela Barone in her essay “On

the Route of a Walking Shadow: Samuel Beckett’s Come and Go” claims that Act

Without Words I, along with some other Beckett’s plays, is capable of being interpreted

either as a verb or as a noun (262) adn thus the man’s acting in silence without uttering

a word can be seen as facing the range of possibilities for acting which has been

provided for him in the desert.

39
Conclusion
The intention of the thesis is to prove that various critics underestimate the

significance of Samuel Beckett’s Act Without Words I by claiming it is a banal piece of

minor importance, largely self-explanatory and thus referring to further worthlessness of

interpretation of this play.

Chapter one attempts to provide a solid background for the tradition Samuel

Beckett was writing in – the Theatre of the Absurd. Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the

Absurd is used to present historical development and influences on the Theater of the

Absurd.

Second chapter is concerned with different perspectives Beckett’s oeuvre can be

approached from. This chapter attempts to prove that comprehension of Samuel

Beckett’s works depends on the individuality of the spectator and thus indicates that

critics underestimating this mime by claiming its obvious interpretations are wrong.

Third chapter is devoted to introduction of broader context of comprehension of

Act Without Words I as such. To support the argument that this mime can be viewed

from different perspectives and thus is not self-explanatory or banal, instances of

possible references which can be applied in the interpretation of the mime are

introduced.

The final chapter is divided into four subchapters which are devoted to four

selected references seen in Act Without Words I. Each of the references is briefly

discussed to prove the focal aim of the thesis – to provide various interpretations of this

Beckett’s mime which has been somehow neglected by critics who declared this mime

to be pat or self-explanatory.

40
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Artaud, Antonin. Teatr i jego sobotwór [The Theatre and Its Double]. Trans. Jan

Błoński. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1966. Print.

Barone, Rosangela. "On the Route of a Walking Shadow : Samuel Beckett’s Come and

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Resumé
The thesis attempts to prove that despite brief criticism and small attention given

to Samuel Beckett’s mime Act Without Words I this play should not be perceived with a

single interpretation and viewed as a banal piece. The first chapter presents nature of the

Theatre of the Absurd, a tradition Samuel Beckett belonged to. Secondly, attention is

paid to approaches in which Beckett’s work can be comprehended. Furthermore, the

thesis presents evidence in support of the argument by providing different perspectives

this mime can be analyzed from. The final part is concerned with analysis of the mime

with references to the different perspectives which it can be interpreted from and

literature which constitutes the source for these perspectives.

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Resumé
Cílem této bakalářské práce je prokázat, že navzdory stručné kritice a malé

pozornosti, která je věnována pantomimě Samuela Becketta Act Without Words I, by

tato hra neměla být chápána pouze za pomocí jedné interpretace a neměla by být

vykreslována jako banální. První kapitola vykresluje povahu absurdního divadla,

tradice, jejíž součástí je i Samuel Beckett. Dále je pozornost věnována přístupům, které

mohou být aplikovány při porozumění Beckettovy tvorby. Dále bakalářská práce

předkládá důkazy, které podporují hlavní postulát tím, že nabízí různé úhly pohledu, ze

kterých může být pantomima analyzována. Závěrečná část je věnována samotné analýze

pantomimy s odkazy na různé perspektivy, ze kterých hra může bát interpretována,

a literaturu, která slouží jako zdroj k odůvodnění různých úhlů pohledů interpretace.

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