International Journal of Innovative Language, Literature & Art Studies 6(1):10-16, Jan-Mar.

2018

© SEAHI PUBLICATIONS, 2018 www.seahipaj.org ISSN: 2354-2926

A Survey to the Chronological Trend of Modern Drama from

Ibsen to Beckett
Mohammad Motiee
Ph.D. in English Literature
English Department,
Shahinshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Email: moh.motiee@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
There is a no careful history of playwriting in the world. In this regard, we may only rely on the theories of
different people. However, the first emergence of drama can almost be attributed to the discovery of
civilizations in the world. In this paper, we will try to be brief to the literary schools involved in creating
and promoting the play since Aristotle, when the playwriting takes a systematic and scientific form. Then
we pursue some authors’ approach of writing in different countries. In such a research, we aim at exploring
those authors’ contribution who played more important role in promoting the style of playwriting to the
world. To elucidate this, there is an attempt to pursue the contemplative notion of play writing in modern
period from Ibsen to Beckett. In presenting such a literary trend it also needs to follow Beckett's literary
approach to modern drama and to show how the author could create the characters stuck in a lifelong
suspicious about the Self.
Keywords: Modern Drama, Absurdity, the Theatre of the Absurd, Existentialism, Self Searching

INTRODUCTION
Modern Drama
True to the spirit of a restless age, most of the prominent dramatists of the modern era like Ibsen, Shaw,
Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello and Beckett have been rebellious artists. Each in his own peculiar way
found his way to God, society, life, world and existence itself. One may not find a good story in any of their
plays, for the playwrights themselves have little interest in telling such stories. This is not to say that they
are not deeply felt, deeply emotional plays, but that this emotion is a response to a condition of human
experience, not to the events of the narrative. Their plays are not knit by the allegedly necessary properties
of time and space. Beckett's tramps could be anywhere, anytime; however, at the same time, the modern
drama is not ignorant of history or tradition. The modern playwrights have a deep familiarity with Christian
tradition or of Western philosophy and literature; but these references are a means of expressing a common
human suffering, and not for providing a particular historical referent.
Such new art, freed from the old bondage of routine entertainment and old method of presentation, is
brought to the world of drama by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) who is known as 'the father of modern drama'.
The most important contribution Ibsen could bring to the history of modern drama, as Kenneth Muir
remarks, "was Ibsen's abandonment of verse after Peer Gynt in order to write prose plays about
contemporary problems." (Muir 1962: 97) Ibsen's turning away from traditional conventions took him from
the social to visionary, from the polemical to the psychological, from the naturalistic to the symbolic, and
from the demonstrative to the suggestive. As his other contribution to the modern drama, Ibsen established
the foundations of 'realistic' drama, writing in prose and dealing with contemporary social problems,
morality, and social institutions. Realistic drama had an attempt to portray real life on stage, a movement
away from the conventional melodramas and sentimental comedies of the 1700s. It is expressed on stage
through the use of symbolism, character development, stage setting and storyline and is exemplified in
Ibsen's plays such as A Doll's House, Ghosts and etc.
Parallel to Ibsen's creation of a drama which narrativises and dramatizes the social needs and purpose of
time, Chekhov's depiction of the reality of modern life was a crucial step in the evolution of modern drama.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a playwright whose 'psychological realism' brought a new phase to this

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evolution. He is a master in showing aspects of real life, in showing how gullible people live and behave in
everyday life. He aimed to depict ‘the real life’ in hisOk
writings where ordinary people play the real role in an
ordinary life; as Elisaveta Fan quotes Chekhov's idea about the play:
A play should be written in which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about the
weather and play cards. Life must be exactly as it is and people as they are…..let’s
everything on the stage be just as complicated……as simple as it is in life. (Fan 1973:
31)

In each of his plays, the seminal acts of Chekhov's characters are symbolized through some central images
in order to represent what is being ravished, stolen, or destroyed. With the possible exception of The Sea
Gull, each of Chekhov’s plays dramatizes the victory of the forces of darkness over the forces of
enlightenment which means the degeneration of culture in modern world. The importance of the comic
element in his plays comes from his sense of ‘revolt’. Instead of showing sympathy for the victims of the
social conflict, he is satirizing them; instead of blackening the character of the despoiler, he appreciates it in
the play with a great deal.
Chekhov's mature dramatic practice combines various elements: an attention to the individual's state of
mind, the complex and ambiguous tensions between conscious and unconscious complexity; the
preoccupation with the subject of existence; small changes of everyday life; the increasing fragmentation of
character; the emphasis on the random, the casual, the contingent as the surest way of achieving an
authenticity of reality and finally the elimination of unnatural heroics. The Chekhovian mode, distinctive as
that of no other dramatist of this age, tends to leave the conventional modes that bothered him in creating
his art of drama. Chekhov knew that the mood and the atmosphere of his plays should serve the structural
purpose, should provide the cohesive force that holds together the basic dramatic elements like words,
silence, movement, gesture, tempo, lighting and all the other non-verbal components that make their
eloquent contribution to his drama.
Following Ibsen's 'realistic method' and Chekhov's 'sympathetic' and 'self-expression' drama, August
Strindberg (1849-1912) flourished the formative period of the literary modernism with his 'naturalistic'
plays. His major plays, to be new in modern period, deal with spiritual issues and revolve around the
exposure of evil. In the year 1899, he wrote four historical plays, a genre he was to find curiously
amendable to the expression of his new and mystic conception of nature of God and man. His 'naturalistic'
plays viz. Crimes and Crimes (1899), Easter (1900) and The Dance of Death (1901) all have their origin in
existentialist realism.
Forms of psychological and sexual conflict between man and woman were a thematic concern with
Strindberg. To him, man's tragic dilemma lies in the irrationality of his conflicting desires, like his desire
for a member of the opposite sex. According to him, men and women are different and the irrational love,
the desire of one for the other makes it impossible for them to have peace among them. Hence, happiness as
well as peace must be rejected, not only as a possible but also even as a desirable end.
Like Ibsen, Strindberg had a contribution to make to the form, the tone and the mood of drama. His plays
Countess Julia and The Father are in a naturalistic form, but in his last plays like To Damascus and A
Dream Play, he reached a visionary subjectivism in which human life is criticized for its irrationality.
Strindberg's later plays move away from naturalism and show a tendency toward expressionism and
symbolism as both technique and theory of modern drama.
After Strindberg's naturalism came Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) who had a style of representing the true
nature of illusion and reality, sanity and insanity. Possibly taking his cue from Ibsen's symbolist drama, The
Wild Duck (1884), Pirandello created plays in which the main character lives comfortably with an illusion
for many years until some well meaning friends decide that the truth must be confronted. In his exploration,
his character ultimately discovers that 'reality' does not result in a beneficial ‘cure’ but a destructive
disillusionment.
In his awareness of social disintegration, Pirandello demonstrates that the illusion is not harmful. It is rather
a heroic assertion of the individual identity and a means of rebelling against society. In Six Characters In
Search of an Author (1921), Pirandello goes further on his modern theme and represents that the line
between illusion and reality breaks down completely. A group of actors is rehearsing when six characters,
unfinished fragments of a playwright's imagination, burst in and insist upon playing themselves on stage in
a ‘real’ production which is itself an illusion to both the actors and the audience in the theatre. At the climax
of the play, one character dies by drowning and another from a gunshot wound. The actors cry out: "No, no,

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it's only make believe, it's only pretence!" But the Father protests: "Pretence? Reality, sir, reality!" (Six
Characters In Search of an Author 18) Ok

Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd

The realization of the individual's absurd life framed and defined in the limits of the world created a new
style of writing in drama in which Samuel Beckett excelled in it. Although he is not the only playwright of
the Theatre of the Absurd, Beckett is known as the most prominent author in demonstrating the absurdity of
human condition in the world. Before pursuing Beckett's thought in some of his plays, the exploration of
this style would be a leading clue to this study.
The word ‘absurd’ is defined in different ways but it has an invariant core meaning in all the contexts in
which it is used. In a musical context, the word means ‘out of harmony’, but in a literary context, with a
close reference to music’s, it is felt as being unreasonable, completely senseless, lacking harmony with
reason, illogical, ridiculous, devoid of purpose, cut off from religious, metaphysical and transcendental
roots etc. These meanings with some other attendant implications gave rise to a movement of thought in art
and literature. Although this movement found many followers in different literary genres like the novel, the
short story and poetry, it was in theatre that the ‘absurd’ movement attained its acme.
In the beginning of the ‘absurd’ school of thought, there was no organized movement, no school from the
artists, who claim the label for themselves. When asked if they belong to the theatre of the absurd, many
playwrights, who have been classed under this label, angrily replied that they belong to no such movement,
and quite rightly so. For each of the absurd playwrights was seeking solely to express no more and no less
than one's own personal vision of the world.
However, an outstanding change from traditional style, theme and form toward a new mode of expression
and new convention of art brought in critical concepts in drama. Traditional theatre claimed to represent life
in precisely defined social contexts and the play was judged by the skill, depth and realism of its
characterization and dialogue.
When the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, and Adamov first appeared on the modern stage, they puzzled
most critics as well as the audiences. Their plays flouted all the standards by which drama had been judged
for many centuries. A well-made play was expected to be recognized easily by presenting the characters
that are well-observed and convincingly motivated. But these plays often contain hardly any recognizable
human beings and present completely unmotivated actions. This innovative dramatic movement known as
the Theatre of the Absurd took its name from Albert Camus' existential description of the dilemma of
modern humanity and as a term, it was coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work of a number of
playwrights, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s. He believed that the Theatre of the Absurd is created
"in the emphasis on the basic absurdity of the human condition, on the bankruptcy of all closed systems of
thought which claims to provide a total explanation of reality" (Esslin 1965: 15).
The Theatre of the Absurd openly rebelled against the conventional theatre. In the meaningless and Godless
world of post-Second world war, it was no longer possible to keep using such traditional art forms and the
standards that had ceased to be convinced by the twentieth century man, so they gradually lost their validity.
As a result, absurd plays assumed a highly unusual, innovative form, directly aiming to startle the viewer,
shaking him out of this comfortable, conventional life of everyday concerns. Indeed, it was anti-theatre,
which first met with incomprehension and rejection.
Absurdist playwrights, led by Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet, embraced this vision and
sought to portray the dismal ridiculousness of human life by using a dramatic style that challenged
theatrical conventions. Characterized by fantasy sequences, disjointed dialogue, and illogical or nearly
nonexistent plots, their plays are concerned primarily with presenting a situation that illustrates the
fundamental helplessness of humanity. Absurd drama is sometimes comic on the surface, but the humour is
well qualified with an underlying pessimism about the human condition that was marked by the notion of
this period. The main events of World War I and World War II and the chaotic results that followed theses
wars inspired the absurd writers of this time to a large extent.
This chaos as a precise outcome of two world wars proved that there is no means for communicating or
understanding each other. In a larger influence, the horrors of the Second World War showed the total
impermanence of any values that successfully shook the validity of all conventions and highlighted the
instability of human life as well as its fundamental meaninglessness and uncertainty. All the 'absurd' plays
of this era share the view that man inhabits a universe with which he is out of harmony. Its meaning is
indecipherable and his place within this universe is without purpose. Man is bewildered, troubled and

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obscurely threatened. In this profound discovery of chaotic actions, distrust of language as a means of
communication was one of the most important aspects ofOkthe absurd drama.
The Theatre of the Absurd tends toward a radical devaluation of language. What happens on the stage
transcends and often contradicts the words spoken by the characters. Language had become a vehicle of
stereotyped, meaningless and conventional exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human
experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface.
Consequently, the Theatre of the Absurd reveals a kind of disgust and disenchantment with language,
showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication.
Beckett's representation of what is considered ‘absurd’ is only a message for the audiences, to threaten them
about their misery; to awaken them about the situation into which they are imprisoned by limits; and finally
to show that they should go somewhere beyond this misery to find their identity. His works carry the
author's message wherein Beckett reveals how his quest for the Self fortifies him to have his needs to "go
on"(The Unnamable 179). He knows that for the sake of attaining his real origin, he "must go on"(The
Unnamable 179); even at the moment he "cannot go on" (The Unnamable 179). Beckett's composing his
literary collection comes from his "obligation to express". (Beckett 1965: 5) All of his literary works are a
unique outcome of a lifelong contemplation for the unattainable truth. He dedicated his life to write about
his spiritual journey towards his origin and many works were created in consequence.
Each of his literary pieces represents the author's peculiar discovery at different moments of searching. As
is evident in some selected plays like Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, All That Fall and A
Piece of Monologue, Beckett's Absurdity does not exhust with the absurd lives that his characters lead. To
go beyond it, it shows that his absurd characters being continually stuck in their condition of absurdity
precisely because of the unattainability of the Self in their life, because of the impossibility of the world to
represent it and finally because of the deficiency of their own knowledge to grasp it. The characters in
Beckett's contemplation set out their journey to terminate their absurdity, to bring light into the unknown
world, to touch knowledge about the uncertainty of their being and to get free from all restrictions hindering
them. Beckett's thought goes beyond the Absurdity because his profound yearning for his real side of
‘being’ was not related to the external world, but to his spiritual realm, to his own inner world. His notion of
the Absurd refers to an external world/life as opposed to one’s own within. The more he tried his quest, the
more he found that the Self is not attainable within the restrictions that the world imposes on man.
Beckett’s works graphically and imaginatively depict this quest, which necessarily colour the perception of
the text itself. His insight of being indifferent to all transient happiness and sadness, his sense of being
unsatisfied with daily meaningless routines, staying aside from slavery of mundane rules and restrictions,
his pleasant tendency to stay in the path of pursuing his important true self made all else seem of little
importance and helped him find a comprehensive insight which affected his whole being.
His subtle insight into the human condition made him a distinguished author in the whole community of
‘absurd’ writers. Beckett may be assumed to hint at divinity negatively but one should know that in his
works, the different implications of religion, theology and the Bible stand for his spiritual quest. This
fortified his works with lots of allusions, metaphors and images related to divinity. His quest may be
considered incomplete or even negative, but the origin of his thought and the way he proceeds to search his
true being reveals the story of his spiritual quest.
Beckett’s Lost Self
Subsequent to all prominent playwrights mentioned here, it would not be wrong to take Samuel Beckett as
the last modernist when we see Waiting for Godot with no plot, no climax, no denouement, no beginning,
no middle and no end. If modernism liberated the writer from conventional storytelling and ordinary
psychology, Beckett's play took modernism just as far as it could go. Ibsen and Beckett represent opposite
poles of modernism both in time and in spirit. In literary movement of modernism, Beckett is well known
for his 'the Theatre of the Absurd', a new movement in modern drama which does not open in any
satisfactory clue on the part of human life. Following all contributions of modern dramatists, modern drama
encounters with Beckettian drama wherein life is simply or merely lived while acknowledging the inherent
absurdity of the existence. Beckett's plays features illogical and purposeless activity in plot, and the endless
contradiction of language and action in dialogue on a bare stage. Creating such innovative drama, perfectly
different from the conventional drama of representing the characters in defined regulation and frame,
Beckett's purpose was to discover the limits of drama and to challenge audiences to move away from their
complacent and comfortable roles of being as spectators in the theatres. Beckett's dramatic art was designed,
wittingly or unwittingly, to give the audience a good shake.

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Feeling like an outsider in his own life, Beckett was haunted by a feeling of an absence of identity and the
sense of alienation in his own world. He was captivatedOk by the notion of never having been born. Right
from the beginning, as evident in his drama, he saw birth and death as parts of a single band, with life as a
long day's dying. ''They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it is night once more,''
(Waiting for Godot 82) Pozzo says near the end of Waiting for Godot. Vladimir echoes him: ''Down in the
hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps''. (Waiting for Godot 83) In such 'meta-theatrical'
aspect of modernism, Beckett should be pursued in his creation of 'the aesthetics of silence'. The
fragmentary, the inarticulate, and the incoherent and non-verbal aspect in theatrical intercourse are all
shown beautifully in his representation of silence. Through both earlier and later plays of Beckett, the
characters permanently fall silent, amazed or terrified and their feeling of silence is beautifully conveyed,
through the context of play, to the audience. "This is deadly" (Endgame 25) Hamm comments to the
audience when he has been frustrated by a particularly deadly piece of "time-wasting" (Endgame 28)
business from Clov. Likewise in Waiting for Godot, in the second dialogue about sand, Estragon breaks the
silence first and says:

ESTRAGON: In the meantime nothing happens.

POZZO: You find it tedious?
ESTRAGON: Somewhat.
POZZO: (to Vladimir). And you, Sir?
VLADIMIR: I've been better entertained. (Silence)
(Waiting for Godot 46)

The silence that pervades Beckett's drama distinguished the author's work from traditional style of
playwriting. Traditional plays begin with some actions or events that result in dramatic conflict, an
imperative element to Aristotelian dramatic theory. However Beckett's drama, known as one of the most
controversial works of twentieth-century drama, is known for its minimal approach to dramatic form, for its
powerful imagery, and for its brief, fragmented, and repetitive dialogue. Waiting for Godot, for instance,
begins with no deliberate movement. That is only an abstract struggle involving the passage of time.
Vladimir and Estragon, two tramps, wait on a desolate piece of land to keep an appointment with someone
called Godot. Likewise, in Endgame two men, Clov and Hamm, are faced with the nothingness of their
existence as they attempt to validate their lives. Eventually we see that both of them fall back on their
memories to justify their existence.
In his effort to display the chaotic situation of human beings in the modern world, Beckett further
developed his innovative theatrical techniques and metaphysical concerns in Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and
Happy Days (1961). In Happy Days, the protagonist, Winnie, continues her daily rituals while being buried
up to her waist. She seems uncaring to her entombment, and by the second act of the play, she is buried up
to her neck. Winnie believes that the earth stabilizes her and keeps her grounded.
Beckett's preoccupation with disembodied heads and faces re-emerges in his later short Plays That Time
(1976), A Piece of Monologue (1979), Ohio Impromptu (1981), and What Where (1983), all of which
feature heads with long white hair and an aged appearance. In Not I (1972), the main character is a
disembodied mouth floating high above the stage and seems to be forced into confessing her faults. Beckett
used darkness, voice, repetition, and silence to heighten the feeling of damnation, hopelessness, and
introspection in much of his work.
During the years of his stay in Paris, Beckett was able to write everything that made him later well known.
In such productive period of writing, he realized that his art must be subjective, in a way being derived
wholly from his own inner world. It was, in fact, Beckett’s turn from the external world into his within that
his goal got an infinite realm. He devoted his time to write about his experience of internal searching, the
way by which he is probably best remembered today. During the fifteen years subsequent to the war,
Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot (written 1948–1949; Waiting for
Godot), Fin de partie (1955–1957; Endgame), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1960). These
plays, which are often considered to have their roots in the Theatre of the Absurd, deal in a very black
humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers, though
Beckett himself cannot be categorized as an existentialist. Broadly speaking, these plays deal with the
subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair in an uncomprehending and, indeed,

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incomprehensible world. The words of Nell, one of the two characters in Endgame who are trapped in
ashbins, can best summarize the themes of the plays of
OkBeckett's middle period:
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most
comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning.
But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too
often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.
(Endgame 20)

Such themes are illustrated in different ways in Beckett's art. Waiting for Godot portrays two tramps in an
isolate area, waiting for an unknown figure while doing some works for passing the meaningless moments
of their existence. Endgame, a one-act drama of frustration and senility, features blind Hamm and his
attendant Clov in a skull-shaped stage. Krapp's Last Tape is in the form of a monologue in which the aged
Krapp attempts to recapture the intensity of earlier days by listening to recordings of his own younger self.
Happy Days portrays Winnie who is buried to her waist in a mound, but still attached to the carefully
itemized contents of her handbag.
The ironically titled Play (1962), for instance, consists of three characters stuck to their necks in large
funeral urns, while the 1963 television drama Eh Joe—written for the actor Jack Mac Gowran—is animated
by a camera that steadily closes in upon the face of the title character, and the 1972 play Not I consists
almost solely of a Mouth in the stage full of darkness. Many of his late plays, taking a cue from Krapp's
Last Tape, were concerned to a great extent with memory, or more particularly, with the often forced
recollection of haunting past events in a moment of stillness in the present. Moreover, these late plays deal
with the theme of despair in self searching and observed as a voice comes from the protagonist's mind, as is
evident in A Piece of Monologue.
The minimalist style dominated Beckett's plays during the last period of his writing career. Come and Go, a
bleak drama with three female characters and a text of 121 words; the even more minimal Breath (1969 ), a
30-second play consisting only of a pile of rubbish, a breath, and a cry; and Not I, a brief, fragmented,
disembodied monologue delivered by an actor of indeterminate sex of whom only the ‘Mouth’ is
illuminated. Not I lasts only fifteen minutes and all we see is a shadowy auditor and a woman's mouth from
which words flow out in a stream.

CONCLUSION
As an outcome of the present study, Beckett's Absurdity should not be considered as the philosophy of
negation because it is thoroughly different from both Nihilism and Pessimism. The philosophy of Nihilism
advocates the lack of loyalties, the corrosive power to destroy, a temptation to expand a negative impulse to
every value and making a value of freedom in an empty mind out of meaninglessness. However, the notion
of the Absurd has its adherence in the meaninglessness of the world which cannot help man solve the
uncertainties of his being.
Also, the philosophy of Pessimism advocates the existence of evil in human nature. The doctrine of
disillusionment of unfulfilled desires plays the role of anti-value in this philosophy. However, in the world
view of the Absurd, happiness rarely is the goal. There is no happiness for an absurd character because both
happiness and sadness are transient and notoriously unstable.
Far from an attempt to bring any philosophical thought, the notion of the Absurd, in its divorce from the
world, simply threatens man with the meaningless and absurd life. In Waiting for Godot, the audience
experiences the absurdity of the characters and scares that such absurdity may be the reality of his life. For
those who are familiar with Beckett’s world view, the Absurd does not come from one’s obsession about
life, but one’s despair to possess a ‘being’ without the Self. The study of Beckett’s drama and fiction
reveals that from the early period of creating his works, his fundamental issue of contemplation was a
search for the Self. What is evident in all of his works is the theme of self searching beyond the absurdity
and also the different stages each character was able to proceed in his route of self searching.
As a protagonist in different representations of his work, Beckett experienced a spiritual journey toward the
Self in his contemplation of within. By following his works one can find that, the more the author, like his
characters, experiences his quest, the more he approaches the Self in his own way. Although he cannot
attain it among the restrictions of the world, he finds it approachable as one can see it in his later works
such as A Piece of Monologue and The Unnamable, two works wherein the characters read out some
mysterious narrations that seem to be about the mysteries of the Self.

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