B.A. (Hons.

) English – Semester V Core Course

Paper XII : British Literature: The Early 20th Century Reading Material

Unit-3
Samuel Beckett : Waiting for Godot

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University of Delhi
Paper XII – British Literature: The Early 20th Century
Unit-3

Samuel Beckett : Waiting for Godot

Edited by:
K. Das Gupta
School of Open Learning
University of Delhi
Delhi-110007

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
Paper XII – British Literature: The Early 20th Century
Unit-3

Samuel Beckett : Waiting for Godot

Contents
S. No. Title Pg. No.
1. Introduction 01
2. Theme 02
3. Who is Godot? 06
4. The Characters 07
5. A Note on Time 10
6. Waiting for Dodot (Study Notes) 13
7. A Note on the Absurd 18
8. List of Resource Books 20
9 Reference Notes 21
10 Chronology 24

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 Waiting for Godot

Introduction
Samuel Beckett was born at Foxrock, near Dublin on Good Friday, April 13th 1906. His
parents were Protestants. He had a comfortable home. He studied piano a team sports. His
academic brilliance came to be noted ever since he went to attend Trinity College Dublin. In
1924 he graduated with a first in modern languages, in 1928 he was awarded a two-year
exchange fellowship to the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris.
In Paris he became a close associate of James Joyce and published poems, stories and
essays and translations.
He continued to stay in mainland Europe, mostly in France except for short visits to
Dublin.
During the war he joined the French Resistance. Threatened by arrest, he escaped to the
unoccupied Zone, working in potato fields in the day and writing at night. Back in Paris after
the war, he wrote many pieces, all in French, short stories, novels and plays – En Attendant
Godot, novels– Molloy, Malone Meurt, L’Innommable, were all written at this time. He was
awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1969. True to himself, he did not go to Stockholm to
receive it. He was always shy, reserved and unassuming untouched by any show of greatness.
Beckett died in December, 1989.
Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot baffles explanation. “Its strength lies in its ambiguity.”
It explores the mystery of existence, the unnamed fear and anxiety of the human
subconscious mind, that defy rationality. Beckett insisted that Waiting for Godot is designed
to give artistic expression to “the irrational state of unknowingness wherein we exist, this
mental weightlessness which is beyond reason. All that can be attempted is to see what
questions are being asked in this play, though the questions remain unanswered.
In the following pages, an attempt has been made to put these questions in a manner, so
that the issues involved in Waiting for Godot are surfaced and crystallized.
It is a play very different from all other plays that you have so far studied. It does not tell
a story. Two tramps meet on a country road with a bare tree and a mound at the backgro
waiting for someone called Godot, who does not turn up. At the end of both the Acts of the
play they are informed by a boy messenger that Godot won’t come that day but surely
tomorrow. In both the Acts a master and his slave pass by as the tramps are waiting. At the
end of each act the tramps agree to go but they do not move. The second act substantially
repeats the first one. The situation remains static. Nothing happens and there is nothing to be
done. The inaction is turned into dramatic actionnothing happens twice.
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was first published in Paris in 1952. It was first
produced in Paris on 5th January 1953. Directed by Roger Blin, who played the part of
Pozzo, the play “ran for four hundred performances at the Theatre de Babylone, and was later

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transferred to another. Parisian Theatre” (Martin Esslin– The Theatre of the Absurd Page 39).
Beckett’s English translation of Godot was published in New York in 1954 and on 3rd
August, 1955 the English Godot was first performed in London.
Waiting for Godot is a classic of modern times. It is a story of two tramps waiting on a
country road by a bare tree in the evening, for Godot. The play is in two acts. The second act
is almost a repetition of the first act. Nothing to be done and nothing happens. The tramps
Vladimir and Estragon wait, apparently without much certainty about Godot’s arrival, as they
have been waiting, before we see them and as they will be waiting for him again the next day
and the day after that and the one after that endlessly. They are hoping for his arrival, they are
not sure to recognise him when he comes – Pozzo for a moment was taken to be Godot.
Vladimir and Estragon seek the alternative to waiting, in suicide, but they do not have any
real desire to take any action, and are only “waiting for life to be over, night to fall, the play
to end”. (Samuel Beckett by Ronald Hayman page 5).
Theme
Nothing to be done – are the first words repeated significantly in the play – first the words are
used by Estragon as he gives up struggling with his boot trying to take it off. Vladimir in
answer extend its significance to a wider scope–“I am beginning to come round to that
opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t
yet tried everything. And I resumed the Struggle”–so it is presumed at the beginning of the
play’s action that action is futile. The pair of tramps on the stage are convinced of the
uselessness of action, they play games to help pass time and inaction is transformed into
theatrical action. Elements of slapstick comedy borrowed from Vaudeville or the circus or the
music hall – provide the crude physical humour bringing out the absurd in the essential
predicament of human life. What happens in the play? Nothing happens twice, Waiting is
doing nothing and something at the same time. Waiting is the experience dramatised.
Beckett’s titles provide clues to the main action, inaction is dramatic action in Waiting for
Godot.
The stage presents a country road, where two tramps wait by the side of a tree for
somebody called Godot, who will relieve them of their misery, if and when he comes. A
master and his slave come and leave as the tramps continue to wait. The pattern is repeated in
the second act. Only the wandering couple has changed. The master has become blind. The
slave has turned dumb. The tree has grown a few leaves. At the end of each act, the tramps
want to go, but they do not move. They have nothing to do except waiting...
“Let’s go”
“We cant”
“Why not?”
“We are waiting for Godot.”
“Ah”.

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 Waiting is the theme of the play and “Time the shadow protagonist” (Ruby Cohn–Just
play). It is with time that the play is obsessed. The first words are “Nothing to be done”
waiting is doing nothing and something at the same time. All action is futile including
waiting. That is the theme of the play. Regarding Godot’s identity, Beckett said that if he
knew who Godot was, he would have mentioned it in the play. The play, described as a tragi-
comedy, has no plot and does not tell a story, it explores the essential human condition. The
first act is repeated in the second act, only the Sequence and dialogue are different, Vladimir
and Estragon meet Pozzo and Lucky the same pair under different circumstances. In both the
acts Pozzo and Lucky, master-slave remain tied together as Vladimir and Estragon continue
to wait for Godot. Both the acts begin in the evening and end with night fall. At the end of
each a messenger from Godot appears, a boy, with the same message that he won’t come that
evening but definitely the next day. Thus the waiting apparently is going to be endless for a
Godot endlessly promising his elusive arrival. Boredom has been used dramatically to create
tension in the play. While waiting, the two tramps feel the passage of time which constantly
subject everything to change. But more things change, more they remain the same “That is
the terrible stability of the world” as said by Pozzo “the tears of the world are a constant
quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops” “One day is like
another and when we die we might never have existed” (Martin Esslin – The Theatre of the
Absurd, page 51). Pozzo says, “Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time?–
one day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other day he went dumb. One day I went
blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we’ll die, the same day, the
same second. They give birth astride of a grave. The light gleams an instant, then its night
once more.”
After a while speaks Vladimir–“Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the
hole, Lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps”.
Between birth and death – light gleams only for an instant. But man hopes for Salvation–
to gain respite from the ravages of time – to arrive at “a haven that Godot represents to the
two tramps”. But the appointment with Godot is uncertain. The tramps are not very sure
whether they have come to the right place, and at the right time. They were asked to wait by
the tree and since there is no other, so apparently they had come to the right place. Again “He
didn’t say for sure he’d come” so they will come back tomorrow – and then the day after
tomorrow and so on until he comes. Estragon asks whether the day was properly fixed, if
Saturday, then what Saturday, even it could be a Sunday or Monday or a Friday. They were
utterly lost and the only certainty is waiting for Godot, whom they are not sure what they had
asked for – it was nothing very definite, a kind of prayer, a vague supplication. Godot’s reply
was also vague, that he’d see and think it over. Strangely, Godot may not be recognised by
either of them. In fact for a moment Pozzo is taken for Godot. Every passing sound puts them
on the alert, as the sound might indicate the arrival of Godot. They have no rights anymore,
but have got rid of them, though there is no question of their being tied to him. This
uncertainty, is present throughout. One of the thieves crucified with Christ was saved, as
reported by one of the four Evangelists present there. The other two do not say anything at all

3
regarding the Thieves, and one says both of them abused him. So of the four witnesses, only
one is believed by everybody, the one who says that one of the thieves was saved. This fifty-
fifty chance of the hope of salvation is grabbed by Vladimir as also by a majority of people as
a reasonable percentage. St. Augustine wrote - Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved.
Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned”. Sceptical Estragon’s comment is “people
are bloody ignorant apes”. Perhaps Beckett wants to crystalise the element of chance in
human destiny –Pozzo Speaks of Lucky-Lucky – “Remark that I might easily have been in
his shoes, and he in mine.” The play is chiefly concerned with the mystery and inexplicable
puzzle and purposelessness of human life, the anxiety and despair that the human condition
entails. It is this concern which reflects in the moods of the tramps through their waiting.
Everything is unsure about this appointment. The identity of Godot, the place where they
were to wait, (they feel it could be that they have come to the wrong place), there is
difference of opinion on whether they came to the same place yesterday – nothing is clear.
Vladimir says they were to meet Godot on Saturday evening, Estragon asks – “But what
Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? or Monday? Or Friday?
This speech utterly confuses Vladimir and Estragon asks again – or Thursday? It seems it
could have been any day of the week. Estragon tells him that if Godot had come yesterday
and they were not there, then he would not come again. To Vladimir’s desperate assertion
that Estragon had said that they had come there yesterday, the latter nonchalantly says he
might have been mistaken. Godot’s assurance was as vague as the tramps’ prayer to him. The
audience participate in the suspense when Pozzo is mistaken for Godot and when he demands
to know who is Godot – the answer is vague – Vladimir – “Oh, he’s a - he’s kind of
acquaintance.
Estragon – “Nothing of the kind, we hardly know him”.
Vladimir – “true – we don’t know him very well – but all the same”.
Estragon – “Personally I wouldn’t even know him, if I saw him”.
Then the uncertainty of the location, the desire of the tramps to hide themselves from
being identified, in an alien territory–
“We are not from these parts Sir” — total absence of information regarding the personal
background of all the four characters, constant doubt regarding the identity of people, the
nameless lot who beat Estragon every night, confusion regarding names, and the immense
difficulty in remembering anything – all add up to the bewildering mysterious atmosphere of
the play that seeks to state the illogicality and absurdity of the human condition. Vladimir is
addressed twice by the Boy as Mr. Albert. And Estragon says once, his name is Adam. The
boy is not sure whether he is happy or unhappy, the time that elapses between the two acts is
incalculable.
The absurdity of the human situation is brought about in a comic and disturbing manner
through dialogue e.g. when they have decided to hand themselves they exchange polite
banalities. Such as we hear everyday on trifling occasions as when entering a room–
Vladimir – Go ahead

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 Estragon – After you
Vladimir – No, no, you first
But the characters are talking about a plan to commit suicide, as though it were of no
more weighty significance than performing a common routine task. Inaction in the play is not
lack of activity. The characters remain busy throughout, particularly after the arrival of Pozzo
and Lucky with whip, stool, basket, rope, pipe etc. The use of which help in carrying on the
conversation and generating comical effect. Comedy is woven into the fabric of the play
along with the serious business of the nature of existence presenting life as nothing more
serious than ridiculous clowning on the one hand and a blend of loneliness, threat and despair
on the other. The play is a tragi-comedy, reflecting Beckett’s attitude that the world does not
make sense, in the absence of God. It is full of despair and is absurd, for life is lived without
any sense of purpose. Counter-balancing throughout, the serious and the farcial, Waiting for
Godot is a statement of the absurdity of the human condition with its mixture of the mundane
and the Spiritual.
In Becketts’ plays time, place and memory all have a vagueness. The superficially trivial
and comic dialogue has an undercurrent of deeper significance, and the structure is repetitive
“The things not said and the pauses are more meaningful than what is explicitly
communicated. Beckett said “Silence pours into this play like water into a sinking ship.”
Here, Beckett, the artist of deprivation and terminal depression, has expressed his vision
of desolation with unique power” (Beckett Alvarez – p. 12)
His dramatic world contains such circus and Vaudeville disasters as falling trousers,
repeated rush to relieve the bladder, three hats being constantly put on and off in endless
confusion. The characters go through such undignified gestures which are “mere by products
of their metaphysically absurd condition” – (Beckett – A Alvarez-p.13).
The influence of the circus is evident in the cracking of the whip by Pozzo as the ring
master, the forcible silencing of Lucky, with the seizure of his hat in the first act and the
multiple tumble in the second act. The Laurel and Hardy elements feature in the bowler hats
of the actors, and the usual casting of one short and stocky actor and another tall and thin as
Estragon and Vladimir respectively1. “They are clearly derived from the pairs of cross-talk
comedians of music halls. Their dialogue has the peculiar repetitive quality of the cross talk
comedians patter – The parallel to the music hall and the circus is even explicitly stated.”
(Martin Esslin – The Theatre of the Absurd – page 46)
Vladimir – Charming evening we’re having
Estragon – Unforgettable
Vladimir – And its not over
Estragon – Apparently not

1 Usually played by a Short Stocky actor, Estragon (in Beckett’s formulation) is on the ground and belongs to
the stone. Convention now dictates that the actor playing Vladimir be tall and thin...
(Lawrence graver-Beckett- Waiting for Godot P-33)

5
 Vladimir – Its only beginning
Estragon – It’s awful-
Vladimir – Worse than the pantomine
Estragon – The Circus-
Vladimir – The Music hall
Estragon – The Circus-
Who is Godot?
In answer to the question who is Godot – Beckett said “If I knew, I would have said so in the
play. What has been said about Godot in the play does not establish his identity Vladimir and
Estragon are waiting for Godot on a country road, by the side of a bare tree in the evening.
They wait indefinitely as they have been doing on earlier evenings and as is apparent, they
will be doing endlessly. In both the acts of the play, at the end of each day, a boy comes with
the message that Godot will come tomorrow. The boy answers in response to Vladimir’s
questions that he is a goatherd and that he is not beaten by Godot, but his brother, a shepherd
is beaten by Godot. In the second act the boy messenger says that Godot does nothing and his
beard is white. To Estragons’ query Vladimir replies that if they did not wait for him he
would punish them. The tramps will have to approach him on the hands and knees. And
except for the spot (by the tree) nothing else is certain about their appointment. But Vladimir
and Estragon live hopefully waiting for Godot. In the French version it is said – “Tonight
perhaps we shall sleep in his place in the warmth, dry, our bellies full, on the straw. It is
worth waiting for that, is it not?” Martin Esslin writes – “This passage omitted in the English
version, clearly suggests the peace, the rest from waiting, the sense of having arrived in a
haven, that Godot represents to the two tramps. They are hoping to be saved from the
evanescence and instability of the illusion of time and to find peace and permanence outside
it. Then they will no longer be tramps, homeless wanderers, but will have arrived home” –
(The Theatre of the Absurd – Martin Esslin – page 52)
But everything about Godot is uncertain and indefinite. Even the tramps are not sure what
they had asked him for – it was “Nothing very definite, a vague supplication” – and Godot
had replied that “he’d see, that he couldn’t promise anything that he’d think it over–before
taking a decision. Whether Godot, if and when he comes will bestow grace or damnation, is
unknown. He beats the shepherd but he does not beat the goatherd. At the possibility of
Godot’s arrival, Estragon says “I am, accursed and I am in hell’Whereas for Vladimir, it is
cause for jubiliation – At last It’s Godot, we’re saved”.
Whether it is a religious play and Godot represents God, remains a debatable point. The
hope of salvation, sustains the tramps even as they are not sure of being saved. The bestowal
of grace is fortuitious, the chance is at best fifty-fifty – a reasonable percentage. Waiting for
Godot perhaps reveals “man’s Smug will to live, our pernicious and incurable optimism.”
(Beckett, Essay on Proust – Page 5)

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 It appears in the play God. Godot and Pozzo are sometimes merging into a vague
identity. In the Second act as Estragon talks of God, Pozzo appears and is taken to be Godot
by him. Spiritual and material needs mix to form the basis of modern day religion-waiting for
Godot has become a kind of dull routine-a habit adapting to the meaninglessness of life. In a
world where God is dead, modern man suffers from doubt on religious questions or is
indifferent to them, as when Vladimir discussing the possibility of salvation, damnation or
questions why people believe only one of the four Evangelists, who speaks of the salvation of
one of the thieves, meets with bored indifference from Eastragon. The ambiguous Godot
expects unquestioned submission to his will, as the tramps will be punished if they don’t wait
for him. Occasionally man may become aware of the terrible condition of life as when
Vladimir speaks – “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth–The air is full of our cries. But
habit is a great deadener” – waiting for Godot is the habit that bars the painful awareness of
the “full reality of being.” “At me too, someone is looking, of me too someone is saying he is
sleeping, he knows nothing let him sleep on” – says Vladimir. When he is about to realise the
actuality of being, at that moment Godot’s messenger arrives to rekindle his hope in the
arrival of Godot and he continues to wait.
Beckett was almost pathologically preoccupied with nothingness. According to Beckett–
“there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no power to express, no desire to
express, together with the obligation to express” Godot is perhaps the ultimate symbol of
nothingness that modern man is striving after. Godot’s absence is the centre of the play,
representing the void of the human existence – “The inscrutable Mr. Godot is ... just another
diminutive god like all the other little gods–some divine, some political, some intellectual,
some personal for whom men wait hopefully and in fear, to solve their problem and bring
point to their pointless lives, and for whose sake they sacrifice the only real gift they have,
their free will (“we’ve lost our rights”? asks Estragon – “we’ve waived them” replies
Vladimir).
(from Beckett – A. Alvarez page 86)
Characters
The Characters in the play are not conventional characters. They cannot be defined nor do
they have definite personality. We are not told of their background. Vladimir and Estragon
as, Pozzo and Lucky have complementary nature. The play follows the pattern of repetition in
the opposition of the two contrasting pairs of characters, with a further contrast and
opposition within each pair. The more important contrast is between the two pairs-Vladimir–
Estragon and Pozzo-Lucky. The latter pair is changed by time, the former is not.
Vladimir – How they’ve changed,
Estragon – Very likely; They all change only we can’t.
(Waiting for Godot–Act one)
Vladimir provides the carrot to Estragon when he is hungry. Estragon plays with his boot
Vladimir with his hat. Vladimir stinks from mouth, Estragon from feet. Estragon dreams and

7
wants to relate his dreams and also funny stories to Vladimir. Vladimir cannot bear to listen
to these. Estragon likes the carrot less, more he eats it, with Vladimir its just the opposite as
he says – “I get used to the much as I go along”, but though the temperament or the character
differs, both of them agree at one point – “nothing to be done”. They come back to that
indefinite but fixed point of the uselessness of human effort.
It is Vladimir who reminds Estragon that they are waiting for Godot. For Estragon
specially, death is the alternative to this waiting. But they cannot even commit suicide or
move away. At the end of each act they decide to go but do not move. The tramps are child-
like in many of their ways. Gogo and Didi to each other, they make childlike gestures, get
frightened easily, quarrel with each other, throwing tantrums and then make up their
differences and become friends again easily like children. Constantly asking each other, what
shall we do now – they improvise games to pass time like children. They play a game of
being Pozzo and Lucky, of being polite or abusive to each other, of staggering about on one
leg, trying to look like trees.
They are not glamorous, perhaps symbolising the anti-hero. There is no tragedy, hardly
any spectacular suffering. We do not admire them but certainly they fascinate. For the
problem of Vladimir and Estragon is that they are alive like everyone and like Everyman,
they are trapped between birth and death” (Theatre and Anti-theatre Ronald Hayman page-3),
circumstances and behaviour patterns do not influence their essential condition.
The tramps only wait for Godot to come or for night to fall – each day and every day.
Restless wanderers, Pozzo and Lucky change from master and slave to the blind depending
on the dumb for their endless onward journey. The assertive Pozzo of the first act, cries for
help in the second. This contrast reflects on the contrasting kind of relationship within each
pair.
The tramps enjoy a healthier relationship between themselves, than the travellers. If
Pozzo controls the rope that binds lucky, he too is bound, as he has to hold the rope, which
leads him later, when he is blind. Vladimir and Estragon are closely and voluntarily tied to
each other. They are loving and sometimes resenting each other trying to break away only to
return to each other anxiously and quickly. Their relationship has been described as that of a
long married couple, Didi and Gogo to each other. Vladimir is protective towards Estragon,
the weaker of the two. They are the real outsiders, rejects of the society, and incapable of
living or ending their lives. They are inter-dependent and affectionate. They cling to their
sanity through talking which itself is kept going through Estragon’s constant forgetfulness.
They are nostalgic of the past, when they were presentable; of the day when Estragon
had thrown himself into the Rhone, as they were grape harvesting. Vladimir had fished him
out, and his clothes dried in the Sun. Pozzo is as pompous and bullying as Lucky is cringing.
Pozzo and Lucky are master and slave, representing the body and the mind. Pozzo in the first
act is an assertive domineering master of Lucky who slaves for him, even carrying the whip
with which he is beaten. Lucky taught Pozzo all the higher values of life – “Beauty, grace,
truth of the first water” – (PozzoWaiting for Godot).

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 Lucky dances and thinks for him. But his powers are failing and Pozzo complains that
Lucky causes him untold suffering and he wants to sell him off. But in the second act Lucky,
who has become dumb leads Pozzo, who has become blind. But they continue their journey,
without any apparent destination in view. The only reply Vladimir gets to his question–
“where do you go from here?” is “on” Pozzo and Lucky move on as Vladimir and Estragon
wait for Godot, the play has no climax in the sense that Pozzo and Lucky are gradually
coming down to the level of the two vagabonds. In the second act the blind Pozzo tells
Vladimir that they would wait till they can get up, in case they fall far from help and then
they would go on.
Pozzo and Lucky represent respectively the material and spiritual aspects of man. Lucky
at an earlier stage used to inspire Pozzo. Their relationship describes the subjugation of the
soul and the intellect by the physical needs of the body “...having exploited, abused, denied
and finally, silenced the spiritual side of his own nature until the very presence of Lucky
seems like a reproach, Pozzo, the materialist, wants to be rid of him altogether”. (Samuel
Beckett – Ronald Hayman – page 9).
The master and the slave however, are not only dependent on but need each other. The
name of Lucky seems to be ironical, but he is fortunate in the sense that his life is ordered for
him. Lucky attempts, according to Pozzo, to prove himself indispensable to his master. It is a
ridiculous attempt perhaps showing Beckett’s contempt for such desire to improve one’s
status in business and society. For Lucky his miserable condition is a matter between himself
and Pozzo. Lucky weeps when Pozzo speaks cruelly against him – concluding “The best
thing would be to kill them”. But when Estragon comes to wipe his tears sympathetically.
Lucky kicks him violently.
Pozzo is domineering and egotistical. He is self-centred and a pessimist. For him the
light gleams only for an instant between life and death, that is human situation. Lucky
symbolises the degeneration of spontaneity and loss of contact with the creative sources of
the mind. His dance has been reduced to only a few tottering steps, and his thinking only a
repetition of meaningless words, a mockery of philosophical language.
The tramps reveal features of the lost value hidden in those who have “something above
the average, an overplus for which there is no adequate outlet, of the rejected who will have
to come to the rescue of a no longer valid normality. When the helpless dumb blind pair need
help in the second act, the tramps make futile attempts to help them.” Vladimir suddenly
realizes the human significance of the situation and says – at this place at this moment of time
all mankind is us, whether we like it or not but his momentary awareness of the ego (all
mankind is us) slides back into what one could call the dominant slogan, “in the immense
confusion, one thing alone is clear, we are waiting for Godot to come” (Reflections on
Samuel Beckett’s plays ‘Eva Metman. A Collection of Critical essays 20th Century views-p-
124).
The tramps are on the stage, they improvise as if to justify their being there. They invent
their dialogue which has no continuity to sustain their conversation for long, falling into
fragments. They are free to do whatever they like, only they are not free to go – they are

9
waiting for Godot– “Yet these fools, ‘looking with inadequate strength on a wrong road, for a
goal that perhaps does not exist, compel compassion. Farce as a vehicle that contains all
human sadness allows us to feel with and for Beckett’s clowns even as they are detached
from us”.
(The Absurd – Arnold P. Hinchliffe page 72.)
The tramps may be outsiders – but they are essentially human – Beckett refers to his
characters as “my people”, not symbols or objects or fictions but people.
(Just Play–Ruby Cohn. P-13)
As the grimness of the human condition is lived through by Vladimir and Estragon,
trying to cope with the enormity of the task with their meagre resources, their gestures
reducing them to comic insignificance, the spectators can identify their own despair of ever
reaching a promised goal, they keep on hoping for. The futility of the waiting symbolises the
futility of human life trapped in a world best compared to a hall of mirrors from which the
attempts to get away only makes the prisoner look comic.
Vladimir and Estragon are clearly superior to Pozzo and Lucky. The tramps are kind and
warmly friendly, sharing fellow-feeling and equality. They are appalled at the behaviour of
Pozzo towards Lucky. Pozzo and Lucky are restless wanderers without any purpose. The
masochistic slave following the Sadistic master. Lucky was naive in placing himself under
Pozzo. His faith in the power of reason truth and beauty comes to nothing under the
dominance of the over confident and egocentric Pozzo.
Valdimir and Estragon are free from all illusions of power and glory that beset Pozzo as
he drags Lucky.
Vladimir and Estragons’s life is ruled by the phrase–“Nothing to be done” all action is
useless. Neither wealth nor reason can be of any help. For them suicide is the only
alternative. But they are too incompetent to achieve it. So they settle down to waiting for
Godot or atleast pretend to wait for him–indefinitely day after day. They recognise their
unwillingness to think. They do not want to hear all the dead voices whispering like wings,
like leaves like sand. Rustling murmuring talking about their lives - these are the voices that
would talk to them of the suffering and agony of human existence, which they want to escape
from realising. Do they find their escape route through waiting for Godot?
A Note on Time
Time is a functioning of the memory. Frequent forgetfulness brings about the invalidity of
time boredom hangs over every world and Estragon’s constant forgetfulness is answered by
Vladimir – “Try and remember” one goes through life, its boredom and pain by force of
habit– “the great deadner”, – absurdly and hoping for an elusive rescue.
“Beckett was preoccupied with the boredom and pointlessness of life. In Godot his
solution was a ritual of question and answer made, necessary and kept going by chronic
forgetfulness.”
(Beckett – A Alvarez page 90)

10
 Time becomes the source of the dramatic dialogue, and marks the title of the play. The
title implies duration, and that it would be a long duration is clear from the talk of the tramps.
The title provides the clue to the main action. The plays of Beckett have a feeling of duration
and gives the impression of “opening in a time without beginning” and ending without a
conclusion.
Ruby Cohn observes – “Rather than Aristotelian beginning middle and end, Beckett’s
plays are endless continua2 his protagonists are in the tradition of the wandering Jew and the
Flying Dutchman, cursed to endure through time.
Beckett is constantly preoccupied with time the world ‘time’ is mentioned a number of
times in Waiting for Godot and time cliches sprinkle the dialogue (time had stopped, one can
bide one’s time, in the meantime nothing happens, It’ll pass the time – is there anything I can
do for these fellows having a dull time? That passed the time, Do you know what time it is?
This is your first time? Take your time How time flies when one has fun, time flies again
already, for the time being, in the fullness of time, pass the time the good old days, take your
time etc. Mention of time is frequent – before, after, first and last etc. The play takes place
“nowhere nowhen” The space of waiting is not fixed, as it cannot be identified, the tramps do
not remember whether they came to the same spot yesterday. Everybody is doubtful of time,
which day was it that they had to wait for Godot? Vladimir and Estragon invent various ways
to spend time. They abuse each other, make conversation, declare that they are happy and
then wonder what do we do now, now that we are happy?” (Estragon) “Wait for Godot”
answers Vladimir. They play at being Pozzo and Lucky, exercise, do deep breathing, do the
tree – these games provide them with pastime from which they return again to their basic wait
for Godot who does not come, Vladimir experiences time in different ways once he says
“Time has stopped” (Act I) and then – “Time flows already” (in Act II).
Act II opens next day. The tree has grown a few leaves. Some time has elapsed between
the two acts. But we could not have calculated how much, unless the stage director had
mentioned that it is “Next day” Vladimir and Estragon have not changed. Pozzo and Lucky
have changed much. The two couples represent antithetical attitudes to infinity-wait or
wander. Waiting for Godot or nothingness of infinity, Valdimir and Estragon are ageless with
only the haziest past and a hazier future, tied to Godot. Ignorant of Godot, Pozzo and Lucky
live in time. Pozzo’s watch tells hours and years, but pozzo loses his w and considers his
heart a poor substitute, changed and changeless, each couple live pulsions.” (Just Play - Ruby
Conn-page 39).
In his Solo Speech in Act I Lucky repeatedly says “time will tell, the reasons unknown”
But time does not tell anything, His speech covers “cosmic time, reaching from a timeless
creator to an abode of stones, with the life of man a momentary incident” – (Just play-Ruby
Cohn page 40) The repetitive actions, repetitive questions about time and place, repetitive

2 (Continuum Latin) –Continua (Plural)–meaning that which is continuous, that which must be regarded as
continuous and the same, and which can be described only relatively.

11
situations, repetitive gestures, phrases all add to the impression of a long tedious duration.
The characters ask for the time and hazard a guests.
Pozzo consults his watch in the first act. In the 2nd act he has lost his notion of time
along with his vision. Man is placed in the infinite universe for an instant with his
consciousness. Soon the swaddling clothes change into the Shroud. Vladimir repeats Pozzo’s
words, changing the meaning to imply that time becomes habit with us on this earth. Habitual
routine moulds time into a tedious largely colourless wait.
Beckett has written on an earlier essay on the Time Cancer and its attributes, Habit and
Memory. Time is the ‘Poisonous’ condition to which we are born and it constantly changes
us without our knowledge, killing us without our assent – we are doomed to time because we
have committed the original and eternal sin of having been born.” We have to do penance for
the “original sin by living, which Beckett considers a peculiarly painful business, and we
mitigate the pain of living by Habit.
“Habit is an armour protecting us from whatever can be neither predicted nor controlled,
from that whole world of feeling which, for Beckett, guarantees only suffering.” (Beckett – A
Alvarez-page 21). Beckett’s characters are trapped in empty space. At the end of each act
Vladimir and Estragon want to go, but do not move as the curtain drops. They have nowhere
to go but tied to nothingness. For them time does not exist and so action can have no prior or
future effect. The causal chain of events is broken, what is happening has happened before in
exactly the same manner. Vladimir and Estragon have no incentive to act with intention and
so their action is meaningless as they know Godot is not coming. They have fragmentary
memory and no idea of future. They are however concerned with the problem of how to pass
timethey invent games and dialogues till night falls to end their wait till next evening – the
only certainty for them is that the hours are long-in this immense confusion they are waiting
for Godot to come or for night to fall – time itself has become a habit a repetitive cycle from
which there is no escape except in death.
Time changes for Pozzo and Lucky. In the 2nd Act both have changed considerably in
contrast to Gogo and Didi, who are changeless. They are rooted in Space, while Pozzo and
Lucky are constantly wandering.
Pozzo has turned blind, Lucky has gone dumb. Earlier before we meet him, Lucky had
already changed, according to Pozzo, from a teacher of all the good things of life to an
incoherent talker.
Pozzo and Lucky show the change at the level of individual life and experience life
changes for the worse. Time takes us inexorably towards decay and loss, finally to death. Life
gleams an instant between birth and death. Even in collective experience time is the process
in which man continues to “waste and pine”. (Lucky’s speech – Act I Waiting for Godot).
Time’s cycle repeats the same pattern and though Pozzo has a feeling of going
somewhere, actually he is going round and round with Lucky along the some beaten tract.

12
Day and night follow each other in the same endless pattern of repetition-”But night doesn’t
fall”.
Vladimir – It’ll fall all of a sudden, like yesterday.
Estragon – “Then it’ll be night”
Vladimir – “And we can go”
Estragon – “Then it’ll be day again” (Despairing)
What’ll we do, what’ll we do. (Waiting for Godot - Act II)
Thus time is both the hope and despair of them Time’s cycle is as meaningless as Man’s
existence.
To wait is to experience the action of time which is constant change. But nothing really
happens, so that change is really meaningless and purposeless. The terrible stability of the
world is that the more things change, the more they are the same.” – (Martin Esslin–The
Theatre of the Absurd) Page 51.
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. One day we are born, one day we die–one
day like any other day. When we die, we might never have existed.
Godot whose arrival is the only possibility of escape from this relentless and meaningless
flow of time, never materialises. Time and fixed space entrap the tramps and they cannot go
as they are perpetually waiting for Godot. “Habit is a compromise effected between the
individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the
lightning-conductor of his existence ...........................................................................................
..................................................Breathing is habit – life is habit......................................
The fundamental duty of Habit – consists in a perpetual adjustment and readjustment of
our or–ganic sensibility to the conditions of its world. Suffering represents the omission of
that duty whether through negligence or inefficiency and boredom its adequate performance
suffering that opens a window on the real and is the main condition of the artistic
experience,” (Beckett – Essay on Proust).
Study Notes

A Tragicomedy– – “is a play combining the qualities of a tragedy and a comedy or

(Dictionary meaning) containing both tragic and comic elements a play mainly of tragic
character, but with a happy ending Waiting for Godot is called a
tragicomedy in the Englis translation only).
Characters – According to Beckett, no significance attaches to the choice of
name– Lucky was named so, as he has no expectation.’
A Tree – “indispensable to the meaning of the fable, the tree in its centre
defines the world as a permanent instrument for suicide or life as the
non committing of suicide”– (Gunther Anders – on Beckett’s Play
Waiting for Godot P. 141)

13
page 9 Legs wide – indicating enlargement of the prostate gland - explaining his
apart sudden urges to pass water
page 11 One of the – First serious note in the dialogue – Note the clownish humour of
thieves was saved Vladimir’s instant chesire-eat grin
ceases as suddenly
Page 13 Charming – One of the explicit gestures to the audience.
spot
Page 14 facing Thereby bringing the latter ironically into the global situation.
auditorium
Page 14 We’re – The first time the phrase is used. It recurs throughout the play. This
waiting for Godot is what the friends have come together for. The recurrent phrase
gives the play its cohesion. Beckett told his first producer Roger Blin
that Godot was suggested to him by godillots and godasses, French
Slang words for boots.
I don’t know –A willow – a typical example of contradicting or qualifying a
Statement inducting an element of uncertainty often used by
Beckett’s characters.
Page 15 I must have – In the original manuscript ‘He’ was written instead of ‘I’ as there
made a note of it was in the original version the tramps had a written note of
appointment with Godot. This was dropped in the published version
and ‘He’ was changed to ‘I’ thus Godot became a more shadowy
figure instead of a concrete definite existence.
Very insidious – Dramatic stress on the uncertainty of the friends situation, Estragon
might be teasing Vladimir.
Page 16 Don’t tell me – Vladimir the more rational of the two recoils in horror from the
creative mind’s lucubrations (learned or pedantic discourses).
Page 18 an even –Like “a reasonable percentage” before it freezes–“a
chance characteristically Beckettian twist on a popular cliche”.
Page 19 I think so too –Exhausted, they withdraw into temporary Silence. The foregoing
dialogue just concluded, is the first example of music hall cross–talk,
a characteristic feature of the play’s dialogue.
Totters –The first of many pieces of circus clowning.
Page 22 does that –Self importance of Pozzo–a local man of some substance, he is
name mean nothing to astonished that the tramps have not heard his name.
you?
Page 31 He wants to –The first of many pieces of circus clowning. “Fool me”–an Irishism
cod Atlas, son of Jupiter–Pozzo is mistaken. Atlas, in Greek mythology,
was the son of a Titan, Iapetus. For his part in the revolt of the Titans
he was condemned to support the heavens on his head and hands.
Page 32 It’s a good –of a healthy wound that cleans itself.
sign

14
Page 33 a constant –Analogy of physical energy.-
quantity
Knook –Beckett’s own coinage of uncertain meaning, suggested by the
word
he consults his watch –for a Russian whip knout. A Vaduville joke also a comment on
human time, Pozzo remains obsessed with time throughout in this
Act.
He is completely bald–According to Dr. J.R. Northam the
intellectual barrenness of Pozzo was symbolized by his baldness in
contrast to Lucky’s abundant white hair. (unpublished lectures on
The Godot Tradition, delivered at Cambridge university during the
Long Vacation Term 1961).
Page 34 Charming –This is the beginning of the sequence where the tramps play the
evening audience to Pozzo’s performance, the sense of theatre within theatre
“reaches its climax with Gogo directing Didi to the toilet, with the
latter asking “Keep my seat”.
Continuum (L) –That which is continuous that which must be regarded as
Continua (Plural) continuous and the same and which can be described only relatively.
Page 35 Kapp and –A famous Irish brand of smoking pipe.
Peterson
Page 36 Pan sleeps –Pan is Greek god of flocks and shepherds.
Page 37 Adam –The role of Pozzo’s interlocutor in the play within play-Estragon is
Adam. It is also a reminder that the tramps represent the whole
mankind.
Page 40 He refused –The menace is obvious. Squirming like aesthete.
once
Page 41 –Vladimir feels like making some critical comment.
He can’t think –The other three can’t think with their hats. His thinking is abruptly
without his hat stopped later when his hat is forcibly removed, as if is a part of a
machinery.
Page 42 –Lucky speech falls into three parts–
Formal and thematic
According to Anselm Atkins writing in Modern Drama (Page 309),
the formal structure of Lucky’s speech is (a) unfinished protasis
(Premise proposition) of a theological or philosophical argument. (b)
an incomplete fragment of a rational argument which is the last half
of an objection to the unfinished demonstration in the first (c) a
second objection parallel to the earlier one which lapses into aphasia
(inability to express thought in words, or inability to understand
thought as expressed in the spoken or written words of others by
reason of some brain disease). The German critic Horst Breuer writes

15
 of the thematic breakdown–as (1) absence of God (2) Shrinking of
man (3) World as chaos. He also notes three subordinate clauses
which pretend to launch off an essential message, which is of course
cunningly held back.
Colin Duckworth writes “By reducing Lucky’s “think” to a
semblance of coherence one destroys the parodic effect, the Pathos,
the growing tension, and the brilliance of the speech which demands
as equal brilliance in performance” “It is after all Lucky’s only
opportunity to fly away beyond the constraints and limitations of his
condition.
Puncher and Wattman –Literally ticket puncher and tram-driver, quaquaquaquan
–quaquaversal –: divine-attribute apathia, athambia aphasia –
freedom from or insensibility to suffering – imperturbability
muteness, inability to communicate.
Page 43 Miranda –In Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest, Prospero’s daughter.
Shrink and dwindle –“This is the crux of–Lucky’s speech which is far from being
gibberish. In an admittedly blurred and pedantically repetitious
manner, Lucky, Senile professor, decayed Scholar, and degraded
man of reason makes a kind of statement”, that in spite of the
existence of a loving God (of Sorts) and progress of various kinds,
man is in full decline”. (–B.S. Fletcher, John Fletcher Barry Smith
Walter Bachem Page 63–A student’s guide to the plays of Samuel
Beckett.)
Page 44 –An Irish Philosopher (1685 - 1753) A great British Empiricist and
Bishop Berkeley representative of the brand of philosophy as idealism.
Steinweg and –invented names. The Skull in connemara – It may be recalled “That
Peterman Thelma (wife of Beckett’s first fictional hero Belacqua) perished of
sunset and honeymoon that time in connemara” (More pricks than
kicks- P. 189)
Page 45 Avenged –for the kick.
Page 46 What have I –An example of Pozzo’s forgetfulness.
done with my watch
It’s the heart –The double nature of Time–Human time indicated by the Watch is
essentially changeable existential time of the heart beat is a static
condition.
Page 57 The tree has –recording passage of time–hope.
leaves
The song of Vladimir –reflects the circular pattern and repetitiveness of the play.
Page 60 It’s never the –all is continually changing and time is irreversible
same pus
Page 61 What is there –“However one may move about one-does not stir” (Ruby Cohn Just

16
to recognise? Play page 21).
Page 62 Picking –Beckett hid in South East France during the later Part of German
grapes-called occupation, buying wine from M. Bonnelly. The original French
version named the man-Bonnelly of Roussilon.
Everything is red –allusion to the colour of the soil at Roussilon.
All the dead voices –beginning of a fast exchange between the tramps which Beckett
sees as cross-talk on a lyrical level”_“The voices explore the
mysteries of being and the self to the limits of anguish and suffering.
Vladimir and Estragon are trying to escape hearing them”. (Martin
Esslin – The Theatre of the Absurd P-26).
Page 65 We’ve tried –refers to the romantic revolt against the age of reason, imagination
that too has failed.
Page 80 Until they –waiting from irrational habit.
become a habit
Page 82 Estragon –Beckett described this multiple fall as the “Visual expression of
Pulls, stumbles, falls their common situation related to the threat in the play of everything
falling”. Beckett further said that it must not be an untidy heap but
has to function. He had made a diagram showing the four bodies
forming an intersection. This fall is a kind of culmination of the
plays essential experience. “There is no longer a single character
standing up. There is nothing left on stage but this wriggling,
whining heap, in which we then observe. Didi’s face light up as he
says in a voice almost calm again “we are men.” (Cohn -ed case
book page 18)
Apart from this such tumbles are common circus acts.
Page 86 Memoria –Latin for ‘memory of past happiness’.
Praeteritorum
bonorum
Board –stage.
Page 89 Have you not –A hopeless vision of life – “If one day is like any other, there is
done once more nothing but fruitless repetition and no transition can take place”
Esslin -ed. Sumuel Beckett page 127).
Page 91 At me too –According to Bishop Berkeley – to be is to be perceived, God
someone is looking perceives everything and thus ensures the world’s existence Berkeley
was an 18th century Irish philosopher and Clergyman.
I can’t go on –a shout of anger, frustration, helplessness. (Cohn ed case book page
186). He cannot go on–
“With an existence in which the womb and the tomb seem to fit
together like two hemispheres which are lifted apart for a brief
moment to let in a ray of light”– (Eva Metman ed. Esslin 127-8?)
According to Ruby Cohn (Just Play 59)

17
 Observing the sleeping Estragon–Vladimir conceives of himself as a
sleeping ignorant figure in someone else’s sight–perhaps it is this
ignorance that he finds intolerable or it is the accumulation of the
play’s events and the continued wait, which drive him to the staccato
end of his soliloquy”.
Page 93 Estragon’s –Beckett said “The spirit of the play to the extent to which it has one
trousers fall is that nothing is more grotesque than the tragic. One must capress it
up to the end and especially at the end. The clowning continues even
at this moment.
Page 94 They do not –They are trapped in a static situation and the whole circular process
move begins over again.
This Silence is the only dignified approach to divine apathia?

A Note on the Absurd

Absurd has a special meaning when the term “Theatre of the Absurd” is used. Eugene
Ionesco defined it as follows “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose – cut off from his
religious metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost, all his actions become senseless,
absurd, useless”. “The sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition,
is – the Theme of the plays of Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco, Genet and some others...
The “Theatre of the Absurd” strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the
human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of the
rational devices and discursive thought…”
(Martin Esslin – The Theatre of the Absurd – page 24). The Theatre of the Absurd has its
roots in the growing “feeling of urgency about man’s, self-estrangement in the modern
world” (Eva Metmanpage 118 Reflections on Beckett’s plays).
This problem of the failure of the religious faith and Man’s growing preoccupation with
materialism, leading the human mind away from his psychic roots, gave rise to the rebellion
and protest voiced by the existentialists such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre. Existentialism
is basically a reaction against rationalism. Historically existentialism developed from the 19th
century with the writings of Nietzche and Kierkegaard. In Nietzche’s Zarathustra (1883) the
startling phrase occurs that God is dead : since then, as Martin Esslin writes, the number of
people for whom God is dead, has greatly increased “And so after two terrible wars, there are
still many who are trying to come to terms with the implications of Zarathustra’s message
searching for a way in which they can, with dignity, confront a universe, deprived of what
was once its centre and its living purpose, a world deprived of a generally accepted
integrating principle, which has become disappointed, purposeless absurd.
The Theatre of the Absurd–is one of the expressions of this search... it seeks to re-
establish an awareness of man’s situation when confronted with the ultimate reality of his
condition–
(Martin Esslin – The Theatre of the Absurd page 390).

18
 The existentialists insist on the presentation of the authenticity of the individual, reject
readymade prescriptions, and resist standardisation and mechanisation of the individual.
Their attempt is to denounce the anonymity of man’s collective existence by stressing the
distress, anxiety and despair of the human soul. These issues raised by the philosophers are
brought into artistic focus by the dramatists such as Beckett Genet, Adamov, Pinter and
others–by showing the importance of Man’s dread, agony and nameless fear, they have
“declared war upon the collective pseudo-ego”. The loneliness of man is projected in an
absurd play, particularly in the plays of Samuel Beckett.
John Russell Taylor defines Absurd Drama as the genre based on the tenets summarised
by Albert Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. The diagnoses humanity’s plight as
purposelessness in an existence out of harmony with its surroundings (absurd literally means
out of harmony). Awareness of this central theme of the writers in the Theatre of the Absurd
most notably Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamorv, Jean Genet and Harol Pinter. What
distinguishes these and other lesser figures/Robert Piget, N.F-Simpson, Edward Albee,
Fernando Arrabal, Gunter Grass from earlier dramatists who have mirrored a similar concern
in their work is that the ideas are allowed to shape, “self-estrangement in the modern
world”– all semblance of logical construction of the rational linking of idea in an
intellectually viable argument is abandoned, and instead the irrationality of experience is
transferred to stage.
The absurdists have each his own style and method of expression. The general traits are
usually the devaluation of language, absence of characterisation and motivation, highlighting
states of mind and search for meaning in a basically absurd situation. Beckett’s brand of
absurdity is different from Ionesco’s. Hilarious outrageous farce comprise absurdity for
Ionesco. Beckett follows Camus footsteps in sketching absurdity, through his play–
presenting a life lived meaninglessly in a world devoid of God – an absurd life – a life only
full of despair according to the believer Kierkegaard. This is not to say that he is following
any system as such. According to Beckett there is no trace of any system anywhere. Hugh
Kerner observes – “a Beckett play contains ideas, but no ideas contains the play. The Theatre
of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition, it merely
presents it in being, that is in terms of concrete stage images. The meaningless action of the
characters seem to carry a lot of meaning by implication. This is effected through a process
using “Stage action for stage metaphor”.
(Marion Fronsdale)
Underneath the apparent absurdity of the leitmotif – “nothing to be done,” one can grasp
the deep despair once one realises what is happening on the stage is actually what is taking
place. Life is what is being shown on the stage.

19
 List of Resource Books
1) Hinch Life - Arnold P – The Absurd (Methuen and Co. Ltd. 1969,
Reprinted 1972.)
2) Kenner, Hugh – A Readers Guide to Samuel Beckett (Thames
and Hudson-London 1973 Reprinted 1976)
3) Alvarez, A – Beckett (Fontana/Collins, 1973, 75, 78)
Modern Masters.
4) Fletcher - Beryl S. – A Student’s Guide to the Plays of Samuel
Fletcher-John Beckett. (Faber and Faber, 1978)
Smith - Barry
Bachem - Walter
5) Hayman - Ronald – Samuel Beckett (Heinemann, 1969 Reprinted
1969, 70) contemporary Playwrights series
6) Esslin - Martin – The Theatre of the Absurd (Pelican, 1967)
7) Cohn Ruby – Just Play–Beckett’s Theater (Princeton
University Press, 1980)
8) Esslin - Martin – Ed Samuel Beckett. (A Collection of critical
essays 20th century views. Prentice-Hall of
India. 1980)
9) Hayman - Ronald – Theatre and Anti-Theatre – New movement
since Beckett Oxford University Press, 1979.
10) Graver - Lawrence – Beckett–Waiting for Godot (Landmarks of
World Literature Cambridge University
Press, 1989).

20
Reference Notes
Music-Hall – Variety entertainment of songs and comic turns at which the audience could
buy drink. The form flourished in Britain from about the middle of the 19th century to the
first world war. It developed from the earlier tavern entertainments, which had grown to the
proportions of minor theatres though still attached to public houses, thereby circumventing
the laws, which protected the theatrical monopoly of stage entertainments. Gradually with
changes in the theatrical lice ing laws, the pub connexion vanished, though it was normal for
there to be bars around the main music hall so that the entertainment could be combined with
alcoholic refreshment. The programmes of the music hall in its heyday really were ‘variety’
along, with songs and comedy were acrobats, animal acts – and even interludes by legitimate
actors, ballet dancers, etc. Most of the great stars of the halls devoted themselves entirely to
them, each with his own material and his own stage character, immediately recognizable.
With the introduction of licensing laws (1902 onwards) banishing drink from the auditorium,
and the competition of films and later radio, music hall proper faded until it was kept up only
as a faint reminder in spectacular west end variety shows at the Palladium or with self-
conscious antiquarian enthusiasm at the Players theatre club. The 1960s have seen something
of a revival, however, starting just where music hall did originally; as free entertainment in
bars of working class public houses.
(John Russel Taylor – The Penguin Dictionary of Theatre).
Sisyphus – In Greek mythology son of Aeolus whence he is called Aeolides. He was
married to Merope, a daughter of Atlas, became by her the father of Glaucus, Ornytion,
Thersander and Halmus. In later accounts he is called a son of Autolycus, and the father of
Ulysses by Anticlea; whence we find Ulysses sometimes called sisyphides. He is said to have
built the town of Ephyra, afterwards Corinth. As king of Corinth he promoted navigation and
commerce, but he was fraudulent and avaricious. His wickedness was punished in the lower
world, where he was condemned forever to roll uphill a marble block, which as soon as it
reached the top always rolled down again.
Vaudeville – More or less the American equivalent of British music hall; a series
of comic, musical acrobatic, etc. deriving from the rough vulgur
bear hall entertainments of the middle 19th century, and invading
theatres as a family entertainment from the 1870s on. The heyday
of Vaudeville was almost exactly contemporary with that of music
hall; from the early 1890s to the mid 1920s; and in America as in
Britain it was ousted mainly by the cinema, particularly the talkies.
The word Vaudeville is also used in French, and during the 19th
century sometimes in English to mean a very light-weight type of
play with musical interludes.
(John Russell Taylor – The Penguin Dictionary of Theatre).
The wandering Jew – The Legendary Jew, who spurned christ and was-condemned to
wander the earth until christ’s second coming.

21
Heidegger – Martin –1889-1976
– Heidegger’s philosophy has been described as atheistic
existentialism. But he repudiates any connexion with existentialism
associated with Sartre or Kierkegaard. By Existence Heidegger
means man’s determination to penetrate the truth of his existence.
He believes man has lost his dignity and god is absent from the
world.
Flying Dutchman–
1) A legendary Dutch mariner condemned to sail the sea against the wind until
judgement day.
2) A spectral Ship said to appear in storms near the Cape of Good Hope.
Kierkegaard, Soren Aaby (1813-55) Danish philosopher born in Copenhagen. He is
numbered among the christian existentialists and is widely regarded as the Seminal figure in
Existentialism, insisting on the incompatibility of lived experience with the classifications of
thinkers such as Hegel whom Kierkegaard attacks virulently. From his earliest years he was
initiated into a sombre oppressive version of Christianity and he deeply examined christian
doctrine.
God, he contends is above moral categories, and this he finds to be true of exceptional
individuals, for whom the general rules of morality are no longer valid. These opinions would
seem to ally his thought to a basic tenet of Sartre’s Existentialism as also his opinion that
subjectivity is truth not only in the sense in which I do not know truth except when it
becomes life in me but in a genuinely relativist sense. In other words, consciousness creates
out of itself what is true”.
Kafka Franz (1883-1924) Austrian novelist, born in Prague of Jewish parents; one of the
greatest and most influential of modern European writers. His youth and indeed his whole life
was overshadowed by the dominant personality of his father. The conflict with authority, and
at the same time the urge to receive its recognition found expression in his work as a novelist.
His best novels - The Trial, The castle, and America are spiritual autobiography portraying in
allegory borrowed from dream, and bordering on nightmare, the isolation of the human soul
in its attempt to come to terms with the world. Comparatively little of his writings was
published during his life time.
Existentialism-claims it is concerned with actual life as it is lived and not with
abstractions and that it is specially concerned with the implications of those moments when
life is lived in some revealing way.
Despite his adherence to christianity, Kierkegaard was the quintessential existentialist in
his experience of absurdity his contempt for unawakened bourgeois, life and his onslaughts
against systematic (Hegelian) philosophy. In Jasper’s work too we come again upon the
contrast between mere existence and significant existing. But Jasper introduced other persons

22
and the interplay of mutual communication, whereas Heidegger, whom Sartre follows
stresses the anguish and isolation of man.
From : Everyman’s Encyclopaedia
Kafka’s work shows throughout the influence of Jewish folklore and Theological writing
and has considerably influenced other modern writers, including Samuel Beckett and Albert
Camus.
From : Everyman’s Encyclopaedia Jaspers, Karl (1883-1969) German Philosopher
usually classified as an existentialist. He began his career as a psychiatrist. In 1919 he
became professor of philosophy in Heidelberg. He was forced to resign under the Nazi
regime and after the second world war became a professor at the university of Basle.
The Existentialist label pinned on him derives from his insistence that scientific study is
only starting point of philosophic enquiry, whereas a deeper grasp involves a sympathy with
human existence from within Science concerns the unauthentic self, which is merely there to
be discovered from without, while the “authentic self” of man lies beyond science and is in
itself.
From : Everyman’s Encyclopaedia
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905-1980)
French novelist, dramatist, and philosopher born in Paris.
own destiny and as forced to make his own decisions without relying on powers higher than
himself. That is what human freedom amounts to. It is as a free agent, who must make
himself as he proceeds, that man exists – prior to any descriptive account he might give of
existence. The psychological problems that this creates are presented with great brilliance in
Sartre’s Literary works.
From : Everyman’s Encyclopaedia
Existentialism:
“May be defined as a School of thought based on a conception of the absurdity of the
universe and the consequent meaninglessness and futility of human life and action; as Sartre
has put it – all human activities are equivalent, all are destined...to defeat. One of the basic
tenets of Sartre’s existentialism, on the other hand is that man can shape his own destiny by
the exercise of his will in the face of the given set of potentialities which is his life. The main
premiss and point of departure is the concrete fact that man exists, predetermination is
denied. Man has freedom of choice and action, and each man’s actions, while subjectively
inspired, influence other people, so every individual is responsible to humanity as a whole.
No dogmatic solutions of the eternal questions of ultimate origins or endings are offered. A
man can choose his faith. An existentialist says Sartre, can be Christian or atheist.”
From : Everyman’s Encyclopaedia

23
 Existentialism takes its name from the proposition that for men existence precedes
essence. In other words the facts of a man’s nature determine his qualities (essence). Sartre,
as an atheist stresses that man standing alone, faces the facts of his nature and is free to
develop his essence, but there is also a Christian form of existentialism.”
From : Newnes Popular Encyclopaedia

Chronology
Beckett’s life and work Historical and cultural events
1906 Samuel Barclay Beckett born at Death of Henrik Ibsen. First
Foxrock, near Dublin, on April 13 performance of G. B. Shaw’s Caesar
(Good Friday), the second son of and Cleopatra and The Doctor’s
William Frank Beckett, a quantity Dilemma: of W.B. Yeats’ Deirdre and
Surveyor, and Mary, nee Roe, a former of Frank Wedekind’s Spring’s
nurse. The family is middle-class Awakening Liberal government.
Protestant and well-off. Campbell- Bannerman Prime Minister.
1907 J.M. Synge, Playboy of the Western
World. Yeats, August Strindberg writes
The Ghost Sonata.
1909 Death of Synge.
1910 B. Russell and A.N. Whitenhead,
Principia Mathematica. Igor Stravinsky,
The Firebird.
1913 Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way. D.H.
Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Stravinsky,
Rite of Spring.
1914 Outbreak of World War I.
1916 Earlsfort House School, Dublin. Easter Uprising in Ireland. James Joyce,
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
First Performance of Yeats, At the
Hawks Well.
1917 Revolution in Russia. U.S.A. enters the
war. Balfour Declaration on Palestine.
T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and other
Observations. Yeats, The Wild Swans at
Coole.
1918 Armistice – World War I.

24
1920 Protora Royal School Civil war in Ireland.
1921 Irish Free State established.
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in
Search of an Author.
1922 Death of Proust. T.S. Eliot, The Waste
Land. Joyce, Ulysses. Yeats Later
Poems and The Player Queen.
1923-27 Studies modern languages at Trinity Nobel Prize to Yeats. Sean O’Casey
College, Dublin. Active in Modern Juno and the Paycock. Shaw, Saint
Language Society; plays cricket and Joan, Death of Franz Kafka (1924).
golf; wins prizes at graduation. Kafka The Trail (posthumous).
O’Casey, The plough and (1926).
Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac found
the Theatre Alfred Jarry in Paris.
Lindbergh files Atlantic.
1928 Teaches for two terms at Campbell Bertolt Brecht, Three penny Opera.
College, Belfast. Goes to Paris to take O’Casey, The Silver Tassie. Hean
up exchange Lectureship at ‘Ecole Giraudoux Amphitryon 38, Death of
normale superieure. Meets James Joyce Adolphe Appia. Death of Thomas
and writers associated with transition Hardy. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s
magazine. Lover Aldous Huxley, Point Counter
Point. Yeats. The Tower.
1929 Publishes essay ‘Dante... World-wide depression. T.S. Eliot,
‘Dante’ Yeats. A packet for Erza
Bruno. Vico....Joyce’.
Pound.
1930 Wins £10 prize from Hours Press for T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday, William
“Whoroscope a poem spoken by Rene Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity.
Descarates. Returns to Dublin to Auden, Poems. Harold Pinter born
become Assistant in French at Trinity Brecht writes fall of the City of
College. Mahagonny. D.H. Lawrence dies.
1931 His first dramatic work. Le Kid, a Yeats, The Dreaming of the Bones
parody of Corneille, (written with Virginia Woolf. The waves. Andre
Georges Pelorson) is performed in Obey, Noah, Death of Arnold Bennett.
Dublin.
1932 Begins first novel, Dream of Fair to Roosevelt President of the U.S.A. T.S.
Middling Women (unfinished) Eliot, Selected Essays. Artaud
Manifestos. Death of Lady Gregory.

25
1933 Death of William Beckett, who leaves Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.
his son an annual annuity of £200. T.S. Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes Ferderico
Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding.
1934 More Pricks Than Kicks, stories T.S. Eliot, The Rock, Nobel Prize to
published in London Pirandello. Lorca, Yerma
1935 Echo's Bones and other Precipitates, T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.
poems, published in Paris
1936 Spanish civil war begins, Nobel Prize to
Eugene O’ Neill.
1937 Begins a play, Human Wishes, about Chamberlain Prime Minister.
the relationship of Dr. Johnson and Destruction of Guernica David Jones, In
Mrs. Thrale, but abandons it after one Parenthesis. George Orwell, The Road
scene. Stabbed by a pimp on a Paris to Wigan Pier. Giraudoux, Electra.
street. Visited in hospital by Suzanne Tom Stoppard (Thomas Straussler)
Deschevaux Dumesnil who later born.
becomes his wife.
1938 Murphy, his first completed novel, is Munich agreement.
published in London after many Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausee. Yeats,
rejections Purgatory. Artaud, The Theatre and its
Double.
1939-45 Beckett active in French resistance Germany invades Poland. World War II
group gathering information about begins. Death of Yeats.
German troop movements. When Paris occupied. Battle of Britain.
Group is threatened by Gestapo, he and Death of Aurelien Lugne-Poe.
Suzanne flee to the South, where they Death of Joyce (1941).
live until the end of the war. Brecht, Mother Courage. Germany
During this period, he writes Watt in invades Russia. America enters the war.
English and a set of poems in French. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
(1942). First atomic bomb exploded
over Hiroshima. End of World War II.
1946 Back in Paris. Begins writing regularly Renaud-Barrault company founded,
in French. In what he was later to call Death of Gerhart Hauptmann. Sartre
‘the siege in the room’, he writes three Men Without Shadows. O’ Neill The
short stories, two short novels; a play, Iceman Cometh. Genet, The Maids
Eleutheria; and the works that will (1947). State of Israel proclaimed.
make him famous : Molloy, Malone Death of Artaud (1948).
meurt, En attendant Godot, and L' Czechoslavakia communist.
Innommable. Brecht founds Berliner Ensemble,
Ionesco, The Bald Soprano, Death of

26
 Shaw (1950)
1951 Molloy and Malone meurt published. Lonesco, The Lesson.
1952 En attendant Godot published in Paris. Lonesco, The Chairs.
Coronation of Elizabeth II.
1953 January 5–the world premiere in Paris Death of Stalin, Korean War ends. T.S.
of En attendant Godot, directed by Eliot, The Confidential Clerk. Arthur
Roger Blin. Adamov, Professor Taranne. Death of
Warten auf Godot tours Germany. L Eugene O'Neill. Lonesco, Victims of
Duty.
‘Innommable and Watt’ published.
154 Waiting for Godot in Beckett's Algerian civil war (to 1962). Berliner
translation is published in New York. Ensemble plays in Paris. Lonesco.
Amedee, Nobel Prize to Hemingway.
1955 First English Production of Waiting for Federal Republic of West Germany
Godot Arts Theatre Club, in London, becomes sovereign State. Death of Paul
directed by Peter Hall. Molloy Claudel Adamov, Ping-Pong.
published in English in New York.
1956 First American Production of Waiting Hungarian uprising. Suez Canal crisis.
for Godot directed by Alan Schneider, Death of Brecht. Osborne, Look Back in
at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Anger. O'Neill, Long Day's Journey
Miami into Night.
1957 The radio play, All That Fall, broadcast
Creation of Common Market. First
on the BBC. World premier of Fin de Russian space flight. Jean Genet, The
Partie in French at the Royal Court Blacks. Osborne, The Entertainer. N.F.
Theatre. London. Simpson, A resounding Tinkle Nobel
Prize to Camus.
1958 First English production of Endgame in Pinter, The Birthday Party. Berline
New York. Premiere of Krapp's Last airlift. De Gaulle President of France.
Tape in London. Nobel Prize to Boris Pasternak.
1959 Embers broadcast on the BBC John Arden, Serjeant Musgrave's
Dance.
1961 Commet c'est. Poems in English. National Theatre Company founded,
Premiere of Happy Days in New York. housed at Old Vic.
1962 Words and Music broadcast on BBC Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia
British premiere of Happy Days. Woolf? Lonesco, Exit the King. Martin
Esslin's Theatre of the Absurd, Lonesco,
Notes and Counter-notes.
1963 Premiere of Play in German (Spiel). Assassination of Kennedy.

27
1964 Film directed by Alan Schneider and Death of O'Casey. Public lab Theatre
starring Buster Keaton, is produced in founded by Grotowski. Peter Weiss,
New York. Marat/Sade.
1965 Come and Go. Pinter, The Homecoming.
1966 Directs first production of his work Va Peter Handke, Insulting the Audience
et veint (Come and Go) in Paris. Deaths of Gordon Craig and Andre
Breton.
1967 No's Knife. Directs Endgame at Schiller Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildestern
Theatre, Berlin. are Dead.
1968 Watt in French published in Paris. Student protests in Paris. Peter Brook,
The Empty Space.
1969 Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature. U.S.A. lands men on the moon. Joe
Orton, What The Butler Saw. Death of
De Gaulle.
1970 Directs Krapp's Last Tape in Paris and David Storey, Home. Pinter, Old Times
Happy Days in Berlin. (1971).
1972 Premiere of Not I at Lincoln Center, U.S.A. troops leave Vietram. Stoppard
New York. The Lost Ones. Jumpers.
1974 Mercier and Camier. Stoppard. Travesties.
1975 Directs Warten auf Godot at Schiller Death of Thornton Wilder. Pinter No
Theater, Berlin. Man's Land. David Mamet, American
Buffalo.
1976 That Time and Footfalls (directed by National Theatre opens on the South
himself) open in London. Bank in London. Deaths of Andre
Malraux and Raymond Queneau.
1977 Ghost Trio and but the clouds
broadcast on BBC TV.
1978 Pinter, Betrayal.
1979 Directs Happy Days with Billie Soviets invade Afghanistan.
Whitelaw in London.
1980 A piece of Monologue plays in New Iraq invades Iran. Death of Sartre.
York. Company Pinter, The Hothouse.
1981 Mal Vu Mal Dit. Premiere of Rockaby Mitterand elected president of France.
in Buffalo, New York and Ohio Sadat assassinated; Mubarak president
Impromptu in Columbus, Ohio, Directs of Egypt. Nobel Prizc to Elias Canetti.
Quad on German television.

28
1982 Premiere of Catastrophe at Avignon Israel invades Lebanon. Falk land
Festival. Island war.
1983 Worstward Ho. Nacht und Traume. Thatcher begins second term as prime
Premiere of What Where in New York. minister Nobel prize to William
Golding. Death of Tenessee Williams.
1984 Collected Shorter Plays. Supervises Indira Gandhi assassinated. Regan re-
San Quentin Drama Woprkship elected. Death of Roger Blin. Britain
production of Waiting for Godot in approves Ulster pact.
London.
1985 Gorbachev General Secretary of
Communist Party in Soviet Union.
1986 Plays by Beckett performed at festivals Space shuttle Challenger explodes in
and conferences around the world to U.S.A. Pinter, One for the Road. Death
celebrate his 80th birthday. of Alan Schneider. Peter Brook's
production of the Mahabharata at
Avignon Festival.
1987 Waiting for Godot, directed by Michael Thatcher begins third term as prime
Rudman and starring Alec McCowen minister. Treaty on intermediate-range
and John Alderton plays at National weapons signed by the United States
Theatre, London. and the Soviet Union.
1988 L'Image published in Paris Waiting for Reagan and Gorbachev summit meeting
Godot, directed by Mike Nichols and in Moscow. Soviet troợp withdrawal
starring Steve Martin, Robin Williams, from Afghanistan. Cease-fire in war
F. Murray Abraham and Bill Irwin, between Iran and Iraq. Pinter, Mountain
plays at Lincoln Center in New York. Language.

December 1989 Death of Samuel Beckett.

29