WAITING FOR

GODOT
Samuel Beckett
Sipra Mukherjee Course 202 401 West Bengal State University

 Esslin felt Becketts plays were the articulation of Camus concept of the Absurd This led to the belief in Becketts (and Camus) existentialism Though it appears too simplistic to straitjacket Beckett/Camus into Existentialism only.

References in Becketts play to the times include allusions to the

religious, philosophical, classical, historical (e.g. colonisation), psychoanalytical and biographical (especially wartime )

who may tell the tale of the old man? weigh absence in a scale? mete want with a span? the sum assess of the world's woes? nothingness in words enclose?
From Watt (1953)

The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos. Tragicomedy appears to be the only way to portray the condition of humanity

"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness ... it's the most comical thing in the world Nell, Endgame Absurdist dramatists reveal a debt to Shakespeare (Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Ionescos Macbett)

Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times review aptly calls Becketts play an acrid cartoon of the story of mankind.

Structural conveniences include:

ritualistic aspects, elements from broad comedy, similar to vaudeville , Commedia dellarte, early film comedians and music hall artists elements from horrific or tragic images, characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichs, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive.

as an experimental form of theatre

Absurdists used techniques from the 19th-century nonsense poets, such as Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear and others; Bertolt Brecht's alienation techniques in his "Epic theatre" and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg

Samuel Beckett is sui generis...He has given a voice to the decrepit and maimed and inarticulate, men and women at the end of their tether, past pose or pretense, past claim of meaningful existence. He seems to say that only there and then, as metabolism lowers, amid Gods paucity, not his plenty, can the core of the human condition be approached... Yet his musical cadences, his wrought and precise sentences, cannot help but stave off the void... Like salamanders we survive in his fire. - Richard Ellman

 The bowler hats and other broadly comic aspects of their personas have reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy, who occasionally played tramps in their films. "The hat-passing game in Waiting For Godot and Lucky's inability to think without his hat on are two obvious Beckett derivations from Laurel and Hardy - a substitution of form for essence, covering for reality."

LAUREL AND HARDY- with their bowler hats

Vivian Mercier described the play as having "... achieved a theoretical impossibilitya play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." (Irish Times, 18 February 1956).

 In Irish Gaelic, "go deo" means both "forever", and "a very long time (Beckett mentions the name of a French cyclist, Christian name uncertain, surname Godeau,) Beckett said the word Godot suggested itself to him by the slang word for boot in French, godillot, godasse because feet play such a prominent role in the play.

GODOT ???

acknowledgment of deeper meanings of GODOT

"It would be fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the meanings attached to the word 'Godot', and the opinion of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it." This is an interesting remark, especially considering that "Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being 'in a trance' when he writes.

setting of play

The minimal description calls to mind "the idea of the lieu vague, a location which should not be particularised". feel Godot needs a very closed box." (when a circus-ring was suggested) contemplated at one point having a "faint shadow of bars on stage floor" but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called "explicitation"

Accusations of obscurity/difficulty minimalism in language, settings, experimental use of language, questioning the very power/role of language, Aggravated by the philosophy which his works articulated

Obscurity a contentious feature of avant garde art and academia

waiting for godot

nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes

concept of time cyclical in play

Harold Pinter

Frequently commented on the irrelevancy of everyday speech.

inspiration for waiting for godot

'This was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know. Beckett to Ruby Cohn about the paintings by Friedrich that inspired him.

Two men contemplating the moon by Caspar David Friedrich

Moonwatchers, by Caspar David Friedrich

productions of play
One particularly significant staging was inside the Lttringhausen Prison near Wuppertal in Germany. In October 1954 Beckett received a letter from an inmate of the prison : "You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps." An inmate had obtained a copy of the French first edition, translated it into German and obtained permission to stage the play.

2009 set

From 'Worstword Ho' by Samuel Beckett

Beckett walking with a friend across a soccer field on a sunny afternoon, heading for a pub: Beckett: "It's a beautiful day, isn't it? The friend: "Yes, it makes one glad to be alive. Beckett: "Aw now, I wouldn't go that far.."

an anecdote

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAnixqo-ENc