Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

by Samuel Beckett

Overview

Performed across the globe by some of the world's most iconic performers, Samuel Beckett's indelible masterpiece remains an unwavering testament of what it means to be human.

From an inauspicious beginning at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone in 1953, followed by bewilderment among American and British audiences, Waiting for Godot has become of the most important and enigmatic plays of the past fifty years and a cornerstone of twentieth-century drama. As Clive Barnes wrote, “Time catches up with genius … Waiting for Godot is one of the masterpieces of the century.”

The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802144423
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/17/2011
Series:	Beckett, Samuel
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.26(h) x 0.27(d)

About the Author

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), one of the leading literary and dramatic figures of the twentieth century, was born in Foxrock, Ireland and attended Trinity Universityin Dublin. In 1928, he visited Paris for the first time and fell in with a number of avant-garde writers and artists, including James Joyce. In 1937, he settled in Paris permanently. Beckett wrote in both English and French, though his best-known works are mostly in the latter language. A prolific writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, he is remembered principally for his works for the theater, which belong to the tradition of the Theater of the Absurd and are characterized by their minimalist approach, stripping drama to its barest elements. In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and commended for having "transformed the destitution of man into his exaltation." Beckett died in Paris in 1989.

At the age of seventy-six he said: "With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence... the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is. Even though everything seems inexpressible, there remains the need to express. A child need to make a sand castle even though it makes no sense. In old age, with only a few grains of sand, one has the greatest possibility." (from Playwrights at Work, ed. by George Plimpton, 2000)

What People are Saying About This

Eric Bentley

"it is the quintessence of 'extentialism.'..."

Norman Mailer

"It is possible that consciously or unconsciously Beckett is restating the moral and sexual basis of Christianity which was lost with Christ..."

G. S. Fraser

"Waiting for Godot.. is a modern moraliyt play, on permanent themes."

Editorial Reviews

"...one of the most noble and moving plays of our generation, a threnody of hope decieved and deferred but never extinguished; a play suffused with tenderness for the whole human perplexity; with phrases that come like a sharp stab of beauty and pain."

The London Times