Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:48:52.098Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Waiting for Godot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2010

Get access

Summary

It is not surprising that fourteen hundred convicts of San Quentin penitentiary responded enthusiastically to a performance of Beckett's play (in 1957) – completely strange yet meaningful to them. They could draw on their own experience of waiting, the empty kind of waiting where ‘nothing to think about’ is a permanent threat, and every happening offers both a promise and a disillusioning repetition of the daily round. They also had fewer preconceptions about what constitutes a well-plotted play than did the literary and theatre-going public of the time.

We are not in the situation of the prisoners of San Quentin; and the risk, in our time and especially for the new reader, is a secondhand or learned response to a ‘great modern classic’ (an examination set book), over-burdened with often far-fetched commentary. The best starting point for critical discussion is still the immediate experience of the play, guided by searching questions concerning both the text and its context. The stage is almost empty, stripped, as hardly ever since Shakespeare, to present only the bare boards and one tree, which can suggest almost anything from the tree of life to all that is left of ‘Nature in a deserted and desolate landscape. The stage is the stage, it is also a road. (It could be a round stage suggesting the circus, but the stage directions do not ask for that.) The opening sequence defines the situation of Vladimir and Estragon clearly enough for a play that is to use ‘uncertainty’ as an element of composition.

Type
Chapter
Information
Samuel Beckett , pp. 24 - 46
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×