Beckett, Samuel

Beckett, Samuel (1906–89), Irishman resident in Paris from 1938, who wrote mainly in French and in 1969 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was already well known as a novelist when his first play, En attendant Godot, was produced by Roger Blin in 1953. Two years later it was seen in London, in the author's own translation, as Waiting for Godot (NY, with Bert Lahr, 1956). In it Beckett abandoned conventional structure and development both in plot and language, creating a situation in which two tramps, indecisive and incapable of action, suffer and wait hopefully for help which never comes. The play is considered one of the masterpieces of the Theatre of the Absurd. In 1957 came Fin de partie, in which a blind man sits in an empty room flanked by two old people in dustbins; it had its first performance in London. An English version, as Endgame, was produced in London in 1958 (NY, 1958), accompanied by Krapp's Last Tape (NY, 1960), a monologue originally written in English, in which an old man listens uncomprehendingly to recordings he made as a youth; it was produced in Paris as La Dernière Bande (1960). Oh! les beaux jours (Happy Days), virtually a monologue for an actress progressively buried in the earth until only her head remains visible, had its first production in New York in 1961. In 1962 it was seen in London, where it was also played in French by Madeleine Renaud (1965). Comédie (Play), first produced in Germany in 1963 (Paris, London, and NY, 1964), had three characters, again only heads protruding from urns, and their short dialogue was repeated da capo. In this and in his later plays, including Va et vient (Come and Go, 1966; London, 1970; NY, 1975), Breath (1969), which lasts about 30 seconds, beginning with the cry of a newborn child and ending with the last gasp of a dying man, and Not I (1971; NY, 1972; London, 1973), featuring only a mouth, Beckett moved further and further away from conventional theatre. The trend continued in his brief final works such as Footfalls (1975), about a sleepless woman, and Rockaby (1981), about an old one, both written for Billie Whitelaw, his leading British interpreter. In any critical assessment of Beckett's work his radio plays—All that Fall, Embers, Words and Music, and Cascando—and particularly his novels, must also be taken into account.