20th Century Drama

Waiting for Godot

About the Author

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett was born near Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1906 into a

Protestant, middle class home. His father was a quantity surveyor and his

mother worked as a nurse. At the age of 14 he was sent to the same school

that Oscar Wilde attended .

Beckett is known to have commented, "I had little talent for happiness."

This was evidenced by his frequent bouts of depression, even as a young

man. He often stayed in bed until late in the afternoon and hated long

conversations. As a young poet he apparently rejected the advances of

James Joyce's daughter and then commented that he did not have feelings

that were human. This sense of depression would show up in much of his

writing, especially in Waiting for Godot where it is a struggle to get

through life .

Samuel Beckett moved to Paris in 1926 and met James Joyce. He soon

respected the older writer so much that at the age of 23 he wrote an essay

defending Joyce's magnum opus to the public. In 1927, one year later, he

won his first literary prize for his poem entitled "Whoroscope." The essay

was about the philosopher Descartes meditating on the subject of time and

about the transiency of life. Beckett then completed a study of Proust

which eventually led him to believe that habit was the "cancer of time." At

this point Beckett left his post at Trinity College and traveled .

Beckett journeyed through Ireland, France, England, and Germany and

continued to write poems and stories. It is likely that he met up with many

of the tramps and vagabonds who later emerged in his writing, such as the

two tramps Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. On his travels

through Paris Beckett would always visit with Joyce for long periods .

Beckett permanently made Paris his home in 1937. Shortly after moving

there, he was stabbed in the street by a man who had begged him for

money. He had to recover from a perforated lung in the hospital. Beckett

then went to visit his assailant, who remained in prison. When Beckett

demanded to know why the man had attacked him, he replied "Je ne sais

pas, Monsieur." This attitude about life comes across in several of the

author's later writings .

During World War II Beckett joined the underground movement in Paris

to resist the Germans. He remained in the resistance until 1942 when

several members of his group were arrested. Beckett was forced to flee

with his French-born wife to the unoccupied zone. He only returned in

1945 after Paris was liberated from the Germans. He soon reached the

pinnacle of his writing career, producing Waiting for Godot, Eleutheria,

Endgame, the novels Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and Mercier

et Camier, two books of short stories, and a book of criticism .

Samuel Beckett's first play was Eleutheria and involved a young man's

efforts to cut himself loose from his family and social obligations. This has

often been compared to Beckett's own search for freedom. Beckett's great

success came on January 5, 1953, when Waiting for Godot premiered at

the Theatre de Babylone. Although critics labeled the play "the strange

little play in which 'nothing happens,'" it gradually became a success as

reports of it spread through word of mouth. It eventually ran for four

hundred performances at the Theatre de Babylone and was heralded with

critical praise from dramatists such as Tennessee Williams, Jean Anouilh,

Thornton Wilder, and William Saroyan. Saroyan even remarked that, "It

will make it easier for me and everyone else to write freely in the theatre."

An interesting production of Waiting for Godot took place when some

actors from the San Francisco Actor's Workshop performed the play at the

San Quentin penitentiary for over fourteen hundred convicts in 1957. The

prisoners immediately identified with both Vladimir and Estragon about

the pains of waiting for life to end, and the struggle of the daily existence.

The production was perhaps the most successful ever. Beckett's second

masterpiece. Endgame, premiered on April 3, 1957 at the Royal Court

Theatre in London .

All of Beckett's major works were written in French. He believed that

French forced him to be more disciplined and to use the language more

9wisely. However, Waiting for Godot was eventually translated into the

English by Beckett himself .

Samuel Beckett also became one of the first absurdist playwrites to win

international fame. His works have been translated into over twenty

languages. In 1969 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the

few times this century that almost everyone agreed the recipient deserved

it. He continued to write until his death in 1989, but towards the end he

remarked that each word seemed to him "an unnecessary stain on silence

""and nothingness"