The Plays of Samuel Beckett

Eugene Webb

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780295994352
• eBook ISBN: 9780295805283
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In The Plays of Samuel Beckett Eugene Webb first summarizes the western philosophical tradition which has culminated in the void--the centuries of attempts to impose form and meaning on existence, the failure of which has left experience in fragments and man a stranger in an unintelligible universe. Succeeding chapters take up the plays work by work, interpreting each individually and tracing recurrent motifs, themes, and images to show the continuity in the underlying tendencies of Beckett's mind and art.

NOTES

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

¹Matthew Arnold, “Preface to First Edition of Poems (1853),” On the Classical Tradition, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 2-3.

²Marjorie Hope Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960).

³Arnold, “Preface to First Edition,” p. 1.

⁴The opening line of the Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 689.

⁵Beckett studied French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin (B.A., 1929; M.A., 1931), and at one time intended to take up an academic career. His master’s thesis was on Descartes.

⁶See Ruby Cohn, “Philosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett,” in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Martin Esslin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1965), pp. 169-77.

⁷Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954), p. 41a. The play originally appeared in French as En attendant Godot (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1952) and was translated by the author himself. The Grove Press edition numbers only the left hand pages; to indicate that a quotation is from the right hand page, I will insert the letter “a” after the page number, as in this case. Subsequent page references will be given in parentheses.

⁸Aristotle, De Anima, in Basic Works, p. 553.

⁹Philip Wheelwright, ed. The Presocratics (New York: Odyssey Press, 1966), p. 70.

¹⁰Ibid, p. 71.

¹¹Ibid, p. 74.

¹²Ibid, p. 79.

¹³Ibid, p. 72.

¹⁴Samuel Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 70. The play originally appeared in French as Fin de partie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1957) and was translated by the author. Subsequent page references refer to the Grove Press edition and are given in parentheses.

¹⁵All of the above passages from Democritus may be found on pages 182-83 of Wheelwright, The Presocratics.

¹⁶Samuel Beckett, Murphy (New York: Grove Press, 1957), pp. 3-4. See William York Tindall, Samuel Beckett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 14.

¹⁷Samuel Beckett, Watt (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 34. See Tindall, Samuel Beckett, p. 20.

¹⁸Murphy, p. 47.

¹⁹Wheelwright, The Presocratics, p. 239.

²⁰See Eugene Webb, Samuel Beckett: A Study of His Novels (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970; London: Peter Owen, 1970); pp. 22-25.

²¹In Samuel Beckett, Poems in English (New York: Grove Press, 1961), pp. 11-17. See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 26-27.

²²See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 26-27, 44.

²³Berkeley is mentioned in Lucky’s speech in Waiting for Godot, p. 29, and the Berkeleian principle, “esse est percipi,” is cited by Beckett himself in the notes to Film, in Samuel Beckett, Cascando and Other Dramatic Works (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 75.

²⁴Purgatorio, canto IV. Beckett named the protagonist of his early collection of stories, More Pricks Than Kicks (London: Chatto and Windus, 1934), after this figure. See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 23, 44-45.

²⁵See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 24, 62-63.

²⁶The volumes of the trilogy originally appeared as Molloy (Paris, 1951), Malone meurt (Paris, 1951), and L’Innomable (Paris, 1953), and were all published by Éditions de Minuit. The English translations, all published by Grove Press, are Molloy (New York, 1955), Malone Dies (New York, 1956), and The Unnamable (New York, 1958). All translations are by Samuel Beckett himself except in the case of Molloy, which he translated in collaboration with Patrick Bowles.

²⁷David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 253.

²⁸See Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1932), pp. 52-55, 63.

²⁹The importance of atomism in our century is obvious. Hylozoism can be seen in recent attempts to trace all matter to a common origin in a single element, hydrogen for example, and in the close association between spirit and matter in a thinker like Teilhard de Chardin.

³⁰The Unnamable, p. 70.

³¹A chronology of Beckett’s works, giving both the dates of composition and the dates of publication (which sometimes differ considerably), may be found in Hugh Kenner, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study (New York: Grove Press, 1961; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 26-28.

³²Bram van Velde (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 13.

³³Ibid., p. 10.

³⁴Ibid., pp. 10-13.

³⁵Samuel Beckett as quoted in Tom F. Driver, “Beckett by the Madeleine,” Columbia University Forum, IV, no. 3 (Spring, 1961), 23.

³⁶Israel Shenker, “Moody Man of Letters,” ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• I Introduction: Beckett and the Philosophical Tradition of the Absurd
• II Waiting for Godot
• III All That Fall
• IV Endgame
• V Krapp’s Last Tape
• VI Embers
• VII Two Mimes: Act Without Words I and Act Without Words II
• VIII Happy Days
• IX Words and Music
• X Cascando
• XI Trios: Play and Come and Go
• XII Film
• XIII Eh Joe
• XIV A General View
• Notes
• List of First Performances
• Bibliography
• Index