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L A N D M A R K S O F W O R L D L I T E R AT U R E
Beckett Waiting for Godot
L A N D M A R K S O F W O R L D L I T E R AT U R E SECOND EDITIONS Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji – Richard Bowring Aeschylus: The Oresteia – Simon Goldhill Virgil: The Aeneid – K. W. Gransden, new edition edited by S. J. Harrison Homer: The Odyssey – Jasper Griffin Dante: The Divine Comedy – Robin Kirkpatrick Milton: Paradise Lost – David Loewenstein Camus: The Stranger – Patrick McCarthy Joyce: Ulysses – Vincent Sherry Homer: The Iliad – Michael Silk Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales – Winthrop Wetherbee Shakespeare: Hamlet – Paul A. Cantor Beckett: Waiting for Godot – Lawrence Graver
SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot L AW R E N C E G R AV E R Professor of English, Williams College
cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521840040 © Cambridge University Press 1989, 2004 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 isbn-13 isbn-10
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For Suzanne
Contents
Preface page ix Chronology x
1
En attendant Godot/Waiting for Godot: genesis and reception 1 1 Beckett at the beginning 1 2 Paris 1946–8 6 3 Godot in Paris, London and New York
2
Approaching the play 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
3
8
19 The drama of unknowingness 19 The caged dynamic 22 Rituals and routines 32 ‘Godet . . . Godot . . . Godin . . . anyhow you see who I mean?’ 38 Pozzo and Lucky 44 Lucky’s ‘think’ 45 Enter the Boy 50 Act I/Act II – ‘nothing happens, twice’ 54 Pozzo redux 62 Vladimir’s soliloquy, the Boy again, the close of the play 65
Godot in French and in English
70
vii
viii
4
Contents
The presence of Godot: the play in the contemporary theatre and elsewhere 79 14 The growing myth of Godot 79 15 Godot and the popular imagination 16 Godot and the contemporary theatre
Guide to further reading
103
85 86
Preface
Anyone who writes about Waiting for Godot becomes a participant in an international critical colloquium that has been in session uninterruptedly since 1953. My specific debts are noted in the text and bibliography, but I want here to acknowledge how much my own thinking about the play has been continually shaped by the work of Ruby Cohn, Colin Duckworth, John Fletcher, Martin Esslin, Hugh Kenner, and James Knowlson. To four readers of this essay, I owe very special thanks: my wife and colleague, Suzanne, who has always been my most devoted and discriminating critic; my daughter, Elizabeth, whose keen intelligence and fine French improved the text at many points; my friend and colleague, John Reichert, who made better sense of literature than most people; and Peter Stern, friend and editor, who encouraged this study and gave it a won