Waiting for Godot : Samuel Beckett

Lucky’s hat at same place.The tree has four or five leaves.Enter Vladimir agitatedly. He halts and looks long at the tree, then suddenly begins to move feverishly about the stage. He halts before the boots, picks one up, examines it, sniffs it, manifests disgust, puts it back carefully. Comes and goes. Halts extreme right and gazes into distance off, shading his eyes with his hand. Comes and goes. Halts extreme left, as before. Comes and goes. Halts suddenly and begins to sing loudly.

He stops, broods. Softly.

And dug the dog a tomb . . .

He remains a moment silent and motionless, then begins to move feverishly about the stage. He halts before the tree, comes and goes, before the boots, comes and goes, halts extreme right, gazes into distance, extreme left, gazes into distance. Enter Estragon right, barefoot, head bowed. He slowly crosses the stage. Vladimir turns and sees him.

VLADIMIR: You again! (Estragon halts but does not raise his head. Vladimir goes towards him.) Come here till I embrace you.

ESTRAGON:Don’t touch me!Vladimir holds back, pained.

VLADIMIR:Do you want me to go away? (Pause.) Gogo! (Pause. Vladimir observes him attentively.) Did they beat you? (Pause.) Gogo! (Estragon remains silent, head bowed.) Where did you spend the night?

ESTRAGON: Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!

VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?

ESTRAGON: You let me go.

VLADIMIR:Look at me. (Estragon does not raise his head. Violently.) Will you look at me!Estragon raises his head. They look long at each other, then suddenly embrace, clapping each other on the back. End of the embrace. Estragon, no longer supported, almost falls.

ESTRAGON: What a day!

VLADIMIR: Who beat you? Tell me.

ESTRAGON: Another day done with.

VLADIMIR: Not yet.

ESTRAGON: For me it’s over and done with, no matter what happens. (Silence.) I heard you singing.

VLADIMIR: That’s right, I remember.

ESTRAGON: That finished me. I said to myself, He’s all alone, he thinks I’m gone for ever, and he sings.

VLADIMIR: One is not master of one’s moods. All day I’ve felt in great form. (Pause.) I didn’t get up in the night, not once!

ESTRAGON: (sadly). You see, you piss better when I’m not there.

VLADIMIR: I missed you . . . and at the same time I was happy. Isn’t that a strange thing?

ESTRAGON: (shocked). Happy?

VLADIMIR: Perhaps it’s not quite the right word.

ESTRAGON: And now?

VLADIMIR: Now? . . . (Joyous.) There you are again . . . (Indifferent.) There we are again. . . (Gloomy.) There I am again.

ESTRAGON: You see, you feel worse when I’m with you. I feel better alone too.

VLADIMIR:(vexed). Then why do you always come crawling back?ESTRAGON: I don’t know.

VLADIMIR: No, but I do. It’s because you don’t know how to defend yourself. I wouldn’t have let them beat you.

ESTRAGON: You couldn’t have stopped them.

VLADIMIR: Why not?

ESTRAGON: There was ten of them.

VLADIMIR: No, I mean before they beat you. I would have stopped you from doing whatever it was you were doing.

ESTRAGON: I wasn’t doing anything.

VLADIMIR: Then why did they beat you?

ESTRAGON:I  don’t know.

VLADIMIR: Ah no, Gogo, the truth is there are things that escape you that don’t escape me, you must feel it yourself.

ESTRAGON:I tell you I wasn’t doing anything.

VLADIMIR:Perhaps you weren’t. But it’s the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living.

ESTRAGON: I  wasn’t doing anything.

VLADIMIR: ou must be happy too, deep down, if you only knew it.

ESTRAGON: Happy about what?

VLADIMIR: To be back with me again.

ESTRAGON: Would you say so?

VLADIMIR: Say you are, even if it’s not true.

ESTRAGON: What am I to say?

VLADIMIR: Say, I am happy.

ESTRAGON: I am happy.

VLADIMIR:So am I.

ESTRAGON:So am I.

VLADIMIR:We are happy.

ESTRAGON:We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy?

VLADIMIR: Wait for Godot. (Estragon groans. Silence.) Things have changed here since yesterday.

ESTRAGON: And if he doesn’t come?

VLADIMIR:(after a moment of bewilderment). We’ll see when the time comes. (Pause.) I was saying that things have changed here since yesterday.

 

(…)

Waiting for Godot (Act 2) 

Waiting for Godot  is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. Godot’s absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play’s 1953 premiere. It was voted “the most significant English language play of the 20th century”.Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s translation of his own original French version, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) “a tragicomedy in two acts”. The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. The première was on 5 January 1953 in the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. 

TV production from 1961, starring Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel.

Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906 – 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomicoutlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.

Selected works by Beckett

Dramatic works

Theatre Human Wishes (c. 1936; published 1984) Eleutheria (written 1947 in French; published in French 1995, and English 1996) En attendant Godot (published 1952, performed,1953) (Waiting for Godot, pub.1954, perf. 1955)[57] Acte sans Paroles I (1956); Act Without Words I (1957) Acte sans Paroles II (1956); Act Without Words II (1957) Fin de partie (published 1957); Endgame (published 1957) Krapp’s Last Tape (first performed 1958) Fragment de théâtre I (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre I Fragment de théâtre II (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre II Happy Days (first performed 1961); Oh les beaux jours(published 1963) Play (performed in German, as Spiel, 1963; English version 1964) Come and Go (first performed in German, then English, 1966) Breath (first performed 1969) Not I (first performed 1972) That Time (first performed 1976) Footfalls (first performed 1976) Neither (1977) (An “opera”, music by Morton Feldman) A Piece of Monologue (first performed 1979) Rockaby (first performed 1981) Ohio Impromptu (first performed 1981) Catastrophe (Catastrophe et autres dramatiques, first performed 1982) What Where (first performed 1983)

Radio All That Fall (broadcast 1957) From an Abandoned Work (broadcast 1957) Embers (broadcast 1959) Rough for Radio I (published 1976) (written in French in 1961 as Esquisse radiophonique) Rough for Radio II (published 1976) (written in French in 1961 as Pochade radiophonique) Words and Music (broadcast 1962) Cascando (broadcast:1963 French version; 1964 English translation) Television Eh Joe with Jack MacGowran (broadcast 1966)[58] Beginning To End with Jack MacGowran (1965) Ghost Trio (broadcast 1977) … but the clouds … (broadcast 1977) Quad I + II (broadcast 1981) Nacht und Träume (broadcast 1983); Night and Dreams, published 1984 Beckett Directs Beckett (1988/92) Cinema Film (1965)

Prose

Novels Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written 1932; published 1992) Murphy (1938); 1947 Beckett’s French version Watt (1953); 1968, Beckett’s French version Molloy (1951); English version (1955) Malone meurt (1951); Malone Dies (1956) L’innommable (1953); The Unnamable (1958) Comment c’est (1961); How It Is (1964) Mercier and Camier (1970); English translation (1974) Short prose More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) “L’Expulsé”, written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien(1955); “The Expelled” Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)[59] “Le Calmant”, written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien(1955); “The Calmative”, Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967) “Le Fin” or “Suite”, written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); “The End”, Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967) “Texts for Nothing”, translated into French for Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); Stories and Texts for Nothing(1967)[60] “L’Image” (1959) a fragment from Comment c’est [61] ‘”Premier Amour” (1970, written 1946); translated by Beckett as “First Love“, 1973[57] Le Dépeupleur (1970); The Lost Ones (1971) Pour finir encore et autres foirades (1976); For to End Yet Again and Other Fizzles (1976) Company (1980) Mal vu mal dit (1981); Ill Seen Ill Said (1982) Worstward Ho (1983) “Stirrings Still” (1988) “As the Story was Told” (1990) The Complete Short Prose: 1929-1989, ed S. E. Gontarski. New York: Grove Press, 1995

Non-fiction Dante…Bruno. Vico..Joyce (1929) Proust (1931) Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) (1949) Disjecta (1929–1967)

Poetry collections Whoroscope (1930) Echo’s Bones and other Precipitates (1935) Poems in English (1961) Poèmes (1968) Collected Poems in English and French (1977) What is the Word (1989) Selected Poems 1930–1989 (2009)

Translation collections and long works Anna Livia Plurabelle (James Joyce, French translation by Beckett and others) (1931) Negro: an Anthology (Nancy Cunard, editor) (1934) Anthology of Mexican Poems (Octavio Paz, editor) (1958) The Old Tune (Robert Pinget) (1963) What Is Surrealism?: Selected Essays (André Breton) (various short pieces in the collection)

source wikipedia.com