Beckett: the Endgame and its Dramaturgy

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Writing Skislls II               Termpaper  I    Dominique Nagpal Tooher     04-132-833      19.04.2005

Beckett:the Endgame  and its Dramaturgy

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett is often classified amongst Absurdist Theatre contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Jean Genet, and Eugene Ionesco (Brockett 392-395). However, Endgame, Beckett’s second play, relates more closely to the theatrical ideology of German playwright Bertolt Brecht, founder of epic theatre and the alienation effect. Through the use of formal stage conventions, theatrical terminology, and allusions to Shakespearean texts within Endgame, Beckett employs Brecht’s alienation concept, distancing the audience empathetically from players of the game and instead focusing attention upon the game itself.

Bertolt Brecht, whose final work, Galileo, was last revised three years before Beckett published Endgame, was personally and professionally influenced by Marxist theory and the political events which plagued the middle of this century. According to drama anthologist Oscar G. Brockett, Brecht asserted that theatre must do more than simply entertain the passive spectator; theatre must recognize and incite change. Brecht suggested a system of "productive participation, in which the spectator actively judges and applies what he sees on stage to conditions outside the theatre" (365-366). Brecht’s alienation effect was a direct means of evoking this participation—the audience is emotionally distanced from characters to allow objective observation. "The audience should never be allowed to confuse what it sees on the stage with reality. Rather the play must always be thought of as a comment upon life— something to be watched and judged critically" (Brockett 366).

Samuel Beckett distances the audience from his comment on life through constant reminders that his staged play is merely a staged play. Through the dialogue of Hamm, Beckett directly implores the audience to be objective onlookers to the absurd tale of Endgame. Hamm ponders: "Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn’t he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough?" The stage directions prescribe he continue in the "voice of rational being." "Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they’re at" (Beckett 33). The audience is called to step away from the stage, to recognize the emotion-blocking proscenium between themselves and the text’s four characters. The audience must realize that it is from another time and place—reality. The reality proscenium is enforced through theatrical references and techniques throughout the play.

For example, despite the minimalist set used in Endgame, Beckett employs the formal convention of a rising curtain during Clov’s opening dramatic action. The text indicates that the initial movement involve the set’s two windows. By purposefully acknowledging their existence, Clov unveils to the audience the characters’ limited eyes to the outside world. Clov then continues to raise the curtain on each of the characters. He removes the sheets from each bin and examines its contents. Finally, Clov pulls the sheets from atop Hamm, leaving only the handkerchief upon his face (Beckett 1). Through one paragraph of stage directions, the stage has amply been set before the audience’s rationally onlooking eyes.

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Though not segmentally indicated in the text, the first two monologues, shared between Clov and Hamm, serve the formal function of prologue to Endgame. After undressing the stage, Clov "turns towards auditorium" to address the onlookers. "Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished" he promises them. Clov then begins to explain his situational context to the audience of outsiders. Hamm interrupts Clov’s storytelling with his exclamation, "Me—(he yawns)—to play" and continues the prologue by himself (Beckett 1-2). Beckett’s indirect use of a prologue reflects a theatrical introduction convention which began in early Greek drama. The prologue ...

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