Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191614 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Customer Reviews

It doesn't get much better than this.
Samuel Beckett, Endgame, A Play in One Act, Followed by Act Without Words, A Mime for One Player (Grove, 1958)

Samuel Beckett's plays are known for being obtuse while entertaining; Endgame is no different where this is concerned, but it is also arguably his most powerful work. We are presented with four characters, three of whom cannot move and one of whom cannot stop moving, in a relentlessly bleak landscape that, while it is never explicitly stated, seems to be post-apocalyptic. It is possible that these four are the last people left alive on earth, and their collective health is failing. Beckett uses this absurd, if gripping, mise en scene to reflect not only on both the banal and the dramatic in interpersonal relationships, but on how screwed up the world is in general. What caused these four people to be the last on Earth? And are they, in fact, the last on Earth in a literal sense, or is it just that they have become so isolated the rest of the world has forgotten about them? And can we (and the other characters) trust anything that Clov, the sole character capable of movement, is telling them? We get no answers; we are expected to supply them ourselves, of course.

Endgame is, in this volume, followed by Act Without Words, a behaviorist melodrama taken to absurd extremes, with one man in a desert setting unable to reach a carafe of water that is dangled (presumably, by a supreme being) just out of his reach, despite objects being delivered to him that should by rights help him reach it. As with most of Beckett's work (much of which, by the way, can be found free online at samuel-beckett.net, including the entire texts of these two plays), the comic and the tragic (or, I should say in this case, the endlessly frustrating) blend marvelously into one ugly morass of emotion. Great stuff, this. ****

Review from a Beckett lover who was sadly disappointed
Beckett's literature can so often be prided on portraying the struggle of the pointlessness of existence versus the hope that is created by the denial that all humans are immersed in. This play is a certain exception.

All hope in Beckett's theatre is ironic and only meant to be seen as a bi-product of human desperation, however this ironic hope is the element of his plays that make them relevant to the human condition. The lack of this hope in endgame is what means this play is simply unhuman.

In 'Waiting for Godot' the flimsy pathetic hope is generated by the idea that Godot will eventually turn up. In 'Endgame' there is no hope for the future of any kind seen in any of the characters. The only any way upbeat contributions come from Nagg and Nell's memories which are irrelevant to their current situation and even more irrelevant to their future (reinforced by the death of one of them).

This play is a pale shadow of 'Waiting for Godot' and it is 'Waiting for Godot' I would recommend as more relevant to what Beckett had to say as well as some other plays from his collected works such as 'Krapp's last tape' 'Ohio inpromptu' or 'Rockaby'

"Endgame" - Ghastly!
"Endgame" is a crude and despicable play. It's not a classic and a pitiable excuse of a play. Utterly useless and does not deserve our time. The characters are one dimensional, lacking, and unrealistic. The plot is morally confusing and worthless. I do not recommend.