Waiting For Godo
[edit] History
Poster for a 2003 production of Waiting for Godot
“[i]t was Beckett’s escape from the increasingly despotic interiority of the fictional trilogy; in Beckett’s own phrasing, ‘I began to write Godot as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.’”[4] It was inspired, according to Beckett himself, by a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Ruby Cohn recalls seeing the painting, Man and Woman Observing the Moon of 1824, along with Beckett who “announced unequivocally, ‘This was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know.’”[5] “He may well have confused two paintings. For, at other times, he drew the attention of friends to Two Men Contemplating the Moon from 1819, in which two men dressed in cloaks and viewed from the rear are looking at a full moon framed by the black branches of a large, leafless tree.”[6] In either case both paintings are similar enough that what he attested to could apply equally to either.
“[O]n 17th February 1952 … an abridged version of the play was performed in the studio of the Club d’Essai de la Radio and was broadcast on [French] radio … [A]lthough he sent a polite note that Roger Blin read out, Beckett himself did not turn up.”[7] Part of his introduction reads:
I don’t know who Godot is. I don’t even know (above all don’t know) if he exists. And I don’t know if they believe in him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony. All I knew I showed. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me, by a wide margin. I’ll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it must be possible … Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand. Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are through with each other.[8] The Minuit edition appeared in print on 17th October 1952 in advance of the play’s first full theatrical performance. On January 4th 1953, “[t]hirty reviewers came to the générale of En attendant Godot before the public opening … Contrary to later legend, the reviewers were kind … Some dozen reviews in daily newspapers range[d] from tolerant to enthusiastic ... Reviews in the weeklies [were] longer and more fervent; moreover, they appeared in time to lure spectators to that first thirty-day run”[9] which began on 5th January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. Early public performances were not, however, without incident: during one performance “the curtain had to be brought down after Lucky’s monologue as twenty, well-dressed, but disgruntled spectators whistled and hooted derisively … One of the protestors [even] wrote a vituperative letter dated 2nd February 1953 to Le Monde.”[10]
En attendant Godot - Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1952. First trade edition.
The cast comprised Pierre Latour (Estragon), Lucien Raimbourg (Vladimir), Jean Martin (Lucky) and Roger Blin (Pozzo). The actor due to play Pozzo found a more remunerative role and so the director – a shy, lean man in real life – had to step in and play the stout bombaster himself with a pillow amplifying his stomach. Both boys were played by Serge Lecointe. The entire production was done on the thinnest of shoestring budgets; the large battered valise that Martin carried “was found among the city’s refuse by the husband of the theatre dresser on his rounds as he worked clearing the dustbins,”[11] for example.
A particularly significant production – from Beckett’s perspective – took place in Lüttringhausen Prison near Wuppertal in Germany. An inmate obtained a copy of the French first edition, translated it himself into German and obtained permission to stage the play. The first night had been on 29th November 1953. He wrote to Beckett in October 1954: “You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting … and waiting … and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps.”[12] Beckett was intensely moved and intended to visit the prison to see a last performance of the play but it never happened. This marked “the beginning of Beckett’s enduring links with prisons and prisoners … He took a tremendous interest in productions of his plays performed in prisons … He [even] gave [Rick Cluchey] a former prisoner from San Quentin financial and moral support over a period of many years.”[13] Cluchey played Vladimir in two productions in the former Gallows room of the San Quentin California State Prison, which had been converted into a 65-seat theatre and, like the German prisoner before him, went on to work on a variety of Beckett’s plays after his release.
The English-language premiere was on 3rd August 1955 at the Arts Theatre, London, directed by the 24-year-old Peter Hall Again, the printed version preceded it (New York: Grove Press, 1954) but Faber’s “mutilated” edition did not materialise until 1956. A “corrected” edition was subsequently produced in 1965. “The most accurate text is in Theatrical Notebooks I, (Ed.) Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson (Faber and Grove, 1993). It is based on Beckett’s revisions for his Schiller-Theatre production (1975) and the London San Quentin Drama Workshop, based on the Schiller production but revised further at the Riverside Studios (March 1984).”[14]
Like all of Beckett’s translations, Waiting for Godot is not simply a transliteration of En attendant Godot. “Small but significant differences separate the French and English text. Some, like Vladimir’s inability to remember the farmer’s name (Bonnelly[15]), show how the translation became more indefinite, attrition and loss of memory more pronounced.”[16] A number of biographical details were removed, all adding to a general “vaguening”[17] of the text which he continued to trim for the rest of his life.
In the nineteen-fifties, theatre was strictly censored in the UK, to Beckett's amazement since he thought it a bastion of free speech. The Lord Chamberlain insisted that the word "erection" be removed, “‘Fartov’ became ‘Popov’ and Mrs Gozzo had ‘warts’ instead of ‘clap’”.[18] Indeed, there were attempts to ban the play completely. For example, Lady Dorothy Howitt wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, saying: "One of the many themes running through the play is the desire of two old tramps continually to relieve themselves. Such a dramatisation of lavatory necessities is offensive and against all sense of British decency."[19] “The first unexpurgated version of Godot in England … opened at the Royal Court on 30th December 1964.”[20]
The London run was not without incident. The actor Peter Bull, who played Pozzo, recalls the reaction of that first night audience:
“Waves of hostility came whirling over the footlights, and the mass exodus, which was to form such a feature of the run of the piece, started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting … The curtain fell to mild applause, we took a scant three calls (Peter Woodthorpe reports only one curtain call[21]) and a depression and a sense of anti-climax descended on us all.”[22] The critics were less than unkind but “[e]verything changed on Sunday 7th August 1955 with Kenneth Tynan’s and Harold Hobson’s reviews in The Observer and The Sunday Times. Beckett was always grateful to the two reviewers for their support … which more or less transformed the play overnight into the rage of London.”[23] “At the end of the year, the Evening Standard Drama Awards were held for the first time ... Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if Godot won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. Godot became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since.”[24]
Beckett resisted offers to film the play, although it was televised in his lifetime. When Keep Films made Beckett an offer to film an adaptation in which Peter O’Toole would feature, Beckett tersely told his French publisher to advise them: “I do not want a film of Godot.”[25] The BBC broadcast a production of Waiting for Godot on 26th June 1961, a version for radio having already been transmitted on 25th April 1960. Beckett watched the programme with a few close friends in Peter Woodthorpe’s Chelsea flat. He was unhappy with what he saw. “My play,” he said, “wasn’t written for this box. My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you’re all too big for the place.”[26]
Although not his favourite amongst his plays – perhaps because of the way it came to overshadow everything else he wrote – it was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held a special place in his affections. “When the manuscript and rare books dealer, Henry Wenning, asked him if he could sell the original French manuscript for him, Beckett replied: ‘Rightly or wrongly have decided not to let Godot go yet. Neither sentimental nor financial, probably peak of market now and never such an offer. Can’t explain.’”[27]
[edit] Setting
There is only one scene throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a country road by a skeletal tree. The script calls for Estragon to sit on a low mound but in practice – as in Beckett’s own 1975 German production – this is usually a stone. In the first act the tree is bare. In the second, although the script specifies it is the next day, a few leaves have appeared. The minimal description calls to mind “the idea of the ‘lieu vague’, a location which should not be particularised”.[28]
Alan Schneider once suggested putting the play on in a round – Pozzo has often been commented on as a ringmaster[29] – but Beckett dissuaded him: “I don’t in my ignorance agree with the round and feel Godot needs a very closed box.” He once even contemplated at one point have “faint shadow of bars on stage floor” but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called “explicitation”. (See Beckett in Berlin) In his 1975 Schiller-Theatre production there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something “like birds trapped in the strands of a[n invisible] net”, to use James Knowlson’s description. Didi and Gogo are only trapped because they still cling to the concept that freedom is possible; freedom is a state of mind, so is imprisonment.
]
.
]
Poster for a 2003 production of Waiting for Godot
“[i]t was Beckett’s escape from the increasingly despotic interiority of the fictional trilogy; in Beckett’s own phrasing, ‘I began to write Godot as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.’”[4] It was inspired, according to Beckett himself, by a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Ruby Cohn recalls seeing the painting, Man and Woman Observing the Moon of 1824, along with Beckett who “announced unequivocally, ‘This was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know.’”[5] “He may well have confused two paintings. For, at other times, he drew the attention of friends to Two Men Contemplating the Moon from 1819, in which two men dressed in cloaks and viewed from the rear are looking at a full moon framed by the black branches of a large, leafless tree.”[6] In either case both paintings are similar enough that what he attested to could apply equally to either.
“[O]n 17th February 1952 … an abridged version of the play was performed in the studio of the Club d’Essai de la Radio and was broadcast on [French] radio … [A]lthough he sent a polite note that Roger Blin read out, Beckett himself did not turn up.”[7] Part of his introduction reads:
I don’t know who Godot is. I don’t even know (above all don’t know) if he exists. And I don’t know if they believe in him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony. All I knew I showed. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me, by a wide margin. I’ll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it must be possible … Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand. Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are through with each other.[8] The Minuit edition appeared in print on 17th October 1952 in advance of the play’s first full theatrical performance. On January 4th 1953, “[t]hirty reviewers came to the générale of En attendant Godot before the public opening … Contrary to later legend, the reviewers were kind … Some dozen reviews in daily newspapers range[d] from tolerant to enthusiastic ... Reviews in the weeklies [were] longer and more fervent; moreover, they appeared in time to lure spectators to that first thirty-day run”[9] which began on 5th January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. Early public performances were not, however, without incident: during one performance “the curtain had to be brought down after Lucky’s monologue as twenty, well-dressed, but disgruntled spectators whistled and hooted derisively … One of the protestors [even] wrote a vituperative letter dated 2nd February 1953 to Le Monde.”[10]
En attendant Godot - Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1952. First trade edition.
The cast comprised Pierre Latour (Estragon), Lucien Raimbourg (Vladimir), Jean Martin (Lucky) and Roger Blin (Pozzo). The actor due to play Pozzo found a more remunerative role and so the director – a shy, lean man in real life – had to step in and play the stout bombaster himself with a pillow amplifying his stomach. Both boys were played by Serge Lecointe. The entire production was done on the thinnest of shoestring budgets; the large battered valise that Martin carried “was found among the city’s refuse by the husband of the theatre dresser on his rounds as he worked clearing the dustbins,”[11] for example.
A particularly significant production – from Beckett’s perspective – took place in Lüttringhausen Prison near Wuppertal in Germany. An inmate obtained a copy of the French first edition, translated it himself into German and obtained permission to stage the play. The first night had been on 29th November 1953. He wrote to Beckett in October 1954: “You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting … and waiting … and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps.”[12] Beckett was intensely moved and intended to visit the prison to see a last performance of the play but it never happened. This marked “the beginning of Beckett’s enduring links with prisons and prisoners … He took a tremendous interest in productions of his plays performed in prisons … He [even] gave [Rick Cluchey] a former prisoner from San Quentin financial and moral support over a period of many years.”[13] Cluchey played Vladimir in two productions in the former Gallows room of the San Quentin California State Prison, which had been converted into a 65-seat theatre and, like the German prisoner before him, went on to work on a variety of Beckett’s plays after his release.
The English-language premiere was on 3rd August 1955 at the Arts Theatre, London, directed by the 24-year-old Peter Hall Again, the printed version preceded it (New York: Grove Press, 1954) but Faber’s “mutilated” edition did not materialise until 1956. A “corrected” edition was subsequently produced in 1965. “The most accurate text is in Theatrical Notebooks I, (Ed.) Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson (Faber and Grove, 1993). It is based on Beckett’s revisions for his Schiller-Theatre production (1975) and the London San Quentin Drama Workshop, based on the Schiller production but revised further at the Riverside Studios (March 1984).”[14]
Like all of Beckett’s translations, Waiting for Godot is not simply a transliteration of En attendant Godot. “Small but significant differences separate the French and English text. Some, like Vladimir’s inability to remember the farmer’s name (Bonnelly[15]), show how the translation became more indefinite, attrition and loss of memory more pronounced.”[16] A number of biographical details were removed, all adding to a general “vaguening”[17] of the text which he continued to trim for the rest of his life.
In the nineteen-fifties, theatre was strictly censored in the UK, to Beckett's amazement since he thought it a bastion of free speech. The Lord Chamberlain insisted that the word "erection" be removed, “‘Fartov’ became ‘Popov’ and Mrs Gozzo had ‘warts’ instead of ‘clap’”.[18] Indeed, there were attempts to ban the play completely. For example, Lady Dorothy Howitt wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, saying: "One of the many themes running through the play is the desire of two old tramps continually to relieve themselves. Such a dramatisation of lavatory necessities is offensive and against all sense of British decency."[19] “The first unexpurgated version of Godot in England … opened at the Royal Court on 30th December 1964.”[20]
The London run was not without incident. The actor Peter Bull, who played Pozzo, recalls the reaction of that first night audience:
“Waves of hostility came whirling over the footlights, and the mass exodus, which was to form such a feature of the run of the piece, started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting … The curtain fell to mild applause, we took a scant three calls (Peter Woodthorpe reports only one curtain call[21]) and a depression and a sense of anti-climax descended on us all.”[22] The critics were less than unkind but “[e]verything changed on Sunday 7th August 1955 with Kenneth Tynan’s and Harold Hobson’s reviews in The Observer and The Sunday Times. Beckett was always grateful to the two reviewers for their support … which more or less transformed the play overnight into the rage of London.”[23] “At the end of the year, the Evening Standard Drama Awards were held for the first time ... Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if Godot won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. Godot became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since.”[24]
Beckett resisted offers to film the play, although it was televised in his lifetime. When Keep Films made Beckett an offer to film an adaptation in which Peter O’Toole would feature, Beckett tersely told his French publisher to advise them: “I do not want a film of Godot.”[25] The BBC broadcast a production of Waiting for Godot on 26th June 1961, a version for radio having already been transmitted on 25th April 1960. Beckett watched the programme with a few close friends in Peter Woodthorpe’s Chelsea flat. He was unhappy with what he saw. “My play,” he said, “wasn’t written for this box. My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you’re all too big for the place.”[26]
Although not his favourite amongst his plays – perhaps because of the way it came to overshadow everything else he wrote – it was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held a special place in his affections. “When the manuscript and rare books dealer, Henry Wenning, asked him if he could sell the original French manuscript for him, Beckett replied: ‘Rightly or wrongly have decided not to let Godot go yet. Neither sentimental nor financial, probably peak of market now and never such an offer. Can’t explain.’”[27]
[edit] Setting
There is only one scene throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a country road by a skeletal tree. The script calls for Estragon to sit on a low mound but in practice – as in Beckett’s own 1975 German production – this is usually a stone. In the first act the tree is bare. In the second, although the script specifies it is the next day, a few leaves have appeared. The minimal description calls to mind “the idea of the ‘lieu vague’, a location which should not be particularised”.[28]
Alan Schneider once suggested putting the play on in a round – Pozzo has often been commented on as a ringmaster[29] – but Beckett dissuaded him: “I don’t in my ignorance agree with the round and feel Godot needs a very closed box.” He once even contemplated at one point have “faint shadow of bars on stage floor” but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called “explicitation”. (See Beckett in Berlin) In his 1975 Schiller-Theatre production there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something “like birds trapped in the strands of a[n invisible] net”, to use James Knowlson’s description. Didi and Gogo are only trapped because they still cling to the concept that freedom is possible; freedom is a state of mind, so is imprisonment.
]
.
]
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