“You cried for night; it falls: now cry in darkness”

Like Waiting for Godot, Endgame is one of Beckett’s longest and most well-known plays. This reading of this text was my first encounter with it. What I find most striking about the play is the game-like quality it conveys: repetition and manipulation are presented in such a way that the actions take on a hue of contrivance and containment, and the specific feeling of this perspective is one that often appears in real life. The game-ness of the work (which is also explicitly present in the text) shows in its craftsmanship: in contrast to the improvisational Godot, the pieces on Endgame’s board feel inevitably managed, and the work as a whole feels more mechanical than Godot, the work of a watchmaker, complete with hidden components. The forcedness, obsession with cessation, and view of time as something that piles up around the self reminded me of The Unnamable. A dark and brilliant work. I look forward to rereading it and, hopefully, seeing it performed.

Banner image:

“Samuel Beckett Bridge” by Daniel Dudek is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license here.