Samuel
Becketts Early Plays: Sample Speeches
In selecting speeches and shorter quotations from the early plays, I have chosen those which convey the apparent nihilism of his dramatic theme, as witnessed by his recurrent use of the word nothing - but also some passages which give more extended accounts of the inadequacy of language to describe our condition and our apparent failure to attain full being - a theme touched on by Carl Jung in the celebrated lecture which Beckett heard at the Tavistock Institute. [See further, attached].
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WAITING
FOR GODOT
(1956; Faber edns.) |
ESTRAGON: Nothing
to be done. (p.9.)
VLADIMIR: Youd be nothing
more than a little heap of bones … . (p.9.)
ESTRAGON:
Nothing ... theres nothing to show. (p.11.)
VLADIMIR: Nothing to be done. (p.11.)
VLADIMIR: Nothing is certain when youre about.
(p.14.)
ESTRAGON: Nothing to be done. Like to finish it [the carrot]?
(p.21.) |
... |
ESTRAGON: Nothing happens, nobody
comes, nobody goes, its awful! (p.41.) |
ESTRAGON: Yes,
I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing
in particular. Thats been going on now for half a century.
(p.66.) |
VLADIMIR: All I know is that the
hours are long, under these conditions, and constrain us to beguile
them with proceedings which - how shall I say - which may at first
sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit. You may say it is
to prevent our reason from foundering. No doubt. But has it not long
been straying in the night without end of the abyssal depths? Thats
what I sometimes wonder. You follow my reasoning? (p.80.) |
VLADIMIR: We
wait. We are bored. No, dont protest, we are bored to death,
theres no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what
do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, lets get to work!
In an instant all will vanish and well be alone once more,
in the midst of nothingness! (p.81.) |
POZZO: Have
you not done tormenting me with our accursed time? Its abominable.
When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any
other day, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day well
go deaf, one day we were born, one day well die, the same
day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth
astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then its
night once more. (p.89.) |
... |
VLADIMIR: Was
I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow,
when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with
Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited
for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke
to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? Hell
know nothing [Estragon]. Hell tell me about the
blows he received and Ill give him a carrrot. Astride of
a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the
grave-digger puts [90] on the forceps. We have time to grow old.
The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener. At
me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping,
he knows nothing, let him sleep on. I cant go on! What have
I said? (pp.90-91.) |
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ENDGAME (Faber 1957; Faber Edn. 1964,
&c.): various lines |
CLOV: Finished,
it must be finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.
(PAUSE). Grain upon gtrain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, theres
a heap, a little heap, the impossibile heap. (Pause). I cant
be punished anymore. (Pause.) Ill go now to my kitchen [...]
and wait for him to whistle me. (p.12.) |
HAMM: Havent you had enough?
CLOV: Yes!
(Pause.) Of what?
HAMM: Of this ... this ... thing.
(p.13.) |
CLOV: There are no more bicycle-wheels (p.15.) HAMM:
Outside of here its death. (p.15.)
HAMM: Accursed
progenitor! (p.15.) |
HAMM: Nature has forgotten us. (p.16); CLOV: No
more nature! (p.16); |
CLOV: Something is taking its course (p.17, 26, 31); |
HAMM: Theres something dripping in my head
(p.19); |
NELL: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness [...] Yes, yess,
its the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh,
with a will, in the beginning. But its always the same thing.
Yes, its like the funny story we have heard too often, we still
find it funny, but we dont laugh any more. (Pause.) Have you
anything else to say to me? (p.20.) [Tells story of the tailor, pp.21-22.] |
HAMM: This is deadly.
CLOV: why this farce,
day after day? (p.26); |
HAMM: Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldnt
he be liable to get the idea into his head if he observed us long
enough. (Voice of rational being.) Ah, good, now I see what it is,
yes, now I understand what theyre at! [...] To think perhaps
it wont all have been for nothing! (p.27); |
HAMM: Laying! lying you mean (p.27); |
HAMM: time for my painkiller? (p.28; cf. pp.16, 34); |
HAMM: I love the old questions. (With fervour.) Ah, the old
questions … theres nothing like them (p.29); |
CLOV: [...] a rare thing not to have been bonny - once!
(p.31); |
HAMM: Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday! |
CLOV: That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before
this bloody awful day. I use the words you taught me. If they dont
mean anything anymore, teach me others. Or let me be silent. (p.32.) |
HAMM: Do you not think this has gone on long enough? |
CLOV: Yes! (Pause.) What? |
HAMM: This ... this ... thing. (p.33; see p.13, supra.) |
HAMM [long speech]: [...] Use your head, cant
you, use your head, youre on earth, theres no cure for
that! (p.37; cf. 44)
[...] whining for bread for his brat (p.40); |
HAMM: Did you ever have an instant of happiness? CLOV:
Not to my knowledge (p.42.) |
HAMM: Absent always. It all happened without me. I dont know whats happened. (Pause.) Do you know whats
happened? (p.47.) |
CLOV: Theres one thing Ill never understand
.. why I always obey you. Can you explain that to me.
HAMM:
No ... Perhaps its compassion. (Pause.) A kind
of great compassion. [...] (p.48.) |
HAMM: An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before?
(Pause.) Im warming up for my last soliloquy (p.49.) HAMM: Its the end, Clov, weve come to the end
(p.50); |
CLOV: I say to myself - sometimes, Clov, you must suffer
better than that if you want them to weary of punishing you - one
day. I say to myself - sometimes, Clov, you must be there better than
that if you want them to let you go - one day. But I feel too old,
and too far, to form new habits. Good, itll never end, Ill
never go. (Pause.) Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I
dont understand, it dies, or its me. [...] (p.51); |
HAMM: I am obliged to you, Clov, for your services.
Clov (turning sharply): Ah, pardon, its I am obliged
to you. HAMM: Its we who are obliged to each other. (p.51) |
HAMM: [...] Old endgame lost of old, play and loose and
have done with losing. [...] (p.51). |
... |
NAGG: Its natural. After all Im your father. Its
true if it hadnt been me it would have been someone else. But
thats no excuse. [Pause.] Turkish Delight, for example,
which no longer exists, we all know that, there is nothing in the
world I love more. And one day Ill ask you for some, in return
for a kindness, and youll promise it to me. One must live with
the times. [Pause.] Whom did you call when you were a tiny
boy, and were frightened, in the dark? Your mother? No. Me. We let
you cry. Then we moved you out of earshot, so that we might sleep.in
peace. [Pause.] I was asleep, as happy as a king, and you
woke me up to have me listen to you. It wasnt indispensable,
you didnt really need to have me listen to you. Besides I didnt
listen to you. [Pause.] I hope the day will come when youll
really need to have me listen to you, and need to hear my voice, any
voice. [Pause.] Yes, I hope Ill live till then, to
hear you calling me like when you were a tiny [119] boy, and were
frightened, in the dark, and I was your only hope. [Pause. NAGG
knocks on lid of NELLs bin. Pause.] Nell! [Pause.
He knocks louder. Pause. Louder.] Nell! [Pause. NAGG sinks
back into his bin, closes the lid behind him. Pause.]
HAMM: Our revels are now ended. [He gropes for the dog.]
The dogs gone. (Complete Dramatic Works, Faber 1986;
1990 Edn., pp.119-20.) |
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KRAPPS
LAST TAPE (1959) |
I asked her
to look at me and after a few moments … after a few moments
she did. […] We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The
way they went down, sighing, before the stem! … I lay down
across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay
there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently,
up and down, and from side to side. (Krapps Last
Tape, p.18.) |
Spiritually a year of profound gloom
and indigence until that memorable night in March, at the end of
the jetty, when suddenly I saw the whole thing. The vision at last.
This I fancy is what I have chiefly to record this evening, against
the day when my work will be done and perhaps no place left in my
memory, warm or cold, for that miracle [...] [hesitates] .. for
the fire that set it alight. (...; &c.; q.p.). |
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ALL
THAT FALL: A Text for Radio (1957) |
ROONEY: [...] Do you know, Maddy, sometimes one would think you were struggling with a dead language. |
Mrs ROONEY: Yes, indeed, Dan,
I know full well what you mean, I often have the feeling, it is
unspeakably excruciating. |
Mr ROONEY: I confess I have it sometimes myself, when I happen to overhear what I am saying.
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Mrs ROONEY: Well you know, it will be dead in time, just like our own poor dead Gaelic, there
is that to be said. (Urgent baa.) |
Mr ROONEY: (startled), Good
God! Mrs Rooney, Oh, the pretty little woolly lamb,
crying to suck its mother! Theirs has not changed, since Arcady.
(p.35.) |
... |
Mrs ROONEY: remembers one of those mnid doctors, I forget what you call them […] telling us the story of a little girl, very strange and unhappy in her ways, and how he treated her unsuccessfully over a period of years and was finally obliged to give up the case. He could find nothing wrong with her, he said. The only thing wrong with her as far as he could see was that she was dying. And she did in fact die shortly after he had washed his hands of her. […] it was just something he said, and the way he said it, that have haunted me ever since […]. When he had done with the little girl he stood there motionless for some time, quite, quite two minutes, I should say, looking down at his table. Then he suddenly raised his head and explained, as if he had had a revelation, “The trouble with her was that she had never been really born!” (Faber Edn., p.37.; quoted in Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, 1996, p.221.) |
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HAPPY
DAYS (1961;
French trans. as Oh ces beaux jours, 1963) |
WINNIE: Ah yes, so little to say, so little to do, and the fear so great, certain days, of finding oneself [...] left, with hours still to run, before the bell for sleep, and nothing more to say, nothing more to do, that the days go by, certain days go by, quite by, the bell goes, and little or nothing said, little or nothing done. (Collected Plays, p.27.) Yes, something seems to have occurred, somehing has seemed to occur, and nothing has occurred, nothing at all, you are quite right, Willie. (Happy Days, ibid., p.154). |
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