Samuel Beckett’s 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].


Shorter extracts
Waiting for Godot Endgame
Krapp’s Last Tape All That Fall

Longer extracts
Not I Footfalls That Time

WAITING FOR GODOT (1956; Faber edns.)
ESTRAGON: ‘Nothing to be done.’ (p.9.)
VLADIMIR: ‘You’d be nothing more than a little heap of bones … .’ (p.9.)
ESTRAGON: ‘Nothing ... there’s nothing to show.’ (p.11.)
VLADIMIR: ‘Nothing to be done.’ (p.11.)
VLADIMIR: ‘Nothing is certain when  you’re about.’ (p.14.)
ESTRAGON: ‘Nothing to be done. Like to finish it [the carrot]?’ (p.21.)
...
ESTRAGON: ‘Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!’ (p.41.)
ESTRAGON: ‘Yes, I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That’s 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? That’s what I sometimes wonder. You follow my reasoning?’ (p.80.)
VLADIMIR: ‘We wait. We are bored. No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let’s get to work! In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!’ (p.81.)
POZZO: ‘Have you not done tormenting me with our accursed time? It’s 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 we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we’ll 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 it’s 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? He’ll know nothing [Estragon]. He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll 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 can’t 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, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossibile heap. (Pause). I can’t be punished anymore. (Pause.) I’ll go now to my kitchen [...] and wait for him to whistle me. (p.12.)
HAMM: ‘Haven’t 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 it’s 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: ‘There’s something dripping in my head’ (p.19);
NELL: ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness [...] Yes, yess, it’s the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t 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, wouldn’t 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 they’re at! [...] To think perhaps it won’t 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 … there’s 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 don’t 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, can’t you, use your head, you’re on earth, there’s 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 don’t know what’s happened. (Pause.) Do you know what’s happened?’ (p.47.)
CLOV: ‘There’s one thing I’ll never understand .. why I always obey you. Can you explain that to me.’
HAMM: ‘No ... Perhaps it’s compassion. (Pause.) A kind of great compassion. [...]’ (p.48.)
HAMM: ‘An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before? (Pause.) I’m warming up for my last soliloquy’ (p.49.)
HAMM: ‘It’s the end, Clov, we’ve 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, it’ll never end, I’ll never go. (Pause.) Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don’t understand, it dies, or it’s me. [...]’ (p.51);
HAMM: ‘I am obliged to you, Clov, for your services.’ Clov (turning sharply): ‘Ah, pardon, it’s 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 I’m your father. It’s true if it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else. But that’s 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 I’ll ask you for some, in return for a kindness, and you’ll 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 wasn’t indispensable, you didn’t really need to have me listen to you. Besides I didn’t listen to you. [Pause.] I hope the day will come when you’ll really need to have me listen to you, and need to hear my voice, any voice. [Pause.] Yes, I hope I’ll 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 NELL’s 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 dog’s gone. (Complete Dramatic Works, Faber 1986; 1990 Edn., pp.119-20.)
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KRAPP’S 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.’ (Krapp’s 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.’
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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