Come and Go
Encyclopedia
Come and Go is a short play (described as a "dramaticule" on its title page) by Samuel Beckett
. It was written in English in January 1965 and first performed (in German) at the Schillertheater, Berlin on 14 January 1966. Its English language premiere was at the Peacock Theatre
, Dublin on 28 February 1966, and its British premiere was at the Royal Festival Hall
in London on 9 December 1968. It was written for and dedicated to the publisher John Calder
.
Some critics consider this one of Beckett's most "perfect" plays: Beckett agonized over each individual line until they exactly matched his creative vision. The play varies between "121 and 127 words" in length, depending on the translation (his notes are significantly longer than the actual play), and as such is rarely performed on its own.
The play opens with three similar figures of "indeterminable" age, Flo, Vi, and Ru, sitting quietly on a narrow bench like seat surrounded by darkness. They are childhood friends who once attended "Miss Wade's" together and sitting side by side in this manner is something they used to do in the playground back then. The three characters – unusually for Beckett – wear colourful full-length coats, albeit now dulled over time; they are effectively three faded flowers. "Drab nondescript hats … shade [their] faces."
Vi's opening line recalls the Three Witches
of Shakespeare's Macbeth
: "When did we three last meet?" ("When shall we three meet again?" - Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 1). "Their names, especially Ru's, recall the names of the flowers which Ophelia distributes to King Claudius
and his court in her mad scene" (Hamlet
- Act 4, Scene 5).
When together they make uneasy small talk. After a short time Vi, who is seated in the centre, rises and silently goes off stage. Once she is out of earshot Flo asks Ru how she thinks their absent friend is looking. "I see little change," Ru replies. Then Flo slides over to the middle to whisper an awful revelation to the other and swears her to secrecy. After this Vi returns and takes the seat vacated by Flo. The same scenario
is then enacted twice more "[w]ith choreography
suggestive of the sleight-of-hand
artist (button under the thimble)" and with very similar dialogue until Vi finds herself back in the middle of the group; Ru and Flo's positions have however been reversed.
In this manner all three women at one point occupy the central position and all become privy to a secret about one of the others. Beckett said the action should be: "Stiff, slow, puppet-like." The audience however does not get to hear what is whispered. The initial response in each instance is a shocked, "Oh," though Beckett specified that all three should be unique in some way.
At the play's conclusion, the three link hands "in the old way" (reminiscent of Winnie's
"old style") forming an unbroken Celtic knot
. Finally Flo says, "I can feel the rings
", though none are apparent.
In a fashion typical of Beckett, the stage directions are exactingly detailed and precise. Due to the complexity of the movements throughout the piece, Beckett included a diagram of each of the characters' position during the performance. A diagram of the aforementioned rings, and the way they should be formed from the actors' hands, is also included.
Some speculate as to what the characters are discussing. From each response (Ru: (about Vi), "Does she not realise?" Vi: (about Flo), "Has she not been told?" Flo: (about Ru), "Does she not know?") it is not unreasonable to assume that each is in fact terminally ill but unaware of the fact. "The unspoken nature of the condemnation in the final version is more powerful [than in Human Wishes (see below)] precisely because it is less explicit. For while it leaves a mystery unresolved, it also tends to lead one beyond the particular illness of an individual woman to embrace the fate of all mankind."
The play might be seen as a coming of age
situation. Vi yearns for the "old days", presumably when there were no awful secrets to tell but, at the same time, to which all three characters know there is no return. On one level "there is a sense of loss in the play, that the women will never regain the intimacy they once had together" … [Brenda Bynum, who has directed the play feels the opposite however:] ‘Why does it have to be that they have lost something, why can it not be Beckett's longing for intimacy that they have and he can’t?’" Anthony Roche agrees: "[T]hey assert a strength through their interdependence which makes this play one of the most perfect theatrical ensembles ever devised."
The joining of the hands evokes the symbol for infinity
. "The ritual
gesture of clasped hands allows them to keep their secrets from each other, but the feeling of the rings evokes the cycle of time. Twice turned upon itself, the bond of the three women (forever linked in their untold secrets) is never again what it was, never again what it seems to be. Something is the same, and everything is different." "Superficially they make us think of the Three Graces
as they link hands, but, more precisely, they resemble in appearance the three mothers in Fritz Lang
's M
, a film much loved by Beckett."
Whereas at the start of the play there is a reluctance to talk of the past, after each of the shocking revelations the three women willingly drift off into nostalgia
at the end as a means of coping with the present.
The rings that Flo says she feels "may be imagined a symbol of the frustrated hopes of youth, of marriages that never occurred [or failed] or equally their eternal union" that has kept them together throughout their personal tragedies.
"Ethereal though the women of Come and Go might be, they are substantial personae in comparison with the wraith-like beings of the ‘supplication
plays.’ And painful though the shock to their sensibilities has been, they have the comforting presence of each other to offset their sadness. They comprise a community, and are therefore not wholly reliant on memory to remedy or sedate. No such comfort is available in the later dramaticules, however, where night after night alienated beings implore their loved ones to make their presence felt."
, Vanity of Human Wishes). It was abandoned but in 1980 he allowed a fragment of this is to be published in Ruby Cohn's Just Play although it is more widely available in Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, Calder Publications.
"When the curtain rises, three women are seated, presumably encircled by the long gowns of the time [18th Century]. Mrs Williams is meditating
, Mrs Desmoulins is knitting
and Miss Carmichael is reading. During the course of the scene the latter two rise and temporarily leave their seats, but Mrs Williams's actions are confined to striking the floor with her stick."
Beckett may have been "motivated by the theme he clearly wishes to pursue: Johnson
in love" but that is not what he ended up writing about. "The "three women look as though they might have emerged from tragedy
. Their dialogue
– especially Mrs Williams's lines – occasionally recalls Restoration comedy
, but its substratum is human mortality, without hope of restoration. [On the other hand r]ather than … explicit references to death, Come and Go spirals delicately around absence and threat." "However, more than death, it is ‘the peevishness of decay’ that pervades the scene, illustrated by the petty bickering and punctuated by the repeated silences that threaten to stop what action there is." "The play fragment also points forward … to the elegant, old-fashioned language and formalised syntax of the three women in Come and Go."
-like style bears little resemblance to the finished work but it is clearly its genesis.
In subsequent drafts Beckett adds a title, Type of Confidence, which he changes to Good Heavens; the names also vanish to be replaced by the letters A, B and C. "Beckett began the play clearly with the structure of three confidential gossips clearly in mind … before going on to draft the play in full … Good Heavens is almost complete, apart from the final conversation between C and A. In both texts the conversation centres on two secrets: first how each woman manages to achieve her apparently flawless complexion and secondly the fact that the absent member of the trio is suffering from a terminal illness … The difference between what is said face to face and what is said behind the back of the missing person reveals both a devastating feminine hypocrisy and the irony that the secret is told by someone whom the hearer already knows (or soon discovers) to be doomed also. And most ironical of all, while each woman muses upon the fate of the other two, she remains supremely unaware of her own."
In a later draft Beckett introduces "three sorrowing husbands – all conspicuously absent from the marital home:
The fact that the whispered secret in Come and Go relates to life expectancy is made "more explicit [in Good Heavens], even spelling out the terminal date of the third friend's incurable ailment (‘Three months. At the outside … Not a suspicion. She thinks it is heartburn’)."
], Mesdames Krap, Meck and Piouk, look forward to Flo, Vi and Ru in Come and Go in their repeated concern for each other's appearance and health; in addition, like the women of the later short play, two of them, Violette and Marguerite, have flower-inspired Christian names."
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. It was written in English in January 1965 and first performed (in German) at the Schillertheater, Berlin on 14 January 1966. Its English language premiere was at the Peacock Theatre
Peacock Theatre
The Peacock Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Portugal Street, near Aldwych. The 999-seat house is owned by, and comprises part of the London School of Economics and Political Science campus, who utilise the theatre for lectures, public talks, conferences,...
, Dublin on 28 February 1966, and its British premiere was at the Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
in London on 9 December 1968. It was written for and dedicated to the publisher John Calder
John Calder
John Mackenzie Calder is a Canadian and Scottish publisher who founded Calder Publishing in 1949.-Biography:John Calder was a friend of Samuel Beckett, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success of Waiting for Godot on the London stage in 1955-56...
.
Some critics consider this one of Beckett's most "perfect" plays: Beckett agonized over each individual line until they exactly matched his creative vision. The play varies between "121 and 127 words" in length, depending on the translation (his notes are significantly longer than the actual play), and as such is rarely performed on its own.
Synopsis
| 1 | FLO | VI | RU |
| 2 | FLO | RU | |
| FLO | RU | ||
| 3 | VI | FLO | RU |
| 4 | VI | RU | |
| VI | RU | ||
| 5 | VI | RU | FLO |
| 6 | VI | FLO | |
| VI | FLO | ||
| 7 | RU | VI | FLO |
The play opens with three similar figures of "indeterminable" age, Flo, Vi, and Ru, sitting quietly on a narrow bench like seat surrounded by darkness. They are childhood friends who once attended "Miss Wade's" together and sitting side by side in this manner is something they used to do in the playground back then. The three characters – unusually for Beckett – wear colourful full-length coats, albeit now dulled over time; they are effectively three faded flowers. "Drab nondescript hats … shade [their] faces."
Vi's opening line recalls the Three Witches
Three Witches
The Three Witches or Weird Sisters are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth . Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles , a history of England, Scotland and Ireland...
of Shakespeare's Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
: "When did we three last meet?" ("When shall we three meet again?" - Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 1). "Their names, especially Ru's, recall the names of the flowers which Ophelia distributes to King Claudius
King Claudius
King Claudius is a character and the antagonist from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the brother to King Hamlet, second husband to Gertrude and uncle to Hamlet. He obtained the throne of Denmark by murdering his own brother with poison and then marrying the late king's widow...
and his court in her mad scene" (Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
- Act 4, Scene 5).
When together they make uneasy small talk. After a short time Vi, who is seated in the centre, rises and silently goes off stage. Once she is out of earshot Flo asks Ru how she thinks their absent friend is looking. "I see little change," Ru replies. Then Flo slides over to the middle to whisper an awful revelation to the other and swears her to secrecy. After this Vi returns and takes the seat vacated by Flo. The same scenario
Scenario
A scenario is a synoptical collage of an event or series of actions and events. In the Commedia dell'arte it was an outline of entrances, exits, and action describing the plot of a play that was literally pinned to the back of the scenery...
is then enacted twice more "[w]ith choreography
Choreography
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
suggestive of the sleight-of-hand
Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand, also known as prestidigitation or legerdemain, is the set of techniques used by a magician to manipulate objects such as cards and coins secretly....
artist (button under the thimble)" and with very similar dialogue until Vi finds herself back in the middle of the group; Ru and Flo's positions have however been reversed.
In this manner all three women at one point occupy the central position and all become privy to a secret about one of the others. Beckett said the action should be: "Stiff, slow, puppet-like." The audience however does not get to hear what is whispered. The initial response in each instance is a shocked, "Oh," though Beckett specified that all three should be unique in some way.
At the play's conclusion, the three link hands "in the old way" (reminiscent of Winnie's
Happy Days (play)
Happy Days is a play in two acts, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. He began the play on 8 October 1960 and it was completed on 14 May 1961. Beckett finished the translation into French by November 1962 but amended the title...
"old style") forming an unbroken Celtic knot
Celtic knot
Celtic knots are a variety of knots and stylized graphical representations of knots used for decoration, used extensively in the Celtic style of Insular art. These knots are most known for their adaptation for use in the ornamentation of Christian monuments and manuscripts, such as the 8th-century...
. Finally Flo says, "I can feel the rings
Wedding ring
A wedding ring or wedding band is a metal ring indicating the wearer is married. Depending on the local culture, it is worn on the base of the right or the left ring finger. The custom of wearing such a ring has spread widely beyond its origin in Europe...
", though none are apparent.
Staging
Interpretations
The whole play's structure is circular ("ring" like). It is divided into three exactly equal segments of seven lines during which a character exits and comes back in after completing their circuit, taking a different seat to the one they sat on originally. In this sense the characters also move around their seats in a ring shape.Some speculate as to what the characters are discussing. From each response (Ru: (about Vi), "Does she not realise?" Vi: (about Flo), "Has she not been told?" Flo: (about Ru), "Does she not know?") it is not unreasonable to assume that each is in fact terminally ill but unaware of the fact. "The unspoken nature of the condemnation in the final version is more powerful [than in Human Wishes (see below)] precisely because it is less explicit. For while it leaves a mystery unresolved, it also tends to lead one beyond the particular illness of an individual woman to embrace the fate of all mankind."
The play might be seen as a coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
situation. Vi yearns for the "old days", presumably when there were no awful secrets to tell but, at the same time, to which all three characters know there is no return. On one level "there is a sense of loss in the play, that the women will never regain the intimacy they once had together" … [Brenda Bynum, who has directed the play feels the opposite however:] ‘Why does it have to be that they have lost something, why can it not be Beckett's longing for intimacy that they have and he can’t?’" Anthony Roche agrees: "[T]hey assert a strength through their interdependence which makes this play one of the most perfect theatrical ensembles ever devised."
The joining of the hands evokes the symbol for infinity
Infinity
Infinity is a concept in many fields, most predominantly mathematics and physics, that refers to a quantity without bound or end. People have developed various ideas throughout history about the nature of infinity...
. "The ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
gesture of clasped hands allows them to keep their secrets from each other, but the feeling of the rings evokes the cycle of time. Twice turned upon itself, the bond of the three women (forever linked in their untold secrets) is never again what it was, never again what it seems to be. Something is the same, and everything is different." "Superficially they make us think of the Three Graces
Charites
In Greek mythology, a Charis is one of several Charites , goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. They ordinarily numbered three, from youngest to oldest: Aglaea , Euphrosyne , and Thalia . In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the "Graces"...
as they link hands, but, more precisely, they resemble in appearance the three mothers in Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's M
M (1931 film)
M is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed more than a dozen films previously....
, a film much loved by Beckett."
Whereas at the start of the play there is a reluctance to talk of the past, after each of the shocking revelations the three women willingly drift off into nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
at the end as a means of coping with the present.
The rings that Flo says she feels "may be imagined a symbol of the frustrated hopes of youth, of marriages that never occurred [or failed] or equally their eternal union" that has kept them together throughout their personal tragedies.
"Ethereal though the women of Come and Go might be, they are substantial personae in comparison with the wraith-like beings of the ‘supplication
Supplication
Supplication is the most common form of prayer, wherein a person asks God to provide something, either for the person or who is doing the praying or for someone else on whose behalf a prayer. This because of a supplication is being made, also known as intercession.The concept of supplication is...
plays.’ And painful though the shock to their sensibilities has been, they have the comforting presence of each other to offset their sadness. They comprise a community, and are therefore not wholly reliant on memory to remedy or sedate. No such comfort is available in the later dramaticules, however, where night after night alienated beings implore their loved ones to make their presence felt."
Background
"Morehampton House, [in Dublin] had originally been run by three spinster sisters and was commonly known … as "Miss Wade's." When Shelia and Molly Roe – Beckett's cousins – attended there during the First World War, "the school was run by two elderly ladies called Miss Irwin and Miss Molyneaux."Human Wishes
In 1936 Beckett began a full-length play entitled Human Wishes (after the poem by Dr JohnsonSamuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, Vanity of Human Wishes). It was abandoned but in 1980 he allowed a fragment of this is to be published in Ruby Cohn's Just Play although it is more widely available in Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, Calder Publications.
"When the curtain rises, three women are seated, presumably encircled by the long gowns of the time [18th Century]. Mrs Williams is meditating
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, Mrs Desmoulins is knitting
Knitting
Knitting is a method by which thread or yarn may be turned into cloth or other fine crafts. Knitted fabric consists of consecutive rows of loops, called stitches. As each row progresses, a new loop is pulled through an existing loop. The active stitches are held on a needle until another loop can...
and Miss Carmichael is reading. During the course of the scene the latter two rise and temporarily leave their seats, but Mrs Williams's actions are confined to striking the floor with her stick."
Beckett may have been "motivated by the theme he clearly wishes to pursue: Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
in love" but that is not what he ended up writing about. "The "three women look as though they might have emerged from tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
. Their dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
– especially Mrs Williams's lines – occasionally recalls Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
, but its substratum is human mortality, without hope of restoration. [On the other hand r]ather than … explicit references to death, Come and Go spirals delicately around absence and threat." "However, more than death, it is ‘the peevishness of decay’ that pervades the scene, illustrated by the petty bickering and punctuated by the repeated silences that threaten to stop what action there is." "The play fragment also points forward … to the elegant, old-fashioned language and formalised syntax of the three women in Come and Go."
Good Heavens
Flo, Vi, and Ru began their life as Viola, Rose and Poppy in a typescript now held at Reading University Library headed ‘Scene 1’. Poppy reads aloud from a titillating book, interrupted at intervals by the others. The revueRevue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
-like style bears little resemblance to the finished work but it is clearly its genesis.
In subsequent drafts Beckett adds a title, Type of Confidence, which he changes to Good Heavens; the names also vanish to be replaced by the letters A, B and C. "Beckett began the play clearly with the structure of three confidential gossips clearly in mind … before going on to draft the play in full … Good Heavens is almost complete, apart from the final conversation between C and A. In both texts the conversation centres on two secrets: first how each woman manages to achieve her apparently flawless complexion and secondly the fact that the absent member of the trio is suffering from a terminal illness … The difference between what is said face to face and what is said behind the back of the missing person reveals both a devastating feminine hypocrisy and the irony that the secret is told by someone whom the hearer already knows (or soon discovers) to be doomed also. And most ironical of all, while each woman muses upon the fate of the other two, she remains supremely unaware of her own."
In a later draft Beckett introduces "three sorrowing husbands – all conspicuously absent from the marital home:
Rose (of Poppy): I ran into her husband at the Gaiety.
He is half crazed with grief.
Poppy (of Vi): Her husband wrote me from Madeira.
He is heartbroken
Vi (of Rose): Her husband called me from Naples.
He was weeping over the wire.
The fact that the whispered secret in Come and Go relates to life expectancy is made "more explicit [in Good Heavens], even spelling out the terminal date of the third friend's incurable ailment (‘Three months. At the outside … Not a suspicion. She thinks it is heartburn’)."
Eleuthéria
"The three women [in EleuthériaEleutheria (play)
Eleutheria is a play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1947. It was his first completed dramatic endeavor . Roger Blin considered staging it in the early fifties, but opted for Waiting for Godot, because it was easier to stage...
], Mesdames Krap, Meck and Piouk, look forward to Flo, Vi and Ru in Come and Go in their repeated concern for each other's appearance and health; in addition, like the women of the later short play, two of them, Violette and Marguerite, have flower-inspired Christian names."