Play (play)
Encyclopedia
Play is a one-act play
by Samuel Beckett
. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German
as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau
, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English
was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic
in London
.
s. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress
(W2). Their “[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns.” Beckett has used similar imagery before, Mahood’s jar in The Unnameable
, for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in Endgame
.
At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; the effect is unintelligible. The main part of this play is made up of short, occasionally fragmented sentences spoken in a “[r]apid tempo
throughout” “which in his 1978 rehearsals [he] likened to a lawn mower
– a burst of energy followed by a pause, a renewed burst followed by another pause.” “He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied.”
One character speaks at a time and only when a strong spotlight shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth’s logorrhoea http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logorrhea%20 in Not I
, the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use first person
pronouns
. Clichés and pun
s abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: “To think we were never together”) nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: “At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments”). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character's speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is “expressive of a unique inquisitor
”. Billie Whitelaw
referred to it as “an instrument of torture.” The spotlight is in effect the play’s fourth character.
In an almost fugal
style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the past tense
and each from his or her respective points of view
. It is one of Beckett’s most ‘musical’ pieces with “a chorus
for three voices, orchestration
, stage directions concerning tempo, volume
and tone
, a da capo
repeat of the entire action” and a short coda
.
Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play." Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. “[I]n the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words.” The purpose of this is to suggest a gradual winding down of the action for he writes of “the impression of falling off which this would give, with the suggestion of a conceivable dark and silence in the end, or of an indefinite approximating towards it.” At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in Act Without Words II), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops.
, threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of Watt
(and where the servant again is ‘Erskine’) … The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who ‘suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the Riviera
or … Grand Canary
,’ and then, [true to form], returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. [In time] their relationship too became jaded, and the man” abandons her as well.
According to Knowlson and John Pilling in Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett, “[T]he three figures in Play … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The stereotype
predominates … [They] belong … to the artificial world of melodrama
and romance embodied in romanticized fiction
.”
, at the time a script-editor with the BBC
. A small and attractive widow in her thirties she was also intelligent and well read. “Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted to her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of a relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with of [his long-time partner] Suzanne, for the rest of his life.” In short time their association became “a very intimate and personal one.”
“In a visit to Paris
in January 1961, Barbara … informed Beckett that she intended to move [there] to live permanently” “a move which had been discussed more than once with Sam.” His response was unusual. In March he married Suzanne in a civil ceremony in the seaside town of Folkestone
, England. Ostensibly this was to ensure if he died before her Suzanne would “inherit the rights to his work, since, under French law
, there was no ‘common-law wife
’ legislation … Or he may simply have wanted to affirm where his true loyalty lay. Whatever the reason, the marriage made it clear … that he was unwilling to leave the woman with whom he had already lived for more than twenty years.”
For all that, in June 1961 Bray still decided to move and despite his recent marriage “[a]lmost every day [he went] round, often spending a good part of the day or a large part of the evening there.” “Oddly enough, this side of his life was [not well] known about in Paris … [Beckett’s] natural reserve and well-developed sense of decorum were allied to his fear of giving offence to Suzanne.” Anthony Cronin
notes that strangely – or perhaps not so strangely – during this time he was often to be found talking “fervently and seriously about suicide.” Despite his unwillingness to do much about it he was clearly suffering badly from guilt.
To comply with the law Beckett “was obliged to be in residence in Folkstone for a minimum of two weeks to allow him to be married in the Registry Office
there” and this time spent there observing the locals may well have influenced the “middle class
, English, ‘Home Counties
’” setting of Play though James Knowlson also point to two visits to Sweetwater about the same time. “Ash
and Snodland
” are both towns in Kent
.
An important point to mention here is that it was during the first London production that he encountered Billie Whitelaw
for the first time. “Whitelaw’s deep brooding voice caught so many inflections that Beckett found himself at times listening to her instead of rehearsing the play.”
The play is entitled Play, in the same way that Beckett’s only venture into film
is called Film
but as always with Beckett there are other levels. “Speaking of his previous life the man remarks: ‘I know now, all that was just … play’, but what then is the meaning of ‘all this? And when will this become the same?’ All three characters admit that life was senseless yet there appears to be ‘no sense in this … either, none whatsoever’; though this does not prevent them from making ‘the same mistakes as when it was the sun that shone, of looking for sense where possibly there is none. They are playing … a pointless game with unending time of which they are the playthings.” This also could be a reference to one of the world’s most famous theatrical metaphor
s: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
In writing to George Devine
, who directed the Old Vic production, Beckett suggests that “the inquirer (light) begins to emerge as no less a victim of his inquiry than they and as needing to be free, within narrow limits, literally to act the part, i.e. to vary only slightly his speeds and intensities.” But the role of the light is even more ambiguous, for it has also been seen as “a metaphor for our attention (relentless, all-consuming, whimsical)” and a way of “switching on and switching off speech exactly as a playwright does when he moves from one line of dialogue on his page to the next.” Neither of these analogies conflicts with the more popular views where the spotlight is believed by to represent God
, or some other moral agent tasked with assessing, each character's case to be relieved from the binds of the urn by having them relive this relationship, which has ruined all their lives. This view ascribes a motive to the light beyond mere torture. That may not be the case. Just as easily as God, the light could represent the devil
.
This reliving of the details surrounding the affair only takes up the first half of the text however; Beckett called this part the ‘Narration.’ As Paul Lawley says in "Beckett’s dramatic counterpoint: a reading of Play", “[T]he second half of the text (preceded by a five second long blackout) – called ‘Meditation’ by Beckett himself – sheds a subtle new light on the first. In the Meditation each of the heads casts about for the sense of its situation, considers the nature of the light, probes for certainties amid the darkness and then makes an attempt to imagine what has happened to the other two corners of this particular Eternal Triangle … We can now see that the heads are not chained exclusively to their ‘past’, their narration(s): they are victims of the light, certainly, but not only victims, for they can recognize themselves as such and can speak of the light when forced to speak by the light. The light obliges them to speak but it does not necessarily determine what they speak – yet we only realize this in the Meditation section of the text.”
“They cope with the light in various ways and natures. W1 screams at the light: ‘Get off me’ and she wonders what she must do to satisfy the disturbing and tormenting light. W2 is content with the idea that the light must know that she is doing her best. But she also wonders if she is perhaps a little ‘unhinged’ (meaning that she may go mad
). For M the light enables fantasy. He imagines the two women drinking green tea
together in the places they have each been with him and comforting each other. He fantasises waking up with both women and then going for a boat trip with the two of them on a summer’s afternoon. “At the end of the second part, M is completely aware of the mechanism of the light but not aware of his own narcissism
” however.
“If the play consisted only of the Narration it would be as though the light were obliging them not only to speak, but to speak only of these events, to tell only this story.”
Many of Beckett’s plays and prose pieces are located “in ‘places’ which may strike us as being most adequately described as ‘Hell
’, ‘Limbo
’ or ‘Purgatory
’– and the parallels with Dante
are always tempting” – and indeed the most popular interpretation of Play is that the three are in some place like this. The use of urns to encase the bodies of the three players is thought to symbolise their entrapment inside the demons of their past; the way in which all three urns are described at the start of the play as "touching" each other is often deciphered as symbolising the shared problem which all three characters have endured.
“The whole situation resembles very closely that of Bérénice
, in which two men, the Emperor Titus
and King Antiochus, are in love with the heroine; Bérénice
, for her part, is in love with Titus and regards Antiochus as her dearest friend. Yet the tragedy ends, bloodlessly, with Titus remaining unwillingly in Rome
, while the other two reluctantly leave the city to go their separate ways. By the end of Bérénice, all three major characters have threatened to commit suicide
; perhaps the three characters in Play are being punished because they have committed suicide. The text certainly indicates that very least the husband might have “sought refuge in death” also “[n]ot only does W1 threaten both her own life and that of W2, but W1 describes herself as ‘Dying for dark,’ and W2 affirms, ‘I felt like death.’ As so often with Beckett, the loose clichés assume an eerie literality.”
Beckett tasked himself with re-reading all of Racine’s
plays in the mid-1950s and James Knowlson suggests that “this daily diet of Racinian claustrophobia
forced Beckett to concentrate on the true essentials of theatre: Time, Space and Speech [which] pointed him in the direction that made a tightly focused, monologic play like Happy Days
or Play possible.
It is conceivable that the three parties are not actually dead at all. Purgatory is, after all, not a theological
concept Beckett would have been brought up with though Dante’s interpretation of it did catch his imagination. In the final paragraph of Dante … Bruno
. Vico
.. Joyce
, Beckett makes a striking comparison between Dante’s version of Purgatory
and Joyce’s: “Dante's is conical and consequently implies culmination. Mr. Joyce's is spherical and excludes culmination … On this earth that is [his] Purgatory." If the trio are separated physically then each one of them will be going through their own private hell imagining what has happened to the others and reliving the events in their own head over and over again. If we view the three urns purely as a theatrical device to bring these separate points of view together this interpretation is also valid. “Life on earth, the endless recurring cycle of history, constitutes Purgatory for Joyce in Finnegans Wake
. From Joyce’s Purgatory there is no escape, not even for the individual human being, who dies only to be reborn into the cycle. Likewise Beckett’s take on Purgatory is that it “is a state rather than a process.”
composed music for a production of Play. The piece was scored for two soprano saxophone
s, and is his first work in a minimalist
idiom
– an idiom which was substantially influenced by the work of Beckett.
(an assistant to Jean-Luc Godard
as well as Roberto Rossellini
), on a film version of Play, resulting in the film, Comédie. The cast included Michael Lonsdale
, Eléonore Hirt and Delphine Seyrig
.
ed version of Play was directed by Anthony Minghella
for the Beckett on Film
project, starring Alan Rickman
, Kristin Scott Thomas
and Juliet Stevenson
.
For this particular interpretation of the play, it is assumed that the action takes place in Hell (perhaps in reference to Jean-Paul Sartre
's famous assertion, 'Hell is—other people' though T. S. Eliot
’s rebuttal, “Hell is oneself,” is probably more accurate. In this filmed version, the action is set in a vast landscape of "urn people", all speaking at once. “This [interpretation] was much turned over, along with doubts whether it should be there at all, in animated discussions that went on throughout the Barbican meeting places.”
A camera is used instead of a stage light to provoke the characters into action; Minghella uses a jump cut
editing technique to make it seem as though there are even more than two repetitions of the text. He “made the equipment into a threatening force by switching it with bullying speed from one face to another, forcing unusual speed of delivery for the actors. Juliet Stevenson told [Katharine Worth] that during rehearsals she had wondered whether the lines were being delivered too fast for viewers to take in their sense [but] theatre critic, Alice Griffin … thought that the lines ‘came across more clearly and more easily understandable than sometimes in the theatre.’ This she attributed partly to Minghella’s use of close-up
, a recurring feature of the film versions naturally enough.”
The postmodern outlook of the film ("a field of urns in a dismal swamp
, a gnarled, blasted oak in the background, a lowering, Chernobyl
sky") was however criticized by The Guardian
s Art critic
Adrian Searle
as "adolescent
, and worse, cliché
d and illustrational," adding: "Any minute, expect a dragon
". It is also perhaps noteworthy that this version does not feature the last section of the script, in which the characters almost embark upon a third cycle of the text.
See also:
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
by Samuel Beckett
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 between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau
Ulm
Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 , forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and...
, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Synopsis
The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral “urns”, about three feet tall by preference, arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three stock characterStock character
A Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...
s. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress
Mistress (lover)
A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
(W2). Their “[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns.” Beckett has used similar imagery before, Mahood’s jar in The Unnameable
The Unnamable (novel)
The Unnamable is a 1953 novel by Samuel Beckett. It is the third and final entry in Beckett's "Trilogy" of novels, which begins with Molloy followed by Malone Dies. It was originally published in French as L'Innommable and later adapted by the author into English...
, for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in Endgame
Endgame (play)
Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...
.
At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; the effect is unintelligible. The main part of this play is made up of short, occasionally fragmented sentences spoken in a “[r]apid tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
throughout” “which in his 1978 rehearsals [he] likened to a lawn mower
Lawn mower
A lawn mower is a machine that uses a revolving blade or blades to cut a lawn at an even length.Lawn mowers employing a blade that rotates about a vertical axis are known as rotary mowers, while those employing a blade assembly that rotates about a horizontal axis are known as cylinder or reel...
– a burst of energy followed by a pause, a renewed burst followed by another pause.” “He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied.”
One character speaks at a time and only when a strong spotlight shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth’s logorrhoea http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logorrhea%20 in Not I
Not I
Not I is a twenty-minute dramatic monologue written in 1972 by Samuel Beckett, translated as Pas Moi; premiere at the “Samuel Beckett Festival” by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York , directed by Alan Schneider, with Jessica Tandy and Henderson Forsythe .-Synopsis:Not I takes place...
, the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
pronouns
English personal pronouns
The personal pronouns in the English language can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little noun or adjective inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns...
. Clichés and pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: “To think we were never together”) nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: “At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments”). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character's speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is “expressive of a unique inquisitor
Inquisitor
An inquisitor was an official in an Inquisition, an organisation or program intended to eliminate heresy and other things frowned on by the Roman Catholic Church...
”. Billie Whitelaw
Billie Whitelaw
Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...
referred to it as “an instrument of torture.” The spotlight is in effect the play’s fourth character.
In an almost fugal
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the past tense
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
and each from his or her respective points of view
Point of view (literature)
The narrative mode is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. Narration, the process of presenting the narrative, occurs because of the narrative mode...
. It is one of Beckett’s most ‘musical’ pieces with “a chorus
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
for three voices, orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
, stage directions concerning tempo, volume
Loudness
Loudness is the quality of a sound that is primarily a psychological correlate of physical strength . More formally, it is defined as "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud."Loudness, a subjective measure, is often...
and tone
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
, a da capo
Da capo
Da Capo is a musical term in Italian, meaning from the beginning . It is often abbreviated D.C. It is a composer or publisher's directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space. In small pieces this might be the same thing as a repeat, but in larger works D.C...
repeat of the entire action” and a short coda
Coda (music)
Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence...
.
Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play." Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. “[I]n the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words.” The purpose of this is to suggest a gradual winding down of the action for he writes of “the impression of falling off which this would give, with the suggestion of a conceivable dark and silence in the end, or of an indefinite approximating towards it.” At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in Act Without Words II), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops.
The Affair
“The affair was unexceptional. From the moment when the man tried to escape his tired marriage and odious professional commitments by taking a mistress, [events took a predictable enough course:] the wife soon began to ‘smell her off him’; there were painful recriminations when the wife accused the man, hired a private detectivePrivate investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
, threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of Watt
Watt (novel)
Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English, largely written on the run in the south of France during the Second World War and published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953...
(and where the servant again is ‘Erskine’) … The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who ‘suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
or … Grand Canary
Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, with a population of 838,397 which constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago...
,’ and then, [true to form], returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. [In time] their relationship too became jaded, and the man” abandons her as well.
According to Knowlson and John Pilling in Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett, “[T]he three figures in Play … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
predominates … [They] belong … to the artificial world of melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
and romance embodied in romanticized fiction
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
.”
Biographical references
During the late 1950s when staying in London, Beckett often met with Barbara BrayBarbara Bray
Barbara Bray was a British translator and critic.An identical twin , she was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, where she read English, with papers in French and Italian...
, at the time a script-editor with the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. A small and attractive widow in her thirties she was also intelligent and well read. “Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted to her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of a relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with of [his long-time partner] Suzanne, for the rest of his life.” In short time their association became “a very intimate and personal one.”
“In a visit to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in January 1961, Barbara … informed Beckett that she intended to move [there] to live permanently” “a move which had been discussed more than once with Sam.” His response was unusual. In March he married Suzanne in a civil ceremony in the seaside town of Folkestone
Folkestone
Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
, England. Ostensibly this was to ensure if he died before her Suzanne would “inherit the rights to his work, since, under French law
Law of France
In academic terms, French law can be divided into two main categories: private or judicial law and public law .Judicial law includes, in particular:*civil law ; and*criminal law ....
, there was no ‘common-law wife
Common-law marriage
Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
’ legislation … Or he may simply have wanted to affirm where his true loyalty lay. Whatever the reason, the marriage made it clear … that he was unwilling to leave the woman with whom he had already lived for more than twenty years.”
For all that, in June 1961 Bray still decided to move and despite his recent marriage “[a]lmost every day [he went] round, often spending a good part of the day or a large part of the evening there.” “Oddly enough, this side of his life was [not well] known about in Paris … [Beckett’s] natural reserve and well-developed sense of decorum were allied to his fear of giving offence to Suzanne.” Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....
notes that strangely – or perhaps not so strangely – during this time he was often to be found talking “fervently and seriously about suicide.” Despite his unwillingness to do much about it he was clearly suffering badly from guilt.
To comply with the law Beckett “was obliged to be in residence in Folkstone for a minimum of two weeks to allow him to be married in the Registry Office
Register office
A register office is a British term for a civil registry, a government office and depository where births, deaths and marriages are officially recorded and where you can get officially married, without a religious ceremony...
there” and this time spent there observing the locals may well have influenced the “middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
, English, ‘Home Counties
Home Counties
The home counties is a term which refers to the counties of South East England and the East of England which border London, but do not include the capital city itself...
’” setting of Play though James Knowlson also point to two visits to Sweetwater about the same time. “Ash
Ash (near Sandwich)
Ash is a village and civil parish in the Dover district of east Kent about three miles west of Sandwich.The civil parish has a population of 2,767, and includes the villages of Ash, Westmarsh, Ware and Hoaden. The Ash Level, by the River Stour, takes up the northern part of the parish.-History:Ash...
and Snodland
Snodland
Snodland is a small town in the county of Kent, England, located on the River Medway between Rochester and Maidstone. It has a population of about 12,000 people....
” are both towns in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
.
An important point to mention here is that it was during the first London production that he encountered Billie Whitelaw
Billie Whitelaw
Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...
for the first time. “Whitelaw’s deep brooding voice caught so many inflections that Beckett found himself at times listening to her instead of rehearsing the play.”
Interpretations
“The earliest version (April 1962) was written for a woman and two men, Syke and Conk, figures in white boxes. In the final version we are presented instead with, as Michael Robinson describes it in The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett, “the three corners of love’s eternal triangle (the emphasis here is on the eternal) … They have no names [now], simply the designations M, W1 and W2 which aim at anonymity but also stand for all men and women who have, like them, been caught up in a three-part love affair,”The play is entitled Play, in the same way that Beckett’s only venture into film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
is called Film
Film (film)
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter...
but as always with Beckett there are other levels. “Speaking of his previous life the man remarks: ‘I know now, all that was just … play’, but what then is the meaning of ‘all this? And when will this become the same?’ All three characters admit that life was senseless yet there appears to be ‘no sense in this … either, none whatsoever’; though this does not prevent them from making ‘the same mistakes as when it was the sun that shone, of looking for sense where possibly there is none. They are playing … a pointless game with unending time of which they are the playthings.” This also could be a reference to one of the world’s most famous theatrical metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
s: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
In writing to George Devine
George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE was an extremely influential theatrical manager, director, teacher and actor in London from the late 1940s until his death. He also worked in the media of TV and film.-Biography:...
, who directed the Old Vic production, Beckett suggests that “the inquirer (light) begins to emerge as no less a victim of his inquiry than they and as needing to be free, within narrow limits, literally to act the part, i.e. to vary only slightly his speeds and intensities.” But the role of the light is even more ambiguous, for it has also been seen as “a metaphor for our attention (relentless, all-consuming, whimsical)” and a way of “switching on and switching off speech exactly as a playwright does when he moves from one line of dialogue on his page to the next.” Neither of these analogies conflicts with the more popular views where the spotlight is believed by to represent God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, or some other moral agent tasked with assessing, each character's case to be relieved from the binds of the urn by having them relive this relationship, which has ruined all their lives. This view ascribes a motive to the light beyond mere torture. That may not be the case. Just as easily as God, the light could represent the devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
.
This reliving of the details surrounding the affair only takes up the first half of the text however; Beckett called this part the ‘Narration.’ As Paul Lawley says in "Beckett’s dramatic counterpoint: a reading of Play", “[T]he second half of the text (preceded by a five second long blackout) – called ‘Meditation’ by Beckett himself – sheds a subtle new light on the first. In the Meditation each of the heads casts about for the sense of its situation, considers the nature of the light, probes for certainties amid the darkness and then makes an attempt to imagine what has happened to the other two corners of this particular Eternal Triangle … We can now see that the heads are not chained exclusively to their ‘past’, their narration(s): they are victims of the light, certainly, but not only victims, for they can recognize themselves as such and can speak of the light when forced to speak by the light. The light obliges them to speak but it does not necessarily determine what they speak – yet we only realize this in the Meditation section of the text.”
“They cope with the light in various ways and natures. W1 screams at the light: ‘Get off me’ and she wonders what she must do to satisfy the disturbing and tormenting light. W2 is content with the idea that the light must know that she is doing her best. But she also wonders if she is perhaps a little ‘unhinged’ (meaning that she may go mad
Insanity
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...
). For M the light enables fantasy. He imagines the two women drinking green tea
Green tea
Green tea is made solely from the leaves of Camellia sinensis that have undergone minimal oxidation during processing. Green tea originates from China and has become associated with many cultures throughout Asia. It has recently become more widespread in the West, where black tea is traditionally...
together in the places they have each been with him and comforting each other. He fantasises waking up with both women and then going for a boat trip with the two of them on a summer’s afternoon. “At the end of the second part, M is completely aware of the mechanism of the light but not aware of his own narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
” however.
“If the play consisted only of the Narration it would be as though the light were obliging them not only to speak, but to speak only of these events, to tell only this story.”
Many of Beckett’s plays and prose pieces are located “in ‘places’ which may strike us as being most adequately described as ‘Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
’, ‘Limbo
Limbo
In the theology of the Catholic Church, Limbo is a speculative idea about the afterlife condition of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the damned. Limbo is not an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church or any other...
’ or ‘Purgatory
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
’– and the parallels with Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
are always tempting” – and indeed the most popular interpretation of Play is that the three are in some place like this. The use of urns to encase the bodies of the three players is thought to symbolise their entrapment inside the demons of their past; the way in which all three urns are described at the start of the play as "touching" each other is often deciphered as symbolising the shared problem which all three characters have endured.
“The whole situation resembles very closely that of Bérénice
Bérénice
Berenice is a five-act tragedy by the French 17th-century playwright Jean Racine. Berenice was not played often between the 17th and the 20th centuries. Today it is one of Racine's more popular plays, after Phèdre, Andromaque and Britannicus.It was first performed in 1670...
, in which two men, the Emperor Titus
Titus
Titus , was Roman Emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, thus becoming the first Roman Emperor to come to the throne after his own father....
and King Antiochus, are in love with the heroine; Bérénice
Berenice of Cilicia
Berenice of Cilicia, also known as Julia Berenice and sometimes spelled Bernice , was a Jewish client queen of the Roman Empire during the second half of the 1st century. Berenice was a member of the Herodian Dynasty, who ruled the Roman province of Judaea between 39 BC and 92 AD...
, for her part, is in love with Titus and regards Antiochus as her dearest friend. Yet the tragedy ends, bloodlessly, with Titus remaining unwillingly in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, while the other two reluctantly leave the city to go their separate ways. By the end of Bérénice, all three major characters have threatened to commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
; perhaps the three characters in Play are being punished because they have committed suicide. The text certainly indicates that very least the husband might have “sought refuge in death” also “[n]ot only does W1 threaten both her own life and that of W2, but W1 describes herself as ‘Dying for dark,’ and W2 affirms, ‘I felt like death.’ As so often with Beckett, the loose clichés assume an eerie literality.”
Beckett tasked himself with re-reading all of Racine’s
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
plays in the mid-1950s and James Knowlson suggests that “this daily diet of Racinian claustrophobia
Claustrophobia
Claustrophobia is the fear of having no escape and being closed in small spaces or rooms...
forced Beckett to concentrate on the true essentials of theatre: Time, Space and Speech [which] pointed him in the direction that made a tightly focused, monologic play like Happy Days
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...
or Play possible.
It is conceivable that the three parties are not actually dead at all. Purgatory is, after all, not a theological
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
concept Beckett would have been brought up with though Dante’s interpretation of it did catch his imagination. In the final paragraph of Dante … Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited...
. Vico
Giambattista Vico
Giovanni Battista ' Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist....
.. Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Beckett makes a striking comparison between Dante’s version of Purgatory
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
and Joyce’s: “Dante's is conical and consequently implies culmination. Mr. Joyce's is spherical and excludes culmination … On this earth that is [his] Purgatory." If the trio are separated physically then each one of them will be going through their own private hell imagining what has happened to the others and reliving the events in their own head over and over again. If we view the three urns purely as a theatrical device to bring these separate points of view together this interpretation is also valid. “Life on earth, the endless recurring cycle of history, constitutes Purgatory for Joyce in Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
. From Joyce’s Purgatory there is no escape, not even for the individual human being, who dies only to be reborn into the cycle. Likewise Beckett’s take on Purgatory is that it “is a state rather than a process.”
Music
In 1965 Philip GlassPhilip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
composed music for a production of Play. The piece was scored for two soprano saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
s, and is his first work in a minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
– an idiom which was substantially influenced by the work of Beckett.
Comédie (1966)
In 1966 Beckett worked with a young director, Marin KarmitzMarin Karmitz
Marin Karmitz is a French jewish businessman whose career has spanned the French film industry, including director, producer, film distributor, and operator of a chain of cinemas....
(an assistant to Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
as well as Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
), on a film version of Play, resulting in the film, Comédie. The cast included Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale , sometimes billed as Michel Lonsdale, is a French actor who has appeared in over 180 films and television shows....
, Eléonore Hirt and Delphine Seyrig
Delphine Seyrig
Delphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig was a stage and film actress and a film director.-Early life:...
.
Beckett on Film (2000)
Another filmFilm
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
ed version of Play was directed by Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007....
for the Beckett on Film
Beckett on Film
Beckett on Film was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed Eleutheria. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films being shown in 2001.The project was conceived by Michael Colgan,...
project, starring Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman
Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman is an English actor and theatre director. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient....
and Juliet Stevenson
Juliet Stevenson
Juliet Anne Virginia Stevenson, CBE is an English actor of stage and screen.- Early life :Stevenson was born in Kelvedon, Essex, England, the daughter of Virginia Ruth , a teacher, and Michael Guy Stevenson, an army officer. Stevenson's father was in the army and was posted to a new place every...
.
For this particular interpretation of the play, it is assumed that the action takes place in Hell (perhaps in reference to Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's famous assertion, 'Hell is—other people' though T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
’s rebuttal, “Hell is oneself,” is probably more accurate. In this filmed version, the action is set in a vast landscape of "urn people", all speaking at once. “This [interpretation] was much turned over, along with doubts whether it should be there at all, in animated discussions that went on throughout the Barbican meeting places.”
A camera is used instead of a stage light to provoke the characters into action; Minghella uses a jump cut
Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
editing technique to make it seem as though there are even more than two repetitions of the text. He “made the equipment into a threatening force by switching it with bullying speed from one face to another, forcing unusual speed of delivery for the actors. Juliet Stevenson told [Katharine Worth] that during rehearsals she had wondered whether the lines were being delivered too fast for viewers to take in their sense [but] theatre critic, Alice Griffin … thought that the lines ‘came across more clearly and more easily understandable than sometimes in the theatre.’ This she attributed partly to Minghella’s use of close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
, a recurring feature of the film versions naturally enough.”
The postmodern outlook of the film ("a field of urns in a dismal swamp
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...
, a gnarled, blasted oak in the background, a lowering, Chernobyl
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
sky") was however criticized by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
s Art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
Adrian Searle
Adrian Searle
Adrian Searle is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. He curates art shows and also writes fiction.-Career:...
as "adolescent
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
, and worse, cliché
Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
d and illustrational," adding: "Any minute, expect a dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
". It is also perhaps noteworthy that this version does not feature the last section of the script, in which the characters almost embark upon a third cycle of the text.
See also:
- Beckett on Film Official site
- Play at Beckett on Film, Official site