Theatre
Waiting for Godot
En attendant Godot
Samuel Beckett · 1952
Synopsis
By the side of a road, near a tree, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for a certain Godot who does not come. To pass the time, they talk, quarrel, consider hanging themselves. Pozzo and his servant Lucky pass by, then a boy comes to announce that Godot will come tomorrow. The second act repeats the first, with slight changes.
Context
Written in 1948 and 1949, the play was published by Éditions de Minuit in 1952 and premiered on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris, directed by Roger Blin. Beckett translated it into English himself: the text appeared in 1954, and the play was staged in London in 1955. It is regarded as the first success of the theatre of the absurd, and the critic Vivian Mercier summed it up in a famous phrase: a play in which nothing happens, twice.
Who it is for
A short play in two acts, written in French, which the author himself translated into English.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a revolution in the theatre; voted in 1998, in a Royal National Theatre poll, the most important English-language play of the century.
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