The First Crusade: Sanctifying War

The Roman Empire had remained, to a limited degree, multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious, even after Christianity became its official religion. With the breakup of the Empire, the Western Church increasingly sought to assert its authority in the secular as well as in the spiritual realm. The society it envisioned was Christian in conformity with the doctrine laid down by the Roman Church. Within it the status of non-Chrisitians or unorthodox Christians became at best anomalous; at worst, these groups came to be threatened with persecution and even extinction.

In the eleventh century, Christian teaching about war changed. The religion that had emphasized passive suffering and martyrdom began a program of "holy wars," glorifying those who took up the cross not only as a badge of suffering but as a battle standard. To make peace among the barons who had been fighting one another, the Church enlisted them in crusades against the Moslems who had conquered the Middle East, North Africa, southern Spain, and much of Asia Minor. [Click on image to enlarge] The crusaders were to be soldiers of God who fought with the promises of indulgence for sins and of salvation. Culminating in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, with the slaughter of its Moslem and Jewish inhabitants, the First Crusade led to the establishment of Crusader kingdoms in the Middle East. These conquests were eventually eroded and the Christians driven out of their fortified cities. Jerusalem itself was recaptured by the armies of the great Arab general Saladin in 1187.

However, crusades were still being waged through the fourteenth century. The "worthiness" of Chaucer's Knight in "The General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales is summed up by a long list of the crusades in which he took part (NAEL 8, 1.219-20, lines 47–68). For Chaucer's audience, ignorant of the sordidness of some of the campaigns waged in God's name, crusades still held an aura of heroism and glory, a spell they would continue to cast over the Western imagination for centuries. [link source]

King Arthur: Romancing Politics

The illustration on the right shows a detail of a magnificent 21-by-16-foot tapestry of King Arthur woven about 1385. The tapestry comes from a set of the "Nine Worthies," who were regarded in the late Middle Ages as the greatest military leaders of all times. Chaucer's French contemporary Eustace Deschamps wrote a ballade about them as a reproach to what he regarded as his own degenerate age. Arthur and his knights, although believed by most medieval people to be historical, are almost entirely products of legend and literature, made up by many authors writing in different genres, beginning not long after the fifth and early sixth centuries, the time when he supposedly lived, and culminating with Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur in the latter part of the fifteenth century (NAEL 8, 1.439-56). The very absence of historical fact to underpin the legends about Arthur left writers of history and romance free to exploit those stories in the service of personal, political, and social agendas.

The man who inspired the Arthurian legend would have been a Briton, a leader of the Celtic people who had been part of the Roman Empire and had converted to Christianity after it became the official religion of Rome. At the time, the Britons were making a temporarily successful stand against the Anglo-Saxon invaders who had already occupied the southeastern corner of Britain. The Roman Empire was crumbling before the incursions of Germanic tribes, and by the late fifth century the Britons were cut off from Rome and forced to rely for protection on their own strength instead of on the Roman legions (NAEL 8, 1.4).

Arthur was never a "king"; he may well have been commander-in-chief of British resistance to the Anglo-Saxons. In the Welsh elegiac poem Gododdin, composed ca. 600, a hero is said to have fed ravens with the corpses of his enemies, "though he was not Arthur," indicating that the poet knew of an even greater hero by that name. According to a Latin History of the Britons around the year 800, ascribed to Nennius, "Arthur fought against the Saxons in those days together with the kings of Britain, but he was himself the leader of battles." Nennius names twelve such battles, in one of which Arthur is said to have carried an image of the Virgin Mary on his shoulders. The Latin Annals of Wales (ca. 950) has an entry for the year 516 concerning "the Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights, and the Britons were victorious."

Not until the twelfth century, though, did Arthur achieve a quasi-historical existence as the greatest of British kings in the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Layamon (NAEL 8, 1.118-28). At the same time, Arthur was flourishing in Welsh tales as a fairy-tale king, attended by courtiers named Kei (Kay), Bedwyn (Bedivere), and Gwalchmain (Gawain). It was in the French literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Arthur and his knights came to embody the rise, and eventual decline, of a court exemplifying an aristocratic ideal of chivalry. In the verse romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the focus shifts from the "history" of Arthur to the deeds of his knights who ride out from his court on fabulous adventures and exemplify the chivalric ethos. Chrétien's works were adapted and imitated by writers in German, English, Dutch, and Icelandic. The new genre of romance focused not only on the exploits of knights fighting in wars and tournaments or battling against monstrous foes but also on the trials and fortunes of love, and romances addressed mixed audiences of men and women.

In the thirteenth century, a group of French writers produced what modern scholars refer to as the Vulgate Cycle, in prose. This consists of a huge network of interlocking tales, featuring hundreds of characters. The Vulgate Cycle presents a darker side to Arthur and to the Round Table as a center of courtesy and culture.

In the chronicle histories, as a Christian king, Arthur had borne the cross and fought valiantly against barbarian enemies and an evil giant. In romance, both Arthur's role and his character undergo changes inconsistent with his reputation as one of the worthies. His court continues to be the center from which the adventures of his knights radiate, but Arthur himself becomes something of a figurehead, someone whom French scholars refer to as a roi fainéant — a do-nothing king — who appears weak and is ruled and sometimes bailed out by one of his knights, especially by his nephew Sir Gawain. The very idea of Arthurian chivalry as a secular ideal undergoes a critique, especially in the Vulgate Cycle. While for the aristocracy Arthur's reign continued to provide an ancient model of courtesy, justice, and prowess, as it does in Deschamps's ballade on the Nine Worthies, moralists and satirists pointed out, with varying degrees of subtlety, how far Arthur and his knights fall short of the highest spiritual ideals. Sir Lancelot's adultery with Arthur's queen became an especially troubling factor.

In French romance, along with his uncle's, Sir Gawain's chivalry becomes equivocal and, in many respects, more interesting. In Chrétien's Yvain, Gawain serves as the advocate for male bonding, who succeeds in wooing the hero of the romance away from his newly wedded wife. In courtly romances at least (there is an exception in popular romance), Gawain never acquires a wife or even a permanent mistress like Lancelot, although there are covert and, occasionally, overt affairs with different ladies. In one late tale, Gawain agrees to woo a cruel lady on behalf of another knight, who then discovers Gawain in bed with that lady. The poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight may well be referring to such episodes when in the first of the three titillating bedroom scenes, he has the lady of the castle reproach Gawain for his lack of courtesy:

"So good a knight as Gawain is given out to be,
And the model of fair demeanor and manners pure,
Had he lain so long at a lady's side,
Would have claimed a kiss, by his courtesy,
Through some touch or trick of phrase at some tale's end."
(NAEL 8, 1.189, lines 1297–1301)

French romance can help one appreciate the subtlety and delicacy of the humor with which the Gawain poet and Chaucer treat bedroom scenes. The Gauvain of French romances, however, contrasts with his English counterpart. In English romance before Malory, Sir Gawain remains Arthur's chief knight. Chaucer's Squire's Tale praises the speech and behavior of a strange knight by saying that "Gawain, with his olde curteisye, / Though he were come again out of fairye, / Ne coude him nat amende with a word." In Arthur's nightmarish dream in Layamon's Brut, Gawain sits astride the roof of the hall in front of the king, holding his sword (NAEL 8, 1.125, lines 13985–87). The English Gawain does get married in The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, which is one of eleven popular Gawain romances surviving in English in all of which Sir Gawain is the best of Arthur's knights. That story is of special interest because it has the same plot as The Wife of Bath's Tale, except that in this tale the hero is not getting himself but King Arthur off the hook.

The legendary king of the Celtic Britons and his nephew were eventually adopted as national heroes by the English, against whose ancestors Arthur and Gawain had fought, and that is how they are presented by William Caxton in the Preface to his edition of Malory's Morte Darthur in 1485, the same year in which Henry Tudor, who thanks to his Welsh ancestry made political capital of King Arthur, became Henry VII of England. Caxton valiantly, and perhaps somewhat disingenuously, seeks to refute the notion, "that there was no such Arthur and that all such books as been made of him been but feigned and fables." Yet even after Arthur's historicity had been discredited, his legend continued to fuel English nationalism and the imagination of epic poets. Spenser made Prince Arthur the destined but never-to-be consort of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene (NAEL 8, 1.808-12, Canto 9.1–153); the young Milton had contemplated Arthur as a possible epic subject (NAEL 8, 1.1813, note 2). [link source]

Medieval Estates and Orders: Making and Breaking Rules

Near the beginning of Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, the narrator tells his audience that he will describe the "condicioun" of the pilgrims, their "degree" (social rank), "whiche they were," and also "what array that they were inne"; at the end he says that he has now told their "estaat" and "array" and apologizes if he has not arranged them in the "degree . . . as that they sholde stonde," i.e., their correct social order (NAEL 8, 1.219, lines 38–41; 235, line 718; 236, lines 745–47). This professed concern for putting people in their proper place is obviously of great interest to the poet and his audience. It should also be a matter of interest and amusement to modern readers, especially if they realize that the poet's ostensible concern for propriety is a mask he puts on. What is interesting about Chaucer's Prologue is not that it portrays an archaic and closed social order but that it reveals that order in the process of breaking down. Most of Chaucer's pilgrims are by no means content to stay in their proper places but are engaged in the pursuit of wealth, status, and respectability. The conflict between the old and the new, between tradition and ambition is evident not only in the General Prologue but throughout The Canterbury Tales in the individual pilgrims' prologues and tales.

Every society devises terminology meant to express social stratifications but also often used to disguise them. Class, the principal term in both popular and academic discourse about our society, is not very useful or accurate in analyzing medieval society or the ways in which that society thought about itself. Although there may be some justification in applying notions of class, especially middle-class, to Chaucer's world, that of the late fourteenth century, one needs to keep in mind that the Middle Ages cover the period of a millennium during which social structures and social theory were constantly changing. The main purpose of the following selections is to define more precisely such terms as condition, degree, estate, and order, a word that can signify both the (theoretically) harmonious arrangement of the cosmos and society and individual units of the general order, such as a religious order or an order of chivalry.

[Click on image to enlarge] One of the main differences between the order of medieval and the order of modern society is the preeminent role played in the former by the Church and its many institutions. One-third of the Canterbury pilgrims either belong to the Church — the Prioress, the Second Nun (her chaplain), the Nun's Priest (one of three priests who are said to accompany her), the Monk, the Friar, the Clerk, and the Parson — or are laymen who make a corrupt living out of it — the Summoner and the Pardoner. >> note 1 The Church was in itself a complex social structure and inevitably constituted one of the divisions made in medieval social theory, which was written in Latin by churchmen. An obvious division is the bipartite one between the clergy and the laity — those belonging to the Church and those outside it. Another — one of several tripartite divisions — which stems from the Roman Church's doctrine of celibacy of the clergy, is based on sexual activity: virgins, widowers and widows, and married people. This is a classification that the Wife of Bath in her Prologue professes to accept while defending her right to remarry as often as she pleases (NAEL 8, 1.256–60).

Religious orders were so called because they were "ordered" or "regulated" by a regula, i.e., a "rule" (the latter noun comes into English from Old French reule via Latin regula), and a division was recognized between regular clergy, those subject to the rule of a monastic order, who lived in a religious community, and secular clergy, those subject to the bishop of a diocese, who lived in the world. Both regulars and seculars were ultimately subject to the pope. The oldest religious rule in this sense is the Rule of Saint Benedict devised in the sixth century by the founder of the Benedictine order, who has been called the "Father of Western Monasticism."

[Click on image to enlarge] Over the course of the Middle Ages, a schema of three mutually dependent estates developed, one of the earliest articulations of which is that of the English Benedictine monk Aelfric. According to this theory, Christian society was comprised of those who pray (the clergy), those who fight (the nobility), and those who work (the laborers). The clergy see to it that the souls of all may be saved; the laborers see to it that the bodies of all may be fed and clothed; the nobility see to it that the other two estates may carry out their functions in peace and with justice.

[Click on image to enlarge] In practice, such a schema does not begin to account for the varieties of religious, social, or professional experience during the Middle Ages. The Rule of Saint Benedict sets forth the basic principles and practices of monks and nuns and helps one to grasp the violations of the rule by the likes of Chaucer's fourteenth-century Monk. But the religious and social world kept changing. The Benedictine order itself changed as it grew more powerful and politically influential. In the twelfth century new orders appeared — the Cistercians and the orders of friars founded by St. Dominic and St. Francis. Also, in emulation of the early Christian desert fathers, both men and women often chose to live as hermits or recluses instead of joining religious communities. The Ancrene Riwle (Rule for Anchoresses) (NAEL 8, 1.157–59), written for three English sisters, contains elements of passionate devotional experience absent from the Benedictine rule.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the nobility developed a taste for romances of chivalry — many of them about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The Round Table itself came to be thought of as an "order," in some respects like a religious order. Ramón Lull's The Book of the Order of Chivalry, one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages, lays out that concept in the form of a book of instruction presented like a rule by an older knight to a young squire who is about to be dubbed into the order of knighthood.

Nuns belonged to religious orders following a rule. But St. Benedict's Rule, Aelfric, Ramón Lull, and most discussions of estates and orders, except those, like Ancrene Riwle, addressed to women, are silent about woman's estate. Women worked beside their husbands in the fields, in the textile industry, and in shops; but there was a body of antifeminist literature that dealt with women as though they belonged to a separate order whose sole enterprise was sex, love, and marriage. In the Romance of the Rose, Jean de Meun, the second of its two authors, created a satiric character named La vieille, the Old Woman, who holds a long discourse on how to take advantage of men and succeed in that enterprise (in which, she confesses, she has failed). Her discourse is an important source for Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue.

[Click on image to enlarge] Although the three estates were supposed to work together for the common good, their actual history is one of constant friction and conflict. The murder of Thomas á Becket by four of Henry II's knights, for which the king was forced to do penance, is an example of an ongoing dispute between church and state about jurisdiction over the clergy. Mutual hatred of the lower and higher estates is seen in the bloody English Uprising of 1381, which is represented here by a series of rebel manifestos preserved in chronicles and an allegorical diatribe against the rebels in the Vox Clamantis of the poet John Gower. That work, as well as Gower's Mirour de l'Omme, illustrates the late-medieval genre of estates satire to which the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is, in some respects, related. In estates satires the idealism projected by St. Benedict, the author of Ancrene Riwle, and Ramón Lull has given way to a profound pessimism and even despair about the social order. The different estates now include — in addition to bishops, monks, barons, knights, and peasants — merchants, doctors, lawyers, and other more specialized professions whose activities provide an unrelieved, if occasionally colorful, catalogue of greed, fraud, and hypocrisy. [source: www.wwnorton.com]

Postcolonial Author: "Gabriel García Márquez"

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, also known as Gabo (born March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Magdalena) is a Colombian novelist, journalist, editor, publisher, political activist, and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. His second novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), is the best-selling of all books originally written in the Spanish language (36 million copies sold as of July 2007). Márquez has lived mostly in Mexico and Europe and currently spends much of his time in Mexico City. Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he has secured both significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success. Many people hold that García Márquez ranks alongside his co-writers of the Latin American Boom, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar as one of the world's greatest 20th-century authors.

Gabriel García Márquez is the father of television and film director Rodrigo Garcia.

García Márquez's first major work was The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago), which he wrote as a newspaper series in 1955. The book told the true story of a shipwreck by exposing the fact that the existence of contraband aboard a Colombian Navy vessel had contributed to the tragedy due to overweight. This resulted in public controversy, as it discredited the official account of the events, which had blamed a storm for the shipwreck and glorified the surviving sailor. This led to the beginning of his foreign correspondence, as García Márquez became a sort of persona non grata to the government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The series was later published in 1970 and taken by many to have been written as a novel.

Several of his works have been classified as both fiction and non-fiction, notably Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Crónica de una muerte anunciada) (1981), which tells the tale of a revenge killing recorded in the newspapers, and Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) (1985), which is loosely based on the story of his parents' courtship. Many of his works, including those two, take place in the "García Márquez universe," in which characters, places, and events reappear from book to book. The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez often cross genres and most integrate at least a few elements of magical realism. Furthermore, many of his novels and short stories integrate actual history as well as complete fabrication, making his genres sometimes difficult to pin down.

His most commercially successful novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (1967; English translation by Gregory Rabassa 1970), has sold more than 36 million copies worldwide. It chronicles several generations of the Buendía family who live in a fictional South American village called Macondo. García Márquez won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1972 for One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, with his short stories and novels cited as the basis for the award.[1]

In 2002, he published the memoir Vivir para contarla, the first of a projected three-volume autobiography. The book was a bestseller in the Spanish-speaking world. Edith Grossman's English translation, Living to Tell the Tale, was published in November 2003 and has become another bestseller. On September 10, 2004, the Bogotá daily El Tiempo announced a new novel, Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores), a love story that follows the romance of a 90-year old man and a drugged, pubescent concubine, was published the following October with a first print run of one million copies.

Novels

* In Evil Hour 1962
* One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967
* The Autumn of the Patriarch 1975
* Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1981
* Love in the Time of Cholera 1985
* The General in His Labyrinth 1989
* Of Love and Other Demons 1994
* Memories of My Melancholy Whores 2004

Short Stories

* A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (1968)
* The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World (1971)
* Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles (1972)
* The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship (1972)
* Death Constant Beyond Love (1973)
* The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother (1973)
* The Sea of Lost Time (1974)
* Eyes of a Blue Dog (1978)
* The Night of the Curlews (1978)
* Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses (1978)
* The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock (1978)
* Artificial Roses (1984)
* Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon (1984)
* Big Mama's Funeral (1984)
* Bitterness for Three Sleepwalkers (1984)
* Dialogue with the Mirror (1984)
* Eva is Inside Her Cat (1984)
* Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo (1984)
* Montiel's Widow (1984)
* Nabo: The Black Man Who Made the Angels Wai (1984)
* One Day After Saturday (1984)
* One of These Days (1984)
* The Other Side of Death (1984)
* There Are No Thieves in This Town (1984)
* The Third Resignation (1984)
* Tuesday Siesta (1984)
* Bon Voyage, Mr. President (1992)
* The Saint (1992)
* Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane (1992)
* I Sell My Dreams (1992)
* "I Only Came to Use the Phone" (1992)
* Maria dos Prazeres(1992)
* Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen (1992)
* Tramontana (1992)
* Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness (1992)
* Light is Like Water (1992)
* The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow (1992)
* The Ghosts of August (1993)
* Caribe Mágico (1996)

Short Story Collections

* No One Writes to the Colonel 1968
* Leaf Storm 1972
* Innocent Erendira 1978
* Strange Pilgrims 1992

Non-fiction

* The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 1955
* The Fragrance of Guava 1982
* Clandestine in Chile 1987
* News of a Kidnapping 1996
* A Country for Children 1998
* Living to Tell the Tale 2002

Further reading

* Bhalla, Alok (1987). Garcia Marquez and Latin America.
* Bell, Michael (1993). Gabriel García Márquez: Solitude and Solidarity.
* Bloom, Harold (1989). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (1999). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (1999). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (2007). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (2006). Gabriel García Márquez (Bloom's BioCritiques).
* Bloom, Harold (2006). One Hundred Years of Solitude (Modern Critical Interpretations).
* Bloom, Harold (2003). One Hundred Years of Solitude (Modern Critical Interpretations).
* Bloom, Harold (2005). Love in the time of cholera (Modern Critical Interpretations).
* Darraj, Susan (2006). Gabriel García Márquez(The great Hispanic heritage).
* Fahy, Thomas (2003). Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the time of cholera : a reader's guide.
* Fiddian, Robin W. (1995). García Márquez.
* Fuentes, Carlos (1987). Gabriel García Márquez and the Invention of America.
* Janes, Regina (1981). Gabriel García Márquez: Revolutions in Wonderland.
* McGuirk, Bernard (1987). Gabriel García Márquez: New Readings.
* McMurray, George R. (1977). Gabriel García Márquez.
* McMurray, George R. (1987). Critical essays on Gabriel García Márquez.
* McMurray, George R. (1987). Gabriel García Márquez: Life, Work, and Criticism.
* McNerney, Kathleen (1989). Understanding Gabriel García Márquez.
* Mellen, Joan (2000). Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
* Miller, Yvette E. (1985). Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
* Oberhelman, Harley D. (1991). Gabriel García Márquez: A Study of the Short Fiction.
* Ortega, Julio (1988). Gabriel García Márquez and the Powers of Fiction.
* Oyarzún, Kemy (1984). Essays on Gabriel García Márquez.
* Penuel, Arnold M. (1994). Intertextuality in García Márquez.
* Pelayo, Rubén (2001). Gabriel García Márquez: A Critical Companion.
* Shaw, Bradley A. (1986). Critical Perspectives on Gabriel García Márquez.
* Vergara, Isabel (1998). Haunting demons : critical essays on the works of Gabriel García Márquez.
* Villada, Gene (2002). Gabriel García Márquez's One hundred years of solitude : a casebook.
* Williams, Raymond L. (1984). Gabriel García Márquez (Twayne's World Authors Series).

Postcolonial Author: "Pramoedya Ananta Toer"

Pramoedya Ananta Toer [1] (February 6, 1925 – April 30, 2006) was an Indonesian author of novels, short stories, essays, polemics, and histories of his homeland and its people. A well-regarded writer in the West, Pramoedya's outspoken and often politically charged writings faced censorship in his native land during the pre-reformation era. For opposing the policies of both founding president Sukarno, as well as those of its successor, the New Order regime of Suharto, he faced extrajudicial punishment. During the many years in which he suffered imprisonment and house arrest, he became a cause célèbre for advocates of freedom of expression and human rights.

Early years

Pramoedya was born on February 6, 1925, in the town of Blora in the heartland of Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies. He was the firstborn son in his family; his father was a teacher, who was also active in Boedi Oetomo (the first recognized national organization in Indonesia) and his mother was a rice trader. His maternal grandfather had taken the pilgramage to Mecca.[2] As it is written in his semi-autobiographical collection of short stories "Cerita Dari Blora", the name was actually Pramoedya Ananta Mastoer. But he felt that the family name Mastoer (his father's name) seemed too aristocratic. The Javanese prefix "Mas" refers to a man of the lowest rank in a noble family. Consequently he omitted "Mas" and kept Toer as his family name. He went on to the Radio Vocational School in Surabaya but had barely graduated from the school when Japan invaded Surabaya (1942).

During World War II, Pramoedya (like many Indonesian Nationalists, Sukarno and Suharto among them) at first supported the occupying forces of Imperial Japan. He believed the Japanese to be the lesser of two evils, compared to the Dutch. He worked as a typist for a Japanese newspaper in Jakarta. As the war went on, however, Indonesians were dismayed by the austerity of wartime rationing and by increasingly harsh measures taken by the Japanese military. The Nationalist forces loyal to Sukarno switched their support to the incoming Allies against Japan; all indications are that Pramoedya did as well.

On August 17, 1945, after the news of Allied victory over Japan reached Indonesia, Sukarno proclaimed Indonesia's total independence from all colonialists. This touched off the Indonesian National Revolution against the forces of the British and Dutch. In this war, Pramoedya joined a paramilitary group in Karawang, Kranji (West Java) and eventually was stationed in Jakarta. During this time he wrote short stories and books, as well as propaganda for the Nationalist cause. He was eventually imprisoned by the Dutch in Jakarta in 1947 and remained there until 1949, the year the Netherlands accepted Indonesian independence. While imprisoned in Bukit Duri from 1947 to 1949 for his role in the Indonesian Revolution, he wrote his first major novel The Fugitive.

Post-Independence prominence

In the first years after the struggle for independence, Pramoedya wrote several works of fiction dealing with the problems of the newly founded nation, as well as semi-autobiographical works based on his wartime memoirs. He was soon able to live in the Netherlands as part of a cultural exchange program. In the years that followed, he took an interest in several other cultural exchanges, including trips to the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China, as well as translations of Russian writers Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy.

In Indonesia, Pramoedya built up a reputation as a literary and social critic, joining the left-wing writers' group Lekra and writing in various newspapers and literary journals. His writing style became more politically charged, as evidenced in his story Korupsi (Corruption), a critical fiction of a civil servant who falls into the trap of corruption. This created friction between him and the government of Sukarno.

From the late 1950s, Pramoedya began teaching literary history at the left-wing Universitas Res Publica. As he prepared material, he began to realise that the study of Indonesian language and literature had been distorted by the Dutch colonial authorities. He sought out materials that had been ignored by colonial educational institutions, and which had continued to be ignored after independence.

Having spent time in China, he became greatly sympathetic to the Indonesian Chinese over the persecutions they faced in postcolonial Indonesia. Most notably, he published a series of letters addressed to an imagined Chinese correspondent discussing the history of the Indonesian Chinese, called Hoakiau di Indonesia (History of the Overseas Chinese in Indonesia). He criticized the government for being too Java-centric and insensitive to the needs and desires of the other regions and peoples of Indonesia. As a result, he was arrested by the Indonesian military and jailed at Cipinang prison for nine months.

Imprisonment under Suharto

In the first years after the independence struggle, a wave of anti-communist and anti-Chinese fervor came to a head with the assassinations of several right-wing generals, allegedly by elements loyal to the Communist Party of Indonesia. After the transition to Suharto's New Order, Pramoedya's position as the head of People's Cultural Organisation, a literary wing of Indonesian Communist Party caused him to be considered a communist and enemy of the "New Order" regime. He was arrested, beaten, and imprisoned by Suharto's government and named a tapol ("political prisoner"). His books were banned from circulation, and he was imprisoned without trial, first in Nusa Kambangan off the coast of Java, and then in the penal colony of Buru in the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago.

He was banned from writing during his imprisonment on the island of Buru, but still managed to compose - orally - his best-known series of work to date, the Buru Quartet, a series of 4 semi-fictional novels chronicling the development of Indonesian nationalism. The English titles of the books in the quartet are This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, and House of Glass. The main character of the series, Minke, a Javanese minor royal, was based on an Indonesian journalist active in the nationalist movement, Tirto Adhi Surjo. Pramoedya had done research for the books before his imprisonment in the Buru prison camp; when he was arrested, his library was burned and he was not permitted even to have a pencil in the prison. Doubting that he would ever be able to write the novels down himself, he narrated them to his fellow prisoners. Eventually, with the support of the other prisoners who took on extra labor to reduce his workload, Pramoedya was able to write the novels down, and the published works derive their name "Buru Quartet" from the prison where he produced them. They have been collected and published in English (translated by Max Lane) and Indonesian, as well as many other languages. Though publication was banned in Indonesia, copies were scanned by Indonesians abroad and distributed via the Internet to people inside the country.

Pramoedya's works on colonial Indonesia recognised the importance of Islam as a vehicle for popular opposition to the Dutch. On the other hand, his works rejected those who used religion to deny critical thinking, and on occasion show considerable negativity to the religiously pious which is speculated to have resulted from a low number of Hajjis in his native Blora and resentment of his Haji grandfather's divorce and abandonment of his grandmother.[2]

Release and subsequent works

Pramoedya was released from imprisonment in 1979, but remained under house arrest in Jakarta until 1992. During this time he released The Girl From the Coast, another semi-fictional novel based on his grandmother's own experience (volumes 2 and 3 of this work were destroyed along with his library in 1965). He also wrote Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu (1995; A Mute's Soliloquy), an autobiography based on the letters that he wrote for his daughter but were not allowed to be sent, and Arus Balik (1995).

More recently, he wrote many columns and short articles criticizing the current Indonesian government. He wrote a book Perawan Remaja dalam Cengkraman Militer (Young Virgins in the Military's Grip), a documentary written in the style of a novel showcasing the plight of Javanese women who were forced to become comfort women during the Japanese occupation. They were brought to the island of Buru where they were sexually abused, and ended up staying there instead of returning to Java. Pramoedya made their acquaintance when he himself was a political prisoner on the Buru island in the 1970s.

Pramoedya was hospitalized on April 27th 2006, for complications brought on by diabetes and heart disease. He was also a heavy smoker of clove cigarettes and had endured years of abuse while in detention. He died on April 30th 2006 at the age of 81. Pramoedya earned several accolades, and was frequently discussed as Indonesia's and Southeast Asia's best candidate for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Awards

* 1988 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.
* 1989 The Fund for Free Expression Award, New York, USA.
* 1992 English P.E.N Centre Award, Great Britain.
* 1992 Stichting Wertheim Award, Netherland.
* 1995 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts.
* 1999 Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Michigan.
* 1999 Chancellor's Distinguished Honor Award from the University of California, Berkeley.
* 2000 Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Republic of France.
* 2000 11th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize.
* 2004 Norwegian Authors' Union award for his contribution to world literature and his continuous struggle for the right to freedom of expression.
* 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll by the Prospect.

Major Works

* Kranji-Bekasi Jatuh (1947)
* Perburuan (The Fugitive) (1950)
* Keluarga Gerilya (1950)
* Bukan Pasarmalam (1951)
* Cerita dari Blora (1952)
* Gulat di Jakarta (1953)
* Korupsi (Corruption) (1954)
* Midah - Si Manis Bergigi Emas (1954)
* Cerita Calon Arang (The King, the Witch, and the Priest) (1957)
* Hoakiau di Indonesia (1960)
* Panggil Aku Kartini Saja I & II (1962)
* The Buru Quartet
o Bumi Manusia (This Earth of Mankind) (1980)
o Anak Semua Bangsa (Child of All Nations) (1980)
o Jejak Langkah (Footsteps) (1985)
o Rumah Kaca (House of Glass) (1988)
* Gadis Pantai (The Girl from the Coast) (1982)
* Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu (A Mute's Soliloquy) (1995)
* Arus Balik (1995)
* Arok Dedes (1999)
* Mangir (1999)
* Larasati (2000)

Books on Pramoedya Ananta Toer

* Citra Manusia Indonesia dalam Karya Pramoedya Ananta Toer, by A. Teuw, Pustaka Jaya, Jakarta, 1990.
* Pramoedya Ananta Toer dan Sastra Realisme Sosialis, by Eka Kurniawan, Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta, 2006.

Postcolonial literature

Postcolonial literature (less often spelled "Post-colonial literature", sometimes called "New English Literature(s)") is literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires, and the literary expression of postcolonialism.

Postcolonial literary critics re-examine classic literature with a particular focus on the social "discourse" that shaped it. For instance, in Orientalism, Edward Said analyzes the works of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Postcolonial fictional writers interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story, for example Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which was written as a pseudo-prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Often the protagonist of a postcolonial work will find him/herself in a struggle to establish an identity, feeling conflicted between an old, native world that is being abolished by the invasive forces of modernity and/or the new dominant culture.

Postcolonial literature uses a wide range of terms, like "writing back", re-writing and re-reading, which describe the interpretation of well-known literature under the perspective of the formerly colonized. In Wide Sargasso Sea, the protagonist is renamed several times, and exploited in several ways. Other authors use different analogies for the colonized, but also very different approaches. Ayi Kwei Armah in "Two Thousand seasons" establishes a history for Africa.

Indian English literature

Indian English Literature (IEL) refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, especially people like Salman Rushdie who was born in India. It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature; Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole context of writing that should not be confused with the term Anglo-Indian. As a category, this production comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature- the production from previously colonised countries such as India.

IEL has a relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first book written by an Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahomet; Mahomet's travel narrative was published in 1793 in England. In its early stages it was influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially Indian. Raja Rao's Kanthapura is Indian in terms of its storytelling qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first Indian author to win a literary award in the United States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer of non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian where he relates his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet, translator, publisher and essayist, founded a press in the 1950's for Indian English writing, Writers Workshop.

R.K. Narayan is a writer who contributed over many decades and who continued to write till his death recently. He was discovered by Graham Greene in the sense that the latter helped him find a publisher in England. Graham Greene and Narayan remained close friends till the end. Similar to Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Narayan created the fictitious town of Malgudi where he set his novels. Some criticise Narayan for the parochial, detached and closed world that he created in the face of the changing conditions in India at the times in which the stories are set. Others, such as Graham Greene, however, feel that through Malgudi they could vividly understand the Indian experience. Narayan's evocation of small town life and its experiences through the eyes of the endearing child protagonist Swaminathan in Swami and Friends is a good sample of his writing style. [source: wikipedia]

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists, who began exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Characteristics of Impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.

The emergence of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous movements in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Impressionism also describes art created in this style, but outside of the late 19th century time period.

Overview

Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colors, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the world. Previously, not only still lifes and portraits, but also landscapes, had been painted indoors, but the Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details. They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed color, not smoothly blended, as was customary, in order to achieve the effect of intense color vibration.

Although the rise of Impressionism in France happened at a time when a number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the Macchiaioli, and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also exploring plein-air painting, the Impressionists developed new techniques that were specific to the movement. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it was an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of color.

The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if it did not receive the approval of the art critics and establishment.

By recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than recreating the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism became seminal to various movements in painting which would follow, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

Painters known as Impressionists

The central figures in the development of Impressionism in France, listed alphabetically, were:

* Frédéric Bazille
* Gustave Caillebotte (who, younger than the others, joined forces with them in the mid 1870s)
* Mary Cassatt (American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in four Impressionist exhibitions)
* Paul Cézanne (although he later broke away from the Impressionists)
* Edgar Degas (a realist who despised the term Impressionist, but is considered one, due to his loyalty to the group)
* Armand Guillaumin
* Édouard Manet (who did not regard himself as an Impressionist, but is generally considered one)
* Claude Monet (the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one who most clearly embodies their aesthetic)[13]
* Berthe Morisot
* Camille Pissarro
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir
* Alfred Sisley

Among the close associates of the Impressionists were several painters who adopted their methods to some degree. These include Giuseppe De Nittis, an Italian artist living in Paris who participated in the first Impressionist exhibit at the invitation of Degas, although the other Impressionists disparaged his work.[14] Federico Zandomeneghi was another Italian friend of Degas who showed with the Impressionists. Eva Gonzalès was a follower of Manet who did not exhibit with the group. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born painter who played a part in Impressionism although he did not join the group and preferred grayed colors. Walter Sickert, an English artist, was initially a follower of Whistler, and later an important disciple of Degas; he did not exhibit with the Impressionists. In 1904 the artist and writer Wynford Dewhurst wrote the first important study of the French painters to be published in English, Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development, which did much to popularize Impressionism in Great Britain.

By the early 1880s, Impressionist methods were affecting, at least superficially, the art of the Salon. Fashionable painters such as Jean Beraud and Henri Gervex found critical and financial success by brightening their palettes while retaining the smooth finish expected of Salon art.[15] Works by these artists are sometimes casually referred to as Impressionism, despite their remoteness from Impressionist practice.

As the influence of Impressionism spread beyond France, artists, too numerous to list, became identified as practitioners of the new style.

Some of the more important examples are:

* The American Impressionists, including Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir
* Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, and Max Slevogt in Germany
* Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov in Russia
* Francisco Oller y Cestero, a native of Puerto Rico, who was a friend of Pissarro and Cézanne
* Laura Muntz Lyall, a Canadian artist
* Władysław Podkowiński, a Polish Impressionist and symbolist
* Nazmi Ziya Güran, who brought Impressionism to Turkey
* Chafik Charobim, who was a well known impressionist painter in Egypt

::more about impressionism, click here

Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage

The second edition of Collier's Short View.

Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage is an anti-theatre pamphlet written in 1698 by the Non-juror bishop and divine Jeremy Collier. Collier attacks the most popular recent comedies on the London stage, notably Love For Love (1695) by William Congreve and The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh.

The target of Collier's "Immorality" charge is the lack of poetic justice and exemplary morality in the plays discussed. Collier performs detailed readings to demonstrate that all the characters are wicked and immoral and denounces the playwrights for failing to punish them, indeed for even, in many cases, rewarding them.

Collier's charge of "Profaneness" is also supported by quotations from the plays, containing exclamations of "Heavens!" and accusations against Providence and Fortune which must seem comparatively mild to modern playgoers. Collier does not provide examples of downright oaths or frank blasphemy, which were not tolerated on the stage or in print at the time.

Collier's tactics of packing the Short View with selected quotations from recent plays were innovative and effective, especially compared to the earlier English tradition of nonspecific anti-theatre rants such as William Prynne's Histriomastix (1633). A pamphlet war for and against Collier's case broke out, where Congreve attempted to refute Collier in a lengthy reply, Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations. Vanbrugh, by contrast, refused to take the attack on his plays seriously, and his response, A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife From Immorality and Prophaneness, is brief and jocular, charging the clergyman Collier with being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real profanity.

In popular accounts, the Short View is often credited with changing public taste and starting a wave of outrage against the sexual explicitness of Restoration comedy. However, the tide had already turned against Restoration comedy when Collier wrote. In the view of modern Restoration scholars, the Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage serves rather to illustrate the fact that the tolerance of respectable Londoners for Restoration comedy had run out at this time, eroded by demographic change, by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692), and by William and Mary's cold dislike of the theatre.

References

* Collier, Jeremy (ed. Kaneko, Yuji ) (1996; first published 1698). A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English stage. London: Routledge.
* Cordner, Michael.(2000) "Playwright versus priest: profanity and the wit of Restoration comedy." In Deborah Payne Fisk (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Vanbrugh, John (1698). A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife From Immorality and Prophaneness, in Bonamy Dobrée and Geoffrey Webb (eds.) (1927), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, vol. 1, Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press.

Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner depicted by Gustave Doré.

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798; it is typically considered to have marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in literature. The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature. Most of the poems in the 1798 edition were written by Wordsworth, with Coleridge contributing only four poems to the collection, including one of his most famous works, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". A second edition was published in 1800, in which Wordsworth added additional poems and a preface on his ideas about poetry. Another edition was published in 1802, Wordsworth added an appendix titled Poetic Diction in which he expanded the ideas set forth in the preface.

Wordsworth and Coleridge set out to overturn what they considered the priggish, learned and highly sculpted forms of eighteenth century English poetry and bring poetry within the reach of the average man by writing the verses using normal, everyday language. They place an emphasis on the vitality of the living voice that the poor use to express their reality. Using this language also helps point out the universality of man's emotions. Even the title of the collection recalls rustic forms of art - the word "lyrical" links the poems with the ancient rustic bards and lends an air of spontaneity, while "ballads" are an oral mode of storytelling used by the common people.

In his famous "Preface" (1800, revised 1802[1]) Wordsworth explained his poetical concept:

"The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure."

If the experiment with vernacular language was not enough of a departure from the norm, the focus on simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry was a signal shift to modern literature. One of the main themes of "Lyrical Ballads" is the return to the original state of nature, in which man led a purer and more innocent existence. Wordsworth subscribed to the belief of Locke and Rousseau that man was essentially good and was corrupted by the influence of society. This may be linked with the sentiments spreading though Europe just prior to the French Revolution.

Poems in the 1800 edition
Volume I

* Expostulation and Reply↨
* The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject↨
* Old Man Travelling; Animal Tranquillity and Decay, a Sketch↨
* The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman↨
* The Last of the Flock↨
* Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite↨
* The Foster-Mother's Tale↨
* Goody Blake and Harry Gill↨
* The Thorn↨
* We are Seven↨
* Anecdote for Fathers↨
* Lines written at a small distance from my House and sent me by my little Boy to the Person to whom they are addressed ↨
* The Female Vagrant↨
* The Dungeon↨ ↑
* Simon Lee, the old Huntsman↨
* Lines written in early Spring↨
* The Nightingale, written in April, 1798.↨ ↑
* Lines written when sailing in a Boat at Evening
* Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames↨
* The Idiot Boy↨
* Love ↑
* The Mad Mother↨
* The Rime of the Ancient Mariner↨ ↑
* Lines written above Tintern Abbey↨


↑ indicates the poem is by Coleridge
↨ indicates the poem was in the 1798 edition.

Volume II

* Hart-leap Well
* There was a Boy, &c
* The Brothers, a Pastoral Poem
* Ellen Irwin, or the Braes of Kirtle
* Strange fits of passion I have known, &c.
* Song
* A slumber did my spirit seal, &c
* The Waterfall and the Eglantine
* The Oak and the Broom, a Pastoral
* Lucy Gray
* The Idle Shepherd-Boys or Dungeon-Gill Force, a Pastoral
* 'Tis said that some have died for love, &c.
* Poor Susan
* Inscription for the Spot where the Hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Island, Derwent-Water
* Inscription for the House (an Out-house) on the Island at Grasmere
* To a Sexton
* Andrew Jones
* The two Thieves, or the last stage of Avarice
* A whirl-blast from behind the Hill, &c.
* Song for the wandering Jew
* Ruth
* Lines written with a Slate-Pencil upon a Stone, &c.
* Lines written on a Tablet in a School
* The two April Mornings
* The Fountain, a conversation
* Nutting
* Three years she grew in sun and shower, &c.
* The Pet-Lamb, a Pastoral
* Written in Germany on one of the coldest days of the century
* The Childless Father
* The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description
* Rural Architecture
* A Poet's Epitaph
* A Character
* A Fragment
* Poems on the Naming of Places,
* Michael, a Pastoral

The poems The Convict (Wordsworth) and Love (Coleridge) were in the 1798 edition but Wordsworth omitted them from the 1800 edition. Lewti or the Circassian Love-chaunt (Coleridge) exists in some 1798 editions in place of The Nightingale.

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years that was revised and expanded a number of times. It was never published during his lifetime, and was only given the title after his death. Up until this time it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Early life and education

The second of five children of John Wordsworth (b. April 7th 1741), William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in Cumberland—part of the scenic region in north-west England called the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year. After the death of their mother in 1778, their father sent William to Bangor Grammar School and sent Dorothy to live with relations in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for another nine years.

In 1783 his father, who was a lawyer and the solicitor for the Earl of Lonsdale (a man much despised in the area), died. The estate consisted of around £4500 [citation needed], most of it in claims upon the Earl, who thwarted these claims until his death in 1802. The Earl's successor, however, settled the claims with interest. After their father's death, the Wordsworth children were left under the guardianship of their uncles. Although many aspects of his boyhood were positive, he recalled bouts of loneliness and anxiety. It took him many years, and much writing, to recover from the death of his parents and his separation from his siblings.

Wordsworth began attending St John's College, Cambridge in 1787, maintained by relatives. He returned to Hawkshead for his first two summer holidays, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790, he visited Revolutionary France and supported the Republican movement. The following year, he graduated from Cambridge without distinction. His youngest brother, Christopher, rose to be Master of Trinity College.[1]

Relationship with Annette Vallon

In November 1791, Wordsworth returned to France and took a walking tour of Europe that included the Alps and Italy. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their child, Caroline. Because of lack of money and Britain's tensions with France, he returned alone to England the next year.[2] The circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raise doubts as to his declared wish to marry Annette but he supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life. During this period, he wrote his acclaimed "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," recalling his seaside walk with his daughter, whom he had not seen for ten years. At the conception of this poem, he had never seen his daughter before. The occurring lines reveal his deep love for both child and mother. The Reign of Terror estranged him from the Republican movement, and war between France and Britain prevented him from seeing Annette and Caroline again for several years. There are also strong suggestions that Wordsworth may have been depressed and emotionally unsettled in the mid 1790s.

With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, visited Annette and Caroline in France and arrived at a mutually agreeable settlement regarding Wordsworth's obligations.[2]

First publication and Lyrical Ballads

1793 saw Wordsworth's first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. He received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could pursue writing poetry. That year, he also met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, moved to Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. The volume had neither the name of Wordsworth nor Coleridge as author. One of Wordsworth's most famous poems, "Tintern Abbey", was published in the work, along with Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as author, and included a preface to the poems, which was significantly augmented in the 1802 edition. This Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility." A fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in 1805.

Germany and move to the Lake District

Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge then travelled to Germany in the autumn of 1798. While Coleridge was intellectually stimulated by the trip, its main effect on Wordsworth was to produce homesickness.[2] During the harsh winter of 1798–1799, Wordsworth lived with Dorothy in Goslar, and despite extreme stress and loneliness, he began work on an autobiographical piece later titled The Prelude. He also wrote a number of famous poems, including "the Lucy poems". He and his sister moved back to England, now to Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, and this time with fellow poet Robert Southey nearby. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey came to be known as the "Lake Poets". Through this period, many of his poems revolve around themes of death, endurance, separation, and grief.
William Wordsworth, reproduced from Margaret Gillies' 1839 original
William Wordsworth, reproduced from Margaret Gillies' 1839 original
Portrait, 1842, by Benjamin Haydon
Portrait, 1842, by Benjamin Haydon

Marriage

In 1802, after returning from his trip to France with Dorothy to visit Annette and Caroline, Wordsworth received the inheritance owed by Lord Lonsdale since John Wordsworth's death in 1783. Later that year, he married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson.[2] Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary. The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, John.

Both Coleridge's health and his relationship to Wordsworth began showing signs of decay in 1804. That year Wordsworth befriended Robert Southey. With Napoleon's rise as Emperor of the French, Wordsworth's last wisp of liberalism fell, and from then on he identified himself as a Tory.

Autobiographical work and Poems in Two Volumes

Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call The Recluse. He had in 1798–99 started an autobiographical poem, which he never named but called the "poem to Coleridge", which would serve as an appendix to The Recluse. In 1804 he began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix to the larger work he planned. By 1805, he had completed it, but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole of The Recluse. The death of his brother, John, in 1805 affected him strongly.

The source of Wordsworth's philosophical allegiances as articulated in The Prelude and in such shorter works as "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey" has been the source of much critical debate. While it had long been supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge for philosophical guidance, more recent scholarship has suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid 1790s. While in Revolutionary Paris in 1792, the twenty-two year old Wordsworth made the acquaintance of the mysterious traveller John "Walking" Stewart (1747-1822),[3] who was nearing the end of a thirty-years' peregrination from Madras, India, through Persia and Arabia, across Africa and all of Europe, and up through the fledgling United States. By the time of their association, Stewart had published an ambitious work of original materialist philosophy entitled The Apocalypse of Nature (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments are likely indebted.

In 1807, his Poems in Two Volumes were published, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Up to this point Wordsworth was known publicly only for Lyrical Ballads, and he hoped this collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was only lukewarm, however.

For a time (starting in 1810), Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction.[2]

Two of his children, Thomas and Catherine, died in 1812. The following year, he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the £400 per year income from the post made him financially secure. His family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water), where he spent the rest of his life.[2]

The Prospectus

In 1814 he published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part The Recluse. He had not completed the first and third parts, and never would complete them. However, he did write a poetic Prospectus to "The Recluse" in which he lays out the structure and intent of the poem. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's most famous lines on the relation between the human mind and nature:

My voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too,
Theme this but little heard of among Men,
The external World is fitted to the Mind . . .

Some modern critics recognise a decline in his works beginning around the mid-1810s. But this decline was perhaps more a change in his lifestyle and beliefs, since most of the issues that characterise his early poetry (loss, death, endurance, separation, abandonment) were resolved in his writings. But, by 1820 he enjoyed the success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary critical opinion of his earlier works.

By 1828, Wordsworth had become fully reconciled to Coleridge, and the two toured the Rhineland together that year.[2]

Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829 that rendered her an invalid for the remainder of her life. In 1835, Wordsworth gave Annette and Caroline the money they needed for support.

The Poet Laureate and other honours

Wordsworth received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838 from Durham University, and the same honour from Oxford University the next year.[2] In 1842 the government awarded him a civil list pension amounting to £300 a year.

With the death in 1843 of Robert Southey, Wordsworth became the Poet Laureate. When his daughter, Dora, died in 1847, his production of poetry came to a standstill.

Death
Gravestone of William Wordsworth, Grasmere, Cumbria
Gravestone of William Wordsworth, Grasmere, Cumbria

William Wordsworth died in Rydal Mount in 1850 and was buried at St. Oswald's church in Grasmere.

His widow published his lengthy autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death. Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850, it has since come to be recognised as his masterpiece. The lives of Wordsworth and Coleridge, in particular their collaboration on the "Lyrical Ballads," are discussed in the 2000 film Pandaemonium.

Major works

* Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
o "Simon Lee"
o "We Are Seven"
o "Lines Written in Early Spring"
o "Expostulation and Reply"
o "The Tables Turned"
o "The Thorn"
o "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

* Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)
o Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
o "Strange fits of passion have I known"[4]
o "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"[4]
o "Three years she grew"[4]
o "A slumber did my spirit seal"[4]
o "I travelled among unknown men"[4]
o "Lucy Gray"
o "The Two April Mornings"
o "Nutting"
o "The Ruined Cottage"
o "Michael"

* Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
o "Resolution and Independence"
o "I wandered lonely as a cloud"
o "My heart leaps up"
o "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
o "Ode to Duty"
o "The Solitary Reaper"
o "Elegiac Stanzas"
o "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
o "London, 1802"
o "The world is too much with us"

* The Excursion (1814)
o "Prospectus to The Recluse"

* Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822)
o "Mutability"

* The Prelude (1850, posthumous)
o The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind

"Songs of Innocence and of Experience" by William Blake

Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was first published by itself in 1789, it is believed that Songs of Experience has always been published in conjunction with Innocence since its completion in 1794.

Songs of Innocence mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship with God, and most famously including Blake's poem The Lamb. Its poems have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written from the perspective of children or written about them.

Directly contrasting this, Songs of Experience instead deals with the loss of innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin during adult life, including works such as The Tyger. Poems here are darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes. Throughout both books, many poems fall into pairs, so that a similar situation or theme can be seen in both Innocence and Experience.

Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience with opposing perspectives of the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the volume's sense of despair. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. Blake believed that innocence and experience were "the two contrary states of the human soul", and that true innocence was impossible without experience.

Songs of Innocence

Songs of Innocence contains the following poems; each is accompanied by an illuminated plate by Blake.

* Introduction
* The Shepherd
* The Echoing Green
* The Lamb
* The Little Black Boy
* The Blossom
* The Chimney Sweeper
* The Little Boy Lost
* The Little Boy Found
* Laughing Song
* A Cradle Song
* The Divine Image
* Holy Thursday
* Night
* Spring
* Nurse's Song
* Infant Joy
* A Dream
* On Another's Sorrow


[source: wikipedia]

British Poet: "William Blake"

William Blake in an 1807 portrait by Thomas Phillips.
Born: November 28, 1757
Flag of England London, England
Died: August 12, 1827
Flag of England London, England
Occupation: Poet, Painter, Printmaker

William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. He was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons organized by the BBC in 2002.

According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language." Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced."[1] Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. As he himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."

While his visual art and written poetry are usually considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert to create a product that at once defied and superseded convention. Though he believed himself able to converse aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the Bible was accompanied by hostility for the established Church, his beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him.[2] Ultimately, the difficulty of placing William Blake in any one chronological stage of art history is perhaps the distinction that best defines him.

::more about William Blake, click here

"Paradise Lost" by John Milton

Cover 1
Title page of the first edition (1667)
Author: John Milton
Country: England
Language: English
Genre(s) : Epic poem
Publisher : Samuel Simmons (original)
Publication date : 1667
Media type : Print
ISBN NA

Cover 2
The cover of the 2005 Hackett Edition, with illustrations from the 1688 edition.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books; a second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. The poem concerns the Judeo-Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is "to justify the ways of God to men" (l. 26) and elucidate the conflict between God's eternal foresight and free will.

The protagonist of this epic is the fallen angel, Satan. Looked at from a modern perspective it may appear to some that Milton presents Satan sympathetically, as an ambitious and proud being who defies his creator, omnipotent God, and wages war on Heaven, only to be defeated and cast down. Indeed, William Blake, a great admirer of Milton and illustrator of the epic poem, said of Milton that "he was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it."[1] Some critics regard the character of Lucifer as a precursor of the Byronic hero.[2]

Milton worked for Oliver Cromwell and thus wrote first-hand for the English Commonwealth. Arguably, the failed rebellion and reinstallation of the monarchy left him to explore his losses within Paradise Lost. Some critics say that he sympathized with the Satan in this work, in that both had experienced a failed cause.

The story is innovative in that it attempts to reconcile the Christian and Pagan traditions: like Shakespeare, Milton found Christian theology lacking, requiring something more. He tries to incorporate Paganism, classical Greek references and Christianity within the story. He greatly admired the classics but intended this work to surpass them.

The poem grapples with many difficult theological issues, including fate, predestination, and the Trinity.

Story
The story is divided into twelve books against Homer's twenty-four of the Iliad and Odyssey. The longest book is Book IX, with 1189 lines and the shortest, Book VII, with 640. Each book is preceded by a summary titled "The Argument". The poem follows the epic tradition of starting in medias res (Latin for in the midst of things), the background story being told in Books V-VI.

Milton's story contains two arcs: one of Satan and another of Adam and Eve. Lucifer's story is an homage to the old epics of warfare. It begins in medias res, after Lucifer and the other rebel angels have been defeated and cast down by God into Hell. In Pandæmonium, Lucifer must employ his rhetorical ability to organize his followers; he is aided by his lieutenants Mammon and Beelzebub. At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers himself to poison the newly-created Earth. He braves the dangers of the Abyss alone in a manner reminiscent of Odysseus or Aeneas.

The other story is a fundamentally different, new kind of epic: a domestic one. Adam and Eve are presented for the first time in Christian literature as having a functional relationship while still without sin. They have passions, personalities, and sex. Satan successfully tempts Eve by preying on her vanity and tricking her with semantics, and Adam, seeing Eve has sinned, knowingly commits the same sin by also eating of the fruit. In this manner Milton portrays Adam as a heroic figure but also as a deeper sinner than Eve. They again have sex, but with a newfound lust that was previously not present. After realizing their error in consuming the "fruit" from the Tree of Knowledge, they fight. However, Eve's pleas to Adam reconcile them somewhat. Adam goes on a vision journey with an angel where he witnesses the errors of man and the great Flood, and he is saddened by the sin that they have released through the consumption of the fruit. However, he is also shown hope – the possibility of redemption – through a vision of Jesus Christ. They are then cast out of Eden and an angel adds that one may find "A paradise within thee, happier farr." They now have a more distant relationship with God, who is omnipresent but invisible (unlike the previous tangible Father in the garden of Eden).

The contents of the 12 books are:
Book I: In a long, twisting opening sentence, the poet invokes the "Heavenly Muse" and states his theme, the Fall of Man, and his aim, to "justifie the wayes of God to men". Satan, Beelzebub, and the other rebel angels are described as lying on a lake of fire, from where Satan rises up to claim hell as his own domain and delivers a rousing speech to his followers ("Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven").
Book II: Satan and the rebel angels debate whether or not to conduct another war on Heaven, and Beelzebub tells them of a new world being built, which is to be the home of Man. Satan decides to visit this new world, passes through the gates of Hell, past the sentries Sin and Death, and journeys through the realm of Chaos. Here, Satan is described as giving birth to Sin with a burst of flame from his forehead, as Athena was born from the head of Zeus.
Book III: God observes Satan's journey and foretells how Satan will bring about Man's Fall. God emphasizes, however, that the Fall will come about as a result of Man's own free will and excuses Himself of responsibility. The Son of God offers himself as a ransom for Man's disobedience, an offer which God accepts, ordaining the Son's future incarnation and punishment. Satan arrives at the rim of the universe, disguises himself as an angel, and is directed to Earth by Uriel, Guardian of the Sun.
Book IV: Satan journeys to the Garden of Eden, where he observes Adam and Eve discussing the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Satan, observing their innocence and beauty hesitates in his task, but concludes that "...reason, honour and empire..." compel him to do this deed which he "should abhor." Satan tries to tempt Eve while she is sleeping, but is discovered by the angels. The angel Gabriel expels Satan from the Garden.
Book V: Eve awakes and relates her dream to Adam. God sends Raphael to warn and encourage Adam: they discuss free will and predestination and Raphael tells Adam the story of how Satan inspired his angels to revolt against God.
Book VI: Raphael goes on to describe further the war in Heaven and explains how the Son of God drove Satan and his minions down to Hell.
Book VII: Raphael explains to Adam that God then decided to create another world (the Earth), and he warns Adam again not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, for "in the day thou eat'st, thou diest;/ Death is the penalty imposed, beware,/ And govern well thy appetite, lest Sin/ Surprise thee, and her black attendant Death".
Book VIII: Adam asks Raphael for knowledge concerning the stars and the heavenly orders; Raphael warns that "heaven is for thee too high/ To know what passes there; be lowly wise", and advises modesty and patience.
Book IX: Satan returns to Eden and enters into the body of a sleeping serpent. The serpent tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. She eats and takes some fruit for Adam. Adam realizes that Eve has been tricked, but eats of the fruit. In their loss of innocence Adam and Eve cover their nakedness and fall into despair: "They sat them down to weep, nor only tears/ Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within/ Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate,/ Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook greatly/ Their inward state of mind."
Book X: God sends his Son to Eden to deliver judgment on Adam and Eve, and Satan returns in triumph to Hell.
Book XI: The Son of God pleads with God on behalf of Adam and Eve. God declares that the couple must be expelled from the Garden, and the angel Michael descends to deliver God's judgment. Michael begins to unfold the future history of the world to Adam.
Book XII: Michael tells Adam of the eventual coming of the Messiah, before leading Adam and Eve from the Garden. Paradise has been lost. The poem ends: "The world was all before them, /They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,/ Through Eden took their solitary way."

Composition

Milton began writing the epic in 1658, during the last years of the English Republic. The infighting among different military and political factions that doomed the Republic may show up in the Council of Hell scenes in Book II. Although he probably finished the work by 1664, Milton did not publish till 1667 on account of the Great Plague and the Great Fire.

Milton composed the entire work while completely blind, necessitating the use of paid amanuenses. (The legend that he forced his daughters to take notation is just that, a legend.) The poet claimed that a divine spirit inspired him during the night, leaving him with verses that he would recite in the morning. It is a matter of debate whether Milton (or the inspirational spirit, if you like) cared about matters like punctuation and capitalization, though few writing at the time maintained a consistent spelling or capitalization. Although, as stated, Milton was not writing it himself; the suppposed "divine spirit" functions in the art, not the grammar. The 3rd Norton edition of Paradise Lost ignores the punctuation found in the surviving manuscript draft on the grounds that it was inserted by the printer, but this procedure has been challenged. Even into the mid-18th century a variety of publications included a wide array of spellings of even the same word within the same text.

Context

Influences include the Bible, Milton's own Puritan upbringing and religious perspective, Edmund Spenser, and the Roman poet Virgil.

Milton wrote the entire work with the help of secretaries and friends, notably Andrew Marvell, after losing his sight.

Later in life, Milton wrote the much shorter Paradise Regained, charting the temptation of Christ by Satan, and the return of the possibility of paradise. This sequel has never had a reputation equal to the earlier poem.

Response and criticism
The cover of the 2005 Hackett Edition, with illustrations from the 1688 edition.
The cover of the 2005 Hackett Edition, with illustrations from the 1688 edition.

This epic has generally been considered one of the greatest works in the English language. In the verses below the portrait in the fourth edition, John Dryden linked Milton with Homer and Virgil, suggesting that Milton encompassed and surpassed both, which would make him the greatest epic poet who ever lived or might ever come to be after him:

“Three Poets, in three distant Ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The First in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The Next in Majesty; in both the Last.
The force of Nature cou'd no farther goe:
To make a third she joynd the former two.”

Since Paradise Lost is based upon scripture, its significance in the Western canon has been thought by some to have lessened due to increasing secularism. However, this is not the general consensus, and even academics who have been labeled as secular realize the merits of the work. In William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the "voice of the devil" argues:

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

This statement summarizes what would become the most common interpretation of the work in the twentieth century. Some critics, including C.S. Lewis and later Stanley Fish, reject this interpretation. Rather, such critics hold that the theology of Paradise Lost conforms to the passages of Scripture on which it is based.

The latter half of the twentieth century saw the critical understanding of Milton's epic shift to a more political and philosophical focus. Rather than the Romantic conception of the Devil as the hero of the piece, it is generally accepted that Satan is presented in terms that begin classically heroic, then diminish him until he is finally reduced to a dust-eating serpent unable even to control his own body. The political angle enters into consideration in the underlying friction between Satan's conservative, hierarchical view of the universe and the contrasting "new way" of God and the Son of God as illustrated in Book III. In other words, in contemporary criticism the main thrust of the work becomes not the perfidy or heroism of Satan, but rather the tension between classical conservative "Old Testament" hierarchs (evidenced in Satan's worldview and even in that of the archangels Raphael and Gabriel), and "New Testament" revolutionaries (embodied in the Son of God, Adam, and Eve) who represent a new system of universal organization.[citation needed] This new order is based not in tradition, precedence, and unthinking habit, but on sincere and conscious acceptance of faith and on station chosen by ability and responsibility.[citation needed] Naturally, this interpretation makes much use of Milton's other works and his biography, grounding itself in his personal history as an English revolutionary and social critic. [citation needed]Samuel Johnson praised the poem lavishly, but conceded that "None ever wished it longer than it is."

Paradise Lost declined in critical and popular estimation during the 20th century due to attacks by F.R. Leavis and T.S. Eliot, who disliked what they viewed as its stilted, unnatural language. However, current programs at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, with popular readings of the work, are being received enthusiastically. A DVD of such a reading [1] was produced by them with the intention of developing it into an educational device to demonstrate the incomparable aesthetic delights of Milton's phraseology. [source: wikipedia]

"Waiting for Godot" Act 2 by Samuel Beckett

Next day. Same time.

Same place.


Estragon's boots front center, heels together, toes splayed.




Lucky's hat at same place.
The tree has four or five leaves.
Enter Vladimir agitatedly. He halts and looks long at the tree, then suddenly begins to move feverishly about the stage. He halts before the boots, picks one up, examines it, sniffs it, manifests disgust, puts it back carefully. Comes and goes. Halts extreme right and gazes into distance off, shading his eyes with his hand. Comes and goes. Halts extreme left, as before. Comes and goes. Halts suddenly and begins to sing loudly.

VLADIMIR:

A dog came in–

Having begun too high he stops, clears his throat, resumes:

A dog came in the kitchen
And stole a crust of bread.
Then cook up with a ladle
And beat him till he was dead.

Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb–

He stops, broods, resumes:

Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb
And wrote upon the tombstone
For the eyes of dogs to come:

A dog came in the kitchen
And stole a crust of bread.
Then cook up with a ladle
And beat him till he was dead.

Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb–

He stops, broods, resumes:

Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb–

He stops, broods. Softly.

And dug the dog a tomb . . .

He remains a moment silent and motionless, then begins to move feverishly about the stage. He halts before the tree, comes and goes, before the boots, comes and goes, halts extreme right, gazes into distance, extreme left, gazes into distance. Enter Estragon right, barefoot, head bowed. He slowly crosses the stage. Vladimir turns and sees him.
VLADIMIR:
You again! (Estragon halts but does not raise his head. Vladimir goes towards him.) Come here till I embrace you.
ESTRAGON:
Don't touch me!
Vladimir holds back, pained.
VLADIMIR:
Do you want me to go away? (Pause.) Gogo! (Pause. Vladimir observes him attentively.) Did they beat you? (Pause.) Gogo! (Estragon remains silent, head bowed.) Where did you spend the night?
ESTRAGON:
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
VLADIMIR:
Did I ever leave you?
ESTRAGON:
You let me go.
VLADIMIR:
Look at me. (Estragon does not raise his head. Violently.) Will you look at me!
Estragon raises his head. They look long at each other, then suddenly embrace, clapping each other on the back. End of the embrace. Estragon, no longer supported, almost falls.
ESTRAGON:
What a day!
VLADIMIR:
Who beat you? Tell me.
ESTRAGON:
Another day done with.
VLADIMIR:
Not yet.
ESTRAGON:
For me it's over and done with, no matter what happens. (Silence.) I heard you singing.
VLADIMIR:
That's right, I remember.
ESTRAGON:
That finished me. I said to myself, He's all alone, he thinks I'm gone for ever, and he sings.
VLADIMIR:
One is not master of one's moods. All day I've felt in great form. (Pause.) I didn't get up in the night, not once!
ESTRAGON:
(sadly). You see, you piss better when I'm not there.
VLADIMIR:
I missed you . . . and at the same time I was happy. Isn't that a strange thing?
ESTRAGON:
(shocked). Happy?
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps it's not quite the right word.
ESTRAGON:
And now?
VLADIMIR:
Now? . . . (Joyous.) There you are again . . . (Indifferent.) There we are again. . . (Gloomy.) There I am again.
ESTRAGON:
You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone too.
VLADIMIR:
(vexed). Then why do you always come crawling back?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
No, but I do. It's because you don't know how to defend yourself. I wouldn't have let them beat you.
ESTRAGON:
You couldn't have stopped them.
VLADIMIR:
Why not?
ESTRAGON:
There was ten of them.
VLADIMIR:
No, I mean before they beat you. I would have stopped you from doing whatever it was you were doing.
ESTRAGON:
I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
Then why did they beat you?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
Ah no, Gogo, the truth is there are things that escape you that don't escape me, you must feel it yourself.
ESTRAGON:
I tell you I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps you weren't. But it's the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living.
ESTRAGON:
I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
You must be happy too, deep down, if you only knew it.
ESTRAGON:
Happy about what?
VLADIMIR:
To be back with me again.
ESTRAGON:
Would you say so?
VLADIMIR:
Say you are, even if it's not true.
ESTRAGON:
What am I to say?
VLADIMIR:
Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON:
I am happy.
VLADIMIR:
So am I.
ESTRAGON:
So am I.
VLADIMIR:
We are happy.
ESTRAGON:
We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy?
VLADIMIR:
Wait for Godot. (Estragon groans. Silence.) Things have changed here since yesterday.
ESTRAGON:
And if he doesn't come?
VLADIMIR:
(after a moment of bewilderment). We'll see when the time comes. (Pause.) I was saying that things have changed here since yesterday.
ESTRAGON:
Everything oozes.
VLADIMIR:
Look at the tree.
ESTRAGON:
It's never the same pus from one second to the next.
VLADIMIR:
The tree, look at the tree.
Estragon looks at the tree.
ESTRAGON:
Was it not there yesterday?
VLADIMIR:
Yes of course it was there. Do you not remember? We nearly hanged ourselves from it. But you wouldn't. Do you not remember?
ESTRAGON:
You dreamt it.
VLADIMIR:
Is it possible you've forgotten already?
ESTRAGON:
That's the way I am. Either I forget immediately or I never forget.
VLADIMIR:
And Pozzo and Lucky, have you forgotten them too?
ESTRAGON:
Pozzo and Lucky?
VLADIMIR:
He's forgotten everything!
ESTRAGON:
I remember a lunatic who kicked the shins off me. Then he played the fool.
VLADIMIR:
That was Lucky.
ESTRAGON:
I remember that. But when was it?
VLADIMIR:
And his keeper, do you not remember him?
ESTRAGON:
He gave me a bone.
VLADIMIR:
That was Pozzo.
ESTRAGON:
And all that was yesterday, you say?
VLADIMIR:
Yes of course it was yesterday.
ESTRAGON:
And here where we are now?
VLADIMIR:
Where else do you think? Do you not recognize the place?
ESTRAGON:
(suddenly furious). Recognize! What is there to recognize? All my lousy life I've crawled about in the mud! And you talk to me about scenery! (Looking wildly about him.) Look at this muckheap! I've never stirred from it!
VLADIMIR:
Calm yourself, calm yourself.
ESTRAGON:
You and your landscapes! Tell me about the worms!
VLADIMIR:
All the same, you can't tell me that this (gesture) bears any resemblance to . . . (he hesitates) . . . to the Macon country for example. You can't deny there's a big difference.
ESTRAGON:
The Macon country! Who's talking to you about the Macon country?
VLADIMIR:
But you were there yourself, in the Macon country.
ESTRAGON:
No I was never in the Macon country! I've puked my puke of a life away here, I tell you! Here! In the Cackon country!
VLADIMIR:
But we were there together, I could swear to it! Picking grapes for a man called . . . (he snaps his fingers) . . . can't think of the name of the man, at a place called . . . (snaps his fingers) . . . can't think of the name of the place, do you not remember?
ESTRAGON:
(a little calmer). It's possible. I didn't notice anything.
VLADIMIR:
But down there everything is red!
ESTRAGON:
(exasperated). I didn't notice anything, I tell you!
Silence. Vladimir sighs deeply.
VLADIMIR:
You're a hard man to get on with, Gogo.
ESTRAGON:
It'd be better if we parted.
VLADIMIR:
You always say that and you always come crawling back.
ESTRAGON:
The best thing would be to kill me, like the other.
VLADIMIR:
What other? (Pause.) What other?
ESTRAGON:
Like billions of others.
VLADIMIR:
(sententious). To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.
ESTRAGON:
In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.
VLADIMIR:
You're right, we're inexhaustible.
ESTRAGON:
It's so we won't think.
VLADIMIR:
We have that excuse.
ESTRAGON:
It's so we won't hear.
VLADIMIR:
We have our reasons.
ESTRAGON:
All the dead voices.
VLADIMIR:
They make a noise like wings.
ESTRAGON:
Like leaves.
VLADIMIR:
Like sand.
ESTRAGON:
Like leaves.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
They all speak at once.
ESTRAGON:
Each one to itself.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Rather they whisper.
ESTRAGON:
They rustle.
VLADIMIR:
They murmur.
ESTRAGON:
They rustle.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
What do they say?
ESTRAGON:
They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR:
To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON:
They have to talk about it.
VLADIMIR:
To be dead is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON:
It is not sufficient.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
They make a noise like feathers.
ESTRAGON:
Like leaves.
VLADIMIR:
Likes ashes.
ESTRAGON:
Like leaves.
Long silence.
VLADIMIR:
Say something!
ESTRAGON:
I'm trying.
Long silence.
VLADIMIR:
(in anguish). Say anything at all!
ESTRAGON:
What do we do now?
VLADIMIR:
Wait for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Ah!
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
This is awful!
ESTRAGON:
Sing something.
VLADIMIR:
No no! (He reflects.) We could start all over again perhaps.
ESTRAGON:
That should be easy.
VLADIMIR:
It's the start that's difficult.
ESTRAGON:
You can start from anything.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, but you have to decide.
ESTRAGON:
True.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Help me!
ESTRAGON:
I'm trying.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
When you seek you hear.
ESTRAGON:
You do.
VLADIMIR:
That prevents you from finding.
ESTRAGON:
It does.
VLADIMIR:
That prevents you from thinking.
ESTRAGON:
You think all the same.
VLADIMIR:
No no, it's impossible.
ESTRAGON:
That's the idea, let's contradict each another.
VLADIMIR:
Impossible.
ESTRAGON:
You think so?
VLADIMIR:
We're in no danger of ever thinking any more.
ESTRAGON:
Then what are we complaining about?
VLADIMIR:
Thinking is not the worst.
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps not. But at least there's that.
VLADIMIR:
That what?
ESTRAGON:
That's the idea, let's ask each other questions.
VLADIMIR:
What do you mean, at least there's that?
ESTRAGON:
That much less misery.
VLADIMIR:
True.
ESTRAGON:
Well? If we gave thanks for our mercies?
VLADIMIR:
What is terrible is to have thought.
ESTRAGON:
But did that ever happen to us?
VLADIMIR:
Where are all these corpses from?
ESTRAGON:
These skeletons.
VLADIMIR:
Tell me that.
ESTRAGON:
True.
VLADIMIR:
We must have thought a little.
ESTRAGON:
At the very beginning.
VLADIMIR:
A charnel-house! A charnel-house!
ESTRAGON:
You don't have to look.
VLADIMIR:
You can't help looking.
ESTRAGON:
True.
VLADIMIR:
Try as one may.
ESTRAGON:
I beg your pardon?
VLADIMIR:
Try as one may.
ESTRAGON:
We should turn resolutely towards Nature.
VLADIMIR:
We've tried that.
ESTRAGON:
True.
VLADIMIR:
Oh it's not the worst, I know.
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
To have thought.
ESTRAGON:
Obviously.
VLADIMIR:
But we could have done without it.
ESTRAGON:
Que voulez-vous?
VLADIMIR:
I beg your pardon?
ESTRAGON:
Que voulez-vouz.
VLADIMIR:
Ah! que voulez-vous. Exactly.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
That wasn't such a bad little canter.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, but now we'll have to find something else.
ESTRAGON:
Let me see.
He takes off his hat, concentrates.
VLADIMIR:
Let me see. (He takes off his hat, concentrates. Long silence.) Ah!
They put on their hats, relax.
ESTRAGON:
Well?
VLADIMIR:
What was I saying, we could go on from there.
ESTRAGON:
What were you saying when?
VLADIMIR:
At the very beginning.
ESTRAGON:
The very beginning of WHAT?
VLADIMIR:
This evening . . . I was saying . . . I was saying . . .
ESTRAGON:
I'm not a historian.
VLADIMIR:
Wait . . . we embraced . . . we were happy . . . happy . . . what do we do now that we're happy . . . go on waiting . . . waiting . . . let me think . . . it's coming . . . go on waiting . . . now that we're happy . . . let me see . . . ah! The tree!
ESTRAGON:
The tree?
VLADIMIR:
Do you not remember?
ESTRAGON:
I'm tired.
VLADIMIR:
Look at it.
They look at the tree.
ESTRAGON:
I see nothing.
VLADIMIR:
But yesterday evening it was all black and bare. And now it's covered with leaves.
ESTRAGON:
Leaves?
VLADIMIR:
In a single night.
ESTRAGON:
It must be the Spring.
VLADIMIR:
But in a single night!
ESTRAGON:
I tell you we weren't here yesterday. Another of your nightmares.
VLADIMIR:
And where were we yesterday evening according to you?
ESTRAGON:
How would I know? In another compartment. There's no lack of void.
VLADIMIR:
(sure of himself). Good. We weren't here yesterday evening. Now what did we do yesterday evening?
ESTRAGON:
Do?
VLADIMIR:
Try and remember.
ESTRAGON:
Do . . . I suppose we blathered.
VLADIMIR:
(controlling himself). About what?
ESTRAGON:
Oh . . . this and that I suppose, nothing in particular. (With assurance.) Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on now for half a century.
VLADIMIR:
You don't remember any fact, any circumstance?
ESTRAGON:
(weary). Don't torment me, Didi.
VLADIMIR:
The sun. The moon. Do you not remember?
ESTRAGON:
They must have been there, as usual.
VLADIMIR:
You didn't notice anything out of the ordinary?
ESTRAGON:
Alas!
VLADIMIR:
And Pozzo? And Lucky?
ESTRAGON:
Pozzo?
VLADIMIR:
The bones.
ESTRAGON:
They were like fishbones.
VLADIMIR:
It was Pozzo gave them to you.
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
And the kick.
ESTRAGON:
That's right, someone gave me a kick.
VLADIMIR:
It was Lucky gave it to you.
ESTRAGON:
And all that was yesterday?
VLADIMIR:
Show me your leg.
ESTRAGON:
Which?
VLADIMIR:
Both. Pull up your trousers. (Estragon gives a leg to Vladimir, staggers. Vladimir takes the leg. They stagger.) Pull up your trousers.
ESTRAGON:
I can't.
Vladimir pulls up the trousers, looks at the leg, lets it go. Estragon almost falls.
VLADIMIR:
The other. (Estragon gives the same leg.) The other, pig! (Estragon gives the other leg. Triumphantly.) There's the wound! Beginning to fester!
ESTRAGON:
And what about it?
VLADIMIR:
(letting go the leg). Where are your boots?
ESTRAGON:
I must have thrown them away.
VLADIMIR:
When?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
Why?
ESTRAGON:
(exasperated). I don't know why I don't know!
VLADIMIR:
No, I mean why did you throw them away?
ESTRAGON:
(exasperated). Because they were hurting me!
VLADIMIR:
(triumphantly, pointing to the boots). There they are! (Estragon looks at the boots.) At the very spot where you left them yesterday!
Estragon goes towards the boots, inspects them closely.
ESTRAGON:
They're not mine.
VLADIMIR:
(stupefied). Not yours!
ESTRAGON:
Mine were black. These are brown.
VLADIMIR:
You're sure yours were black?
ESTRAGON:
Well they were a kind of gray.
VLADIMIR:
And these are brown. Show me.
ESTRAGON:
(picking up a boot). Well they're a kind of green.
VLADIMIR:
Show me. (Estragon hands him the boot. Vladimir inspects it, throws it down angrily.) Well of all the—
ESTRAGON:
You see, all that's a lot of bloody—
VLADIMIR:
Ah! I see what it is. Yes, I see what's happened.
ESTRAGON:
All that's a lot of bloody—
VLADIMIR:
It's elementary. Someone came and took yours and left you his.
ESTRAGON:
Why?
VLADIMIR:
His were too tight for him, so he took yours.
ESTRAGON:
But mine were too tight.
VLADIMIR:
For you. Not for him.
ESTRAGON:
(having tried in vain to work it out). I'm tired! (Pause.) Let's go.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We're waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Ah! (Pause. Despairing.) What'll we do, what'll we do!
VLADIMIR:
There's nothing we can do.
ESTRAGON:
But I can't go on like this!
VLADIMIR:
Would you like a radish?
ESTRAGON:
Is that all there is?
VLADIMIR:
There are radishes and turnips.
ESTRAGON:
Are there no carrots?
VLADIMIR:
No. Anyway you overdo it with your carrots.
ESTRAGON:
Then give me a radish. (Vladimir fumbles in his pockets, finds nothing but turnips, finally brings out a radish and hands it to Estragon who examines it, sniffs it.) It's black!
VLADIMIR:
It's a radish.
ESTRAGON:
I only like the pink ones, you know that!
VLADIMIR:
Then you don't want it?
ESTRAGON:
I only like the pink ones!
VLADIMIR:
Then give it back to me.
Estragon gives it back.
ESTRAGON:
I'll go and get a carrot.
He does not move.
VLADIMIR:
This is becoming really insignificant.
ESTRAGON:
Not enough.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
What about trying them.
ESTRAGON:
I've tried everything.
VLADIMIR:
No, I mean the boots.
ESTRAGON:
Would that be a good thing?
VLADIMIR:
It'd pass the time. (Estragon hesitates.) I assure you, it'd be an occupation.
ESTRAGON:
A relaxation.
VLADIMIR:
A recreation.
ESTRAGON:
A relaxation.
VLADIMIR:
Try.
ESTRAGON:
You'll help me?
VLADIMIR:
I will of course.
ESTRAGON:
We don't manage too badly, eh Didi, between the two of us?
VLADIMIR:
Yes yes. Come on, we'll try the left first.
ESTRAGON:
We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
VLADIMIR:
(impatiently). Yes yes, we're magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget. (He picks up a boot.) Come on, give me your foot. (Estragon raises his foot.) The other, hog! (Estragon raises the other foot.) Higher! #

(Wreathed together they stagger about the stage. Vladimir succeeds finally in getting on the boot.) Try and walk. (Estragon walks.) Well?
ESTRAGON:
It fits.
VLADIMIR:
(taking string from his pocket). We'll try and lace it.
ESTRAGON:
(vehemently). No no, no laces, no laces!
VLADIMIR:
You'll be sorry. Let's try the other. (As before.) Well?
ESTRAGON:
(grudgingly). It fits too.
VLADIMIR:
They don't hurt you?
ESTRAGON:
Not yet.
VLADIMIR:
Then you can keep them.
ESTRAGON:
They're too big.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps you'll have socks some day.
ESTRAGON:
True.
VLADIMIR:
Then you'll keep them?
ESTRAGON:
That's enough about these boots.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, but—
ESTRAGON:
(violently). Enough! (Silence.) I suppose I might as well sit down.
He looks for a place to sit down, then goes and sits down on the mound.
VLADIMIR:
That's where you were sitting yesterday evening.
ESTRAGON:
If I could only sleep.
VLADIMIR:
Yesterday you slept.
ESTRAGON:
I'll try.
He resumes his foetal posture, his head between his knees.
VLADIMIR:
Wait. (He goes over and sits down beside Estragon and begins to sing in a loud voice.)

Bye bye bye bye
Bye bye– #



ESTRAGON:
(looking up angrily). Not so loud!
VLADIMIR:
(softly).

Bye bye bye bye
Bye bye bye bye
Bye bye bye bye
Bye bye . . .

Estragon sleeps. Vladimir gets up softly, takes off his coat and lays it across Estragon's shoulders, then starts walking up and down, swinging his arms to keep himself warm. Estragon wakes with a start, jumps up, casts about wildly. Vladimir runs to him, puts his arms around him.) There . . . there . . . Didi is here . . . don't be afraid . . .
ESTRAGON:
Ah!
VLADIMIR:
There . . . there . . . it's all over.
ESTRAGON:
I was falling—
VLADIMIR:
It's all over, it's all over.
ESTRAGON:
I was on top of a—
VLADIMIR:
Don't tell me! Come, we'll walk it off.
He takes Estragon by the arm and walks him up and down until Estragon refuses to go any further.
ESTRAGON:
That's enough. I'm tired.
VLADIMIR:
You'd rather be stuck there doing nothing?
ESTRAGON:
Yes.
VLADIMIR:
Please yourself.
He releases Estragon, picks up his coat and puts it on.
ESTRAGON:
Let's go.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We're waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Ah! (Vladimir walks up and down.) Can you not stay still?
VLADIMIR:
I'm cold.
ESTRAGON:
We came too soon.
VLADIMIR:
It's always at nightfall.
ESTRAGON:
But night doesn't fall.
VLADIMIR:
It'll fall all of a sudden, like yesterday.
ESTRAGON:
Then it'll be night.
VLADIMIR:
And we can go.
ESTRAGON:
Then it'll be day again. (Pause. Despairing.) What'll we do, what'll we do!
VLADIMIR:
(halting, violently). Will you stop whining! I've had about my bellyful of your lamentations!
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
(seeing Lucky's hat). Well!
ESTRAGON:
Farewell.
VLADIMIR:
Lucky's hat. (He goes towards it.) I've been here an hour and never saw it. (Very pleased.) Fine!
ESTRAGON:
You'll never see me again.
VLADIMIR:
I knew it was the right place. Now our troubles are over. (He picks up the hat, contemplates it, straightens it.) Must have been a very fine hat. (He puts it on in place of his own which he hands to Estragon.) Here.
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
Hold that.
Estragon takes Vladimir's hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Vladimir's hat in place of his own which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Estragon's hat. Estragon adjusts Vladimir's hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Estragon's hat in place of Lucky's which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Lucky's hat. Vladimir adjusts Estragon's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Lucky's hat in place of Vladimir's which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes his hat, Estragon adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Vladimir puts on his hat in place of Estragon's which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes his hat. Vladimir adjusts his hat on his head. Estragon puts on his hat in place of Lucky's which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Lucky's hat. Estragon adjusts his hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Lucky's hat in place of his own which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Vladimir's hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon hands Vladimir's hat back to Vladimir who takes it and hands it back to Estragon who takes it and hands it back to Vladimir who takes it and throws it down.
How does it fit me?
ESTRAGON:
How would I know?
VLADIMIR:
No, but how do I look in it?
He turns his head coquettishly to and fro, minces like a mannequin.
ESTRAGON:
Hideous.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, but not more so than usual?
ESTRAGON:
Neither more nor less.
VLADIMIR:
Then I can keep it. Mine irked me. (Pause.) How shall I say? (Pause.) It itched me.
He takes off Lucky's hat, peers into it, shakes it, knocks on the crown, puts it on again.
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Will you not play?
ESTRAGON:
Play at what?
VLADIMIR:
We could play at Pozzo and Lucky.
ESTRAGON:
Never heard of it.
VLADIMIR:
I'll do Lucky, you do Pozzo. (He imitates Lucky sagging under the weight of his baggage. Estragon looks at him with stupefaction.) Go on.
ESTRAGON:
What am I to do?
VLADIMIR:
Curse me!
ESTRAGON:
(after reflection). Naughty!
VLADIMIR:
Stronger!
ESTRAGON:
Gonococcus! Spirochete!
Vladimir sways back and forth, doubled in two.
VLADIMIR:
Tell me to think.
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
Say, Think, pig!
ESTRAGON:
Think, pig!
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
I can't.
ESTRAGON:
That's enough of that.
VLADIMIR:
Tell me to dance.
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
Dance, hog! (He writhes. Exit Estragon left, precipitately.) I can't! (He looks up, misses Estragon.) Gogo! (He moves wildly about the stage. Enter Estragon left, panting. He hastens towards Vladimir, falls into his arms.) There you are again at last!
ESTRAGON:
I'm accursed!
VLADIMIR:
Where were you? I thought you were gone for ever.
ESTRAGON:
They're coming!
VLADIMIR:
Who?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
How many?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
(triumphantly). It's Godot! At last! Gogo! It's Godot! We're saved! Let's go and meet him! (He drags Estragon towards the wings. Estragon resists, pulls himself free, exit right.) Gogo! Come back! (Vladimir runs to extreme left, scans the horizon. Enter Estragon right, he hastens towards Vladimir, falls into his arms.) There you are again again!
ESTRAGON:
I'm in hell!
VLADIMIR:
Where were you?
ESTRAGON:
They're coming there too!
VLADIMIR:
We're surrounded! (Estragon makes a rush towards back.) Imbecile! There's no way out there. (He takes Estragon by the arm and drags him towards front. Gesture towards front.) There! Not a soul in sight! Off you go! Quick! (He pushes Estragon towards auditorium. Estragon recoils in horror.) You won't? (He contemplates auditorium.) Well I can understand that. Wait till I see. (He reflects.) Your only hope left is to disappear.
ESTRAGON:
Where?
VLADIMIR:
Behind the tree. (Estragon hesitates.) Quick! Behind the tree. (Estragon goes and crouches behind the tree, realizes he is not hidden, comes out from behind the tree.) Decidedly this tree will not have been the slightest use to us.
ESTRAGON:
(calmer). I lost my head. Forgive me. It won't happen again. Tell me what to do.
VLADIMIR:
There's nothing to do.
ESTRAGON:
You go and stand there. (He draws Vladimir to extreme right and places him with his back to the stage.) There, don't move, and watch out. (Vladimir scans horizon, screening his eyes with his hand. Estragon runs and takes up same position extreme left. They turn their heads and look at each other.) Back to back like in the good old days. (They continue to look at each other for a moment, then resume their watch. Long silence.) Do you see anything coming?
VLADIMIR:
(turning his head). What?
ESTRAGON:
(louder). Do you see anything coming?
VLADIMIR:
No.
ESTRAGON:
Nor I.
They resume their watch. Silence.
VLADIMIR:
You must have had a vision.
ESTRAGON:
(turning his head). What?
VLADIMIR:
(louder). You must have had a vision.
ESTRAGON:
No need to shout!
They resume their watch. Silence.
VLADIMIR and ESTRAGON:
(turning simultaneously). Do you—
VLADIMIR:
Oh pardon!
ESTRAGON:
Carry on.
VLADIMIR:
No no, after you.
ESTRAGON:
No no, you first.
VLADIMIR:
I interrupted you.
ESTRAGON:
On the contrary.
They glare at each other angrily.
VLADIMIR:
Ceremonious ape!
ESTRAGON:
Punctilious pig!
VLADIMIR:
Finish your phrase, I tell you!
ESTRAGON:
Finish your own!
Silence. They draw closer, halt.
VLADIMIR:
Moron!
ESTRAGON:
That's the idea, let's abuse each other.
They turn, move apart, turn again and face each other.
VLADIMIR:
Moron!
ESTRAGON:
Vermin!
VLADIMIR:
Abortion!
ESTRAGON:
Morpion!
VLADIMIR:
Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON:
Curate!
VLADIMIR:
Cretin!
ESTRAGON:
(with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR:
Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.
ESTRAGON:
Now let's make it up.
VLADIMIR:
Gogo!
ESTRAGON:
Didi!
VLADIMIR:
Your hand!
ESTRAGON:
Take it!
VLADIMIR:
Come to my arms!
ESTRAGON:
Yours arms?
VLADIMIR:
My breast!
ESTRAGON:
Off we go!
They embrace. #

They separate. Silence.
VLADIMIR:
How time flies when one has fun!
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
What do we do now?
VLADIMIR:
While waiting.
ESTRAGON:
While waiting.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
We could do our exercises.
ESTRAGON:
Our movements.
VLADIMIR:
Our elevations.
ESTRAGON:
Our relaxations.
VLADIMIR:
Our elongations.
ESTRAGON:
Our relaxations.
VLADIMIR:
To warm us up.
ESTRAGON:
To calm us down.
VLADIMIR:
Off we go.
Vladimir hops from one foot to the other. Estragon imitates him.
ESTRAGON:
(stopping). That's enough. I'm tired.
VLADIMIR:
(stopping). We're not in shape. What about a little deep breathing?
ESTRAGON:
I'm tired breathing.
VLADIMIR:
You're right. (Pause.) Let's just do the tree, for the balance.
ESTRAGON:
The tree?
Vladimir does the tree, staggering about on one leg.
VLADIMIR:
(stopping). Your turn.
Estragon does the tree, staggers.
ESTRAGON:
Do you think God sees me?
VLADIMIR:
You must close your eyes.
Estragon closes his eyes, staggers worse.
ESTRAGON:
(stopping, brandishing his fists, at the top of his voice.) God have pity on me!
VLADIMIR:
(vexed). And me?
ESTRAGON:
On me! On me! Pity! On me!
Enter Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo is blind. Lucky burdened as before. Rope as before, but much shorter, so that Pozzo may follow more easily. Lucky wearing a different hat. At the sight of Vladimir and Estragon he stops short. Pozzo, continuing on his way, bumps into him.
VLADIMIR:
Gogo!
POZZO:
(clutching onto Lucky who staggers). What is it? Who is it?
Lucky falls, drops everything and brings down Pozzo with him. They lie helpless among the scattered baggage.
ESTRAGON:
Is it Godot?
VLADIMIR:
At last! (He goes towards the heap.) Reinforcements at last!
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
Is it Godot?
VLADIMIR:
We were beginning to weaken. Now we're sure to see the evening out.
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
Do you hear him?
VLADIMIR:
We are no longer alone, waiting for the night, waiting for Godot, waiting for . . . waiting. All evening we have struggled, unassisted. Now it's over. It's already tomorrow.
POZZO:
Help!
VLADIMIR:
Time flows again already. The sun will set, the moon rise, and we away . . . from here.
POZZO:
Pity!
VLADIMIR:
Poor Pozzo!
ESTRAGON:
I knew it was him.
VLADIMIR:
Who?
ESTRAGON:
Godot.
VLADIMIR:
But it's not Godot.
ESTRAGON:
It's not Godot?
VLADIMIR:
It's not Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Then who is it?
VLADIMIR:
It's Pozzo.
POZZO:
Here! Here! Help me up!
VLADIMIR:
He can't get up.
ESTRAGON:
Let's go.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We're waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Ah!
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps he has another bone for you.
ESTRAGON:
Bone?
VLADIMIR:
Chicken. Do you not remember?
ESTRAGON:
It was him?
VLADIMIR:
Yes.
ESTRAGON:
Ask him.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps we should help him first.
ESTRAGON:
To do what?
VLADIMIR:
To get up.
ESTRAGON:
He can't get up?
VLADIMIR:
He wants to get up.
ESTRAGON:
Then let him get up.
VLADIMIR:
He can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know.
Pozzo writhes, groans, beats the ground with his fists.
ESTRAGON:
We should ask him for the bone first. Then if he refuses we'll leave him there.
VLADIMIR:
You mean we have him at our mercy?
ESTRAGON:
Yes.
VLADIMIR:
And that we should subordinate our good offices to certain conditions?
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
That seems intelligent all right. But there's one thing I'm afraid of.
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
That Lucky might get going all of a sudden. Then we'd be ballocksed.
ESTRAGON:
Lucky?
VLADIMIR:
The one that went for you yesterday.
ESTRAGON:
I tell you there was ten of them.
VLADIMIR:
No, before that, the one that kicked you.
ESTRAGON:
Is he there?
VLADIMIR:
As large as life. (Gesture towards Lucky.) For the moment he is inert. But he might run amuck any minute.
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
And suppose we gave him a good beating, the two of us.
VLADIMIR:
You mean if we fell on him in his sleep?
ESTRAGON:
Yes.
VLADIMIR:
That seems a good idea all right. But could we do it? Is he really asleep? (Pause.) No, the best would be to take advantage of Pozzo's calling for help—
POZZO:
Help!
VLADIMIR:
To help him—
ESTRAGON:
We help him?
VLADIMIR:
In anticipation of some tangible return.
ESTRAGON:
And suppose he—
VLADIMIR:
Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing.) It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come—
ESTRAGON:
Ah!
POZZO:
Help!
VLADIMIR:
Or for night to fall. (Pause.) We have kept our appointment and that's an end to that. We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
ESTRAGON:
Billions.
VLADIMIR:
You think so?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
You may be right.
POZZO:
Help! #


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?
ESTRAGON:
(aphoristic for once). We are all born mad. Some remain so.
POZZO:
Help! I'll pay you!
ESTRAGON:
How much?
POZZO:
One hundred francs!
ESTRAGON:
It's not enough.
VLADIMIR:
I wouldn't go so far as that.
ESTRAGON:
You think it's enough?
VLADIMIR:
No, I mean so far as to assert that I was weak in the head when I came into the world. But that is not the question.
POZZO:
Two hundred!
VLADIMIR:
We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) 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! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!
He broods.
POZZO:
Two hundred!
VLADIMIR:
We're coming!
He tries to pull Pozzo to his feet, fails, tries again, stumbles, falls, tries to get up, fails.
ESTRAGON:
What's the matter with you all?
VLADIMIR:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
Don't leave me! They'll kill me!
POZZO:
Where am I?
VLADIMIR:
Gogo!
POZZO:
Help!
VLADIMIR:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
Help me up first, then we'll go together.
ESTRAGON:
You promise?
VLADIMIR:
I swear it!
ESTRAGON:
And we'll never come back?
VLADIMIR:
Never!
ESTRAGON:
We'll go to the Pyrenees.
VLADIMIR:
Wherever you like.
ESTRAGON:
I've always wanted to wander in the Pyrenees.
VLADIMIR:
You'll wander in them.
ESTRAGON:
(recoiling). Who farted?
VLADIMIR:
Pozzo.
POZZO:
Here! Here! Pity!
ESTRAGON:
It's revolting!
VLADIMIR:
Quick! Give me your hand!
ESTRAGON:
I'm going. (Pause. Louder.) I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
Well I suppose in the end I'll get up by myself. (He tries, fails.) In the fullness of time.
ESTRAGON:
What's the matter with you?
VLADIMIR:
Go to hell.
ESTRAGON:
Are you staying there?
VLADIMIR:
For the time being.
ESTRAGON:
Come on, get up, you'll catch a chill.
VLADIMIR:
Don't worry about me.
ESTRAGON:
Come on, Didi, don't be pig-headed!
He stretches out his hand which Vladimir makes haste to seize.
VLADIMIR:
Pull!
Estragon pulls, stumbles, falls. Long silence.
POZZO:
Help!
VLADIMIR:
We've arrived.
POZZO:
Who are you?
VLADIMIR:
We are men.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Sweet mother earth!
VLADIMIR:
Can you get up?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
Try.
ESTRAGON:
Not now, not now.
Silence.
POZZO:
What happened?
VLADIMIR:
(violently). Will you stop it, you! Pest! He can think of nothing but himself!
ESTRAGON:
What about a little snooze?
VLADIMIR:
Did you hear him? He wants to know what happened!
ESTRAGON:
Don't mind him. Sleep.
Silence.
POZZO:
Pity! Pity!
ESTRAGON:
(with a start). What is it?
VLADIMIR:
Were you asleep?
ESTRAGON:
I must have been.
VLADIMIR:
It's this bastard Pozzo at it again.
ESTRAGON:
Make him stop it. Kick him in the crotch.
VLADIMIR:
(striking Pozzo). Will you stop it! Crablouse! (Pozzo extricates himself with cries of pain and crawls away. He stops, saws the air blindly, calling for help. Vladimir, propped on his elbow, observes his retreat.) He's off! (Pozzo collapses.) He's down!
#

ESTRAGON:
What do we do now?
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps I could crawl to him.
ESTRAGON:
Don't leave me!
VLADIMIR:
Or I could call to him.
ESTRAGON:
Yes, call to him.
VLADIMIR:
Pozzo! (Silence.) Pozzo! (Silence.) No reply.
ESTRAGON:
Together.
VLADIMIR and ESTRAGON:
Pozzo! Pozzo!
VLADIMIR:
He moved.
ESTRAGON:
Are you sure his name is Pozzo?
VLADIMIR:
(alarmed). Mr. Pozzo! Come back! We won't hurt you!
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
We might try him with other names.
VLADIMIR:
I'm afraid he's dying.
ESTRAGON:
It'd be amusing.
VLADIMIR:
What'd be amusing?
ESTRAGON:
To try him with other names, one after the other. It'd pass the time. And we'd be bound to hit on the right one sooner or later.
VLADIMIR:
I tell you his name is Pozzo.
ESTRAGON:
We'll soon see. (He reflects.) Abel! Abel!
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
Got it in one!
VLADIMIR:
I begin to weary of this motif.
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps the other is called Cain. Cain! Cain!
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
He's all humanity. (Silence.) Look at the little cloud.
VLADIMIR:
(raising his eyes). Where?
ESTRAGON:
There. In the zenith.
VLADIMIR:
Well? (Pause.) What is there so wonderful about it?
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Let's pass on now to something else, do you mind?
VLADIMIR:
I was just going to suggest it.
ESTRAGON:
But to what?
VLADIMIR:
Ah!
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Suppose we got up to begin with?
VLADIMIR:
No harm trying.
They get up.
ESTRAGON:
Child's play.
VLADIMIR:
Simple question of will-power.
ESTRAGON:
And now?
POZZO:
Help!
ESTRAGON:
Let's go.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We're waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Ah! (Despairing.) What'll we do, what'll we do!
POZZO:
Help!
VLADIMIR:
What about helping him?
ESTRAGON:
What does he want?
VLADIMIR:
He wants to get up.
ESTRAGON:
Then why doesn't he?
VLADIMIR:
He wants us to help him get up.
ESTRAGON:
Then why don't we? What are we waiting for?
They help Pozzo to his feet, let him go. He falls.
VLADIMIR:
We must hold him. (They get him up again. Pozzo sags between them, his arms round their necks.) #

Feeling better?
POZZO:
Who are you?
VLADIMIR:
Do you not recognize us?
POZZO:
I am blind.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps he can see into the future.
VLADIMIR:
Since when?
POZZO:
I used to have wonderful sight— but are you friends?
ESTRAGON:
(laughing noisily). He wants to know if we are friends!
VLADIMIR:
No, he means friends of his.
ESTRAGON:
Well?
VLADIMIR:
We've proved we are, by helping him.
ESTRAGON:
Exactly. Would we have helped him if we weren't his friends?
VLADIMIR:
Possibly.
ESTRAGON:
True.
VLADIMIR:
Don't let's quibble about that now.
POZZO:
You are not highwaymen?
ESTRAGON:
Highwaymen! Do we look like highwaymen?
VLADIMIR:
Damn it, can't you see the man is blind!
ESTRAGON:
Damn it, so he is. (Pause.) So he says.
POZZO:
Don't leave me!
VLADIMIR:
No question of it.
ESTRAGON:
For the moment.
POZZO:
What time is it?
VLADIMIR:
(inspecting the sky). Seven o'clock . . . eight o'clock . . .
ESTRAGON:
That depends what time of year it is.
POZZO:
Is it evening?
Silence. Vladimir and Estragon scrutinize the sunset.
ESTRAGON:
It's rising.
VLADIMIR:
Impossible.
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps it's the dawn.
VLADIMIR:
Don't be a fool. It's the west over there.
ESTRAGON:
How do you know?
POZZO:
(anguished). Is it evening?
VLADIMIR:
Anyway, it hasn't moved.
ESTRAGON:
I tell you it's rising.
POZZO:
Why don't you answer me?
ESTRAGON:
Give us a chance.
VLADIMIR:
(reassuring). It's evening, Sir, it's evening, night is drawing nigh. My friend here would have me doubt it and I must confess he shook me for a moment. But it is not for nothing I have lived through this long day and I can assure you it is very near the end of its repertory. (Pause.) How do you feel now?
ESTRAGON:
How much longer are we to cart him around? (They half release him, catch him again as he falls.) We are not caryatids!
VLADIMIR:
You were saying your sight used to be good, if I heard you right.
POZZO:
Wonderful! Wonderful, wonderful sight!
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
(irritably). Expand! Expand!
VLADIMIR:
Let him alone. Can't you see he's thinking of the days when he was happy. (Pause.) Memoria praeteritorum bonorum— that must be unpleasant.
ESTRAGON:
We wouldn't know.
VLADIMIR:
And it came on you all of a sudden?
POZZO:
Quite wonderful!
VLADIMIR:
I'm asking you if it came on you all of a sudden.
POZZO:
I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune. (Pause.) Sometimes I wonder if I'm not still asleep.
VLADIMIR:
And when was that?
POZZO:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
But no later than yesterday—
POZZO:
(violently). Don't question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.
VLADIMIR:
Well just fancy that! I could have sworn it was just the opposite.
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
POZZO:
Where are we?
VLADIMIR:
I couldn't tell you.
POZZO:
It isn't by any chance the place known as the Board?
VLADIMIR:
Never heard of it.
POZZO:
What is it like?
VLADIMIR:
(looking round). It's indescribable. It's like nothing. There's nothing. There's a tree.
POZZO:
Then it's not the Board.
ESTRAGON:
(sagging). Some diversion!
POZZO:
Where is my menial?
VLADIMIR:
He's about somewhere.
POZZO:
Why doesn't he answer when I call?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know. He seems to be sleeping. Perhaps he's dead.
POZZO:
What happened, exactly?
ESTRAGON:
Exactly!
VLADIMIR:
The two of you slipped. (Pause.) And fell.
POZZO:
Go and see is he hurt.
VLADIMIR:
We can't leave you.
POZZO:
You needn't both go.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). You go.
ESTRAGON:
After what he did to me? Never!
POZZO:
Yes yes, let your friend go, he stinks so. (Silence.) What is he waiting for?
VLADIMIR:
What are you waiting for?
ESTRAGON:
I'm waiting for Godot.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
What exactly should he do?
POZZO:
Well to begin with he should pull on the rope, as hard as he likes so long as he doesn't strangle him. He usually responds to that. If not he should give him a taste of his boot, in the face and the privates as far as possible.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). You see, you've nothing to be afraid of. It's even an opportunity to revenge yourself.
ESTRAGON:
And if he defends himself?
POZZO:
No no, he never defends himself.
VLADIMIR:
I'll come flying to the rescue.
ESTRAGON:
Don't take your eyes off me.
He goes towards Lucky.
VLADIMIR:
Make sure he's alive before you start. No point in exerting yourself if he's dead.
ESTRAGON:
(bending over Lucky). He's breathing.
VLADIMIR:
Then let him have it.
With sudden fury Estragon starts kicking Lucky, hurling abuse at him as he does so. But he hurts his foot and moves away, limping and groaning. Lucky stirs.
ESTRAGON:
Oh the brute!
He sits down on the mound and tries to take off his boot. But he soon desists and disposes himself for sleep, his arms on his knees and his head on his arms.
POZZO:
What's gone wrong now?
VLADIMIR:
My friend has hurt himself.
POZZO:
And Lucky?
VLADIMIR:
So it is he?
POZZO:
What?
VLADIMIR:
It is Lucky?
POZZO:
I don't understand.
VLADIMIR:
And you are Pozzo?
POZZO:
Certainly I am Pozzo.
VLADIMIR:
The same as yesterday?
POZZO:
Yesterday?
VLADIMIR:
We met yesterday. (Silence.) Do you not remember?
POZZO:
I don't remember having met anyone yesterday. But tomorrow I won't remember having met anyone today. So don't count on me to enlighten you.
VLADIMIR:
But—
POZZO:
Enough! Up pig!
VLADIMIR:
You were bringing him to the fair to sell him. You spoke to us. He danced. He thought. You had your sight.
POZZO:
As you please. Let me go! (Vladimir moves away.) Up!
Lucky gets up, gathers up his burdens.
VLADIMIR:
Where do you go from here?
POZZO:
On. (Lucky, laden down, takes his place before Pozzo.) Whip! (Lucky puts everything down, looks for whip, finds it, puts it into Pozzo's hand, takes up everything again.) Rope!
Lucky puts everything down, puts end of rope into Pozzo's hand, takes up everything again.
VLADIMIR:
What is there in the bag?
POZZO:
Sand. (He jerks the rope.) On!
VLADIMIR:
Don't go yet.
POZZO:
I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
What do you do when you fall far from help?
POZZO:
We wait till we can get up. Then we go on. On!
VLADIMIR:
Before you go tell him to sing.
POZZO:
Who?
VLADIMIR:
Lucky.
POZZO:
To sing?
VLADIMIR:
Yes. Or to think. Or to recite.
POZZO:
But he is dumb.
VLADIMIR:
Dumb!
POZZO:
Dumb. He can't even groan.
VLADIMIR:
Dumb! Since when?
POZZO:
(suddenly furious.) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. (He jerks the rope.) On!
Exeunt Pozzo and Lucky. Vladimir follows them to the edge of the stage, looks after them. The noise of falling, reinforced by mimic of Vladimir, announces that they are down again. Silence. Vladimir goes towards Estragon, contemplates him a moment, then shakes him awake.
ESTRAGON:
(wild gestures, incoherent words. Finally.) Why will you never let me sleep?
VLADIMIR:
I felt lonely.
ESTRAGON:
I was dreaming I was happy.
VLADIMIR:
That passed the time.
ESTRAGON:
I was dreaming that—
VLADIMIR:
(violently). Don't tell me! (Silence.) I wonder is he really blind.
ESTRAGON:
Blind? Who?
VLADIMIR:
Pozzo.
ESTRAGON:
Blind?
VLADIMIR:
He told us he was blind.
ESTRAGON:
Well what about it?
VLADIMIR:
It seemed to me he saw us.
ESTRAGON:
You dreamt it. (Pause.) Let's go. We can't. Ah! (Pause.) Are you sure it wasn't him?
VLADIMIR:
Who?
ESTRAGON:
Godot.
VLADIMIR:
But who?
ESTRAGON:
Pozzo.
VLADIMIR:
Not at all! (Less sure.) Not at all! (Still less sure.) Not at all!
ESTRAGON:
I suppose I might as well get up. (He gets up painfully.) Ow! Didi!
VLADIMIR:
I don't know what to think any more.
ESTRAGON:
My feet! (He sits down again and tries to take off his boots.) Help me!
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?
(Estragon, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off again. Vladimir looks at him.) He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can't go on! (Pause.) What have I said?
He goes feverishly to and fro, halts finally at extreme left, broods. Enter Boy right. He halts. Silence.
BOY:
Mister . . . (Vladimir turns.) Mister Albert . . .
VLADIMIR:
Off we go again. (Pause.) Do you not recognize me?
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
It wasn't you came yesterday.
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
This is your first time.
BOY:
Yes Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
You have a message from Mr. Godot.
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
He won't come this evening.
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
But he'll come tomorrow.
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Without fail.
BOY:
Yes Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Did you meet anyone?
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Two other . . . (he hesitates) . . . men?
BOY:
I didn't see anyone, Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
What does he do, Mr. Godot? (Silence.) Do you hear me? #

BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Well?
BOY:
He does nothing, Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
How is your brother?
BOY:
He's sick, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps it was he came yesterday.
BOY:
I don't know, Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
(softly). Has he a beard, Mr. Godot?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Fair or . . . (he hesitates) . . . or black?
BOY:
I think it's white, Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Christ have mercy on us!
Silence.
BOY:
What am I to tell Mr. Godot, Sir?
VLADIMIR:
Tell him . . . (he hesitates) . . . tell him you saw me and that . . . (he hesitates) . . . that you saw me. (Pause. Vladimir advances, the Boy recoils. Vladimir halts, the Boy halts. With sudden violence.) You're sure you saw me, you won't come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!
Silence. Vladimir makes a sudden spring forward, the Boy avoids him and exits running. Silence. The sun sets, the moon rises. As in Act 1. Vladimir stands motionless and bowed. Estragon wakes, takes off his boots, gets up with one in each hand and goes and puts them down center front, then goes towards Vladimir.
ESTRAGON:
What's wrong with you?
VLADIMIR:
Nothing.
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
VLADIMIR:
So am I.
ESTRAGON:
Was I long asleep?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Where shall we go?
VLADIMIR:
Not far.
ESTRAGON:
Oh yes, let's go far away from here.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We have to come back tomorrow.
ESTRAGON:
What for?
VLADIMIR:
To wait for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Ah! (Silence.) He didn't come?
VLADIMIR:
No.
ESTRAGON:
And now it's too late.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, now it's night.
ESTRAGON:
And if we dropped him? (Pause.) If we dropped him?
VLADIMIR:
He'd punish us. (Silence. He looks at the tree.) Everything's dead but the tree.
ESTRAGON:
(looking at the tree). What is it?
VLADIMIR:
It's the tree.
ESTRAGON:
Yes, but what kind?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know. A willow.
Estragon draws Vladimir towards the tree. They stand motionless before it. Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Why don't we hang ourselves?
VLADIMIR:
With what?
ESTRAGON:
You haven't got a bit of rope?
VLADIMIR:
No.
ESTRAGON:
Then we can't.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Let's go.
ESTRAGON:
Wait, there's my belt.
VLADIMIR:
It's too short.
ESTRAGON:
You could hang onto my legs.
VLADIMIR:
And who'd hang onto mine?
ESTRAGON:
True.
VLADIMIR:
Show me all the same. (Estragon loosens the cord that holds up his trousers which, much too big for him, fall about his ankles. They look at the cord.) It might do in a pinch. But is it strong enough?
ESTRAGON:
We'll soon see. Here.
They each take an end of the cord and pull. #

It breaks. They almost fall.
VLADIMIR:
Not worth a curse.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
You say we have to come back tomorrow?
VLADIMIR:
Yes.
ESTRAGON:
Then we can bring a good bit of rope.
VLADIMIR:
Yes.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Didi?
VLADIMIR:
Yes.
ESTRAGON:
I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR:
That's what you think.
ESTRAGON:
If we parted? That might be better for us.
VLADIMIR:
We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes.
ESTRAGON:
And if he comes?
VLADIMIR:
We'll be saved.
Vladimir takes off his hat (Lucky's), peers inside it, feels about inside it, shakes it, knocks on the crown, puts it on again.
ESTRAGON:
Well? Shall we go?
VLADIMIR:
Pull on your trousers.
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
Pull on your trousers.
ESTRAGON:
You want me to pull off my trousers?
VLADIMIR:
Pull ON your trousers.
ESTRAGON:
(realizing his trousers are down). True.
He pulls up his trousers.
VLADIMIR:
Well? Shall we go?
ESTRAGON:
Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

Curtain.

[Link source: visit www.samuel-beckett.net]

"Waiting for Godot" Act 1 by Samuel Beckett

tragicomedy in 2 acts

Actor: Estragon, Vladimir, Lucky, Pozzo, a boy

ACT I

A country road. A tree.

Evening.


Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. #

He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again.
As before.
Enter Vladimir.
ESTRAGON:
(giving up again). Nothing to be done.
VLADIMIR:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.
ESTRAGON:
Am I?
VLADIMIR:
I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
ESTRAGON:
Me too.
VLADIMIR:
Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.
ESTRAGON:
(irritably). Not now, not now.
VLADIMIR:
(hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?
ESTRAGON:
In a ditch.
VLADIMIR:
(admiringly). A ditch! Where?
ESTRAGON:
(without gesture). Over there.
VLADIMIR:
And they didn't beat you?
ESTRAGON:
Beat me? Certainly they beat me.
VLADIMIR:
The same lot as usual?
ESTRAGON:
The same? I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be . . . (Decisively.) You'd be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.
ESTRAGON:
And what of it?
VLADIMIR:
(gloomily). It's too much for one man. (Pause. Cheerfully.) On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.
ESTRAGON:
Ah stop blathering and help me off with this bloody thing.
VLADIMIR:
Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it's too late. They wouldn't even let us up. (Estragon tears at his boot.) What are you doing?
ESTRAGON:
Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?
VLADIMIR:
Boots must be taken off every day, I'm tired telling you that. Why don't you listen to me?
ESTRAGON:
(feebly). Help me!
VLADIMIR:
It hurts?
ESTRAGON:
(angrily). Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!
VLADIMIR:
(angrily). No one ever suffers but you. I don't count. I'd like to hear what you'd say if you had what I have.
ESTRAGON:
It hurts?
VLADIMIR:
(angrily). Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!
ESTRAGON:
(pointing). You might button it all the same.
VLADIMIR:
(stooping). True. (He buttons his fly.) Never neglect the little things of life.
ESTRAGON:
What do you expect, you always wait till the last moment.
VLADIMIR:
(musingly). The last moment . . . (He meditates.) Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?
ESTRAGON:
Why don't you help me?
VLADIMIR:
Sometimes I feel it coming all the same. Then I go all queer. (He takes off his hat, peers inside it, feels about inside it, shakes it, puts it on again.) How shall I say? Relieved and at the same time . . . (he searches for the word) . . . appalled. (With emphasis.) AP-PALLED. (He takes off his hat again, peers inside it.) Funny. (He knocks on the crown as though to dislodge a foreign body, peers into it again, puts it on again.) Nothing to be done. (Estragon with a supreme effort succeeds in pulling off his boot. He peers inside it, feels about inside it, turns it upside down, shakes it, looks on the ground to see if anything has fallen out, finds nothing, feels inside it again, staring sightlessly before him.) Well?
ESTRAGON:
Nothing.
VLADIMIR:
Show me.
ESTRAGON:
There's nothing to show.
VLADIMIR:
Try and put it on again.
ESTRAGON:
(examining his foot). I'll air it for a bit.
VLADIMIR:
There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. (He takes off his hat again, peers inside it, feels about inside it, knocks on the crown, blows into it, puts it on again.) This is getting alarming. (Silence. Vladimir deep in thought, Estragon pulling at his toes.) One of the thieves was saved. (Pause.) It's a reasonable percentage. (Pause.) Gogo.
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
Suppose we repented.
ESTRAGON:
Repented what?
VLADIMIR:
Oh . . . (He reflects.) We wouldn't have to go into the details.
ESTRAGON:
Our being born?
Vladimir breaks into a hearty laugh which he immediately stifles, his hand pressed to his pubis, his face contorted.
VLADIMIR:
One daren't even laugh any more.
ESTRAGON:
Dreadful privation.
VLADIMIR:
Merely smile. (He smiles suddenly from ear to ear, keeps smiling, ceases as suddenly.) It's not the same thing. Nothing to be done. (Pause.) Gogo.
ESTRAGON:
(irritably). What is it?
VLADIMIR:
Did you ever read the Bible?
ESTRAGON:
The Bible . . . (He reflects.) I must have taken a look at it.
VLADIMIR:
Do you remember the Gospels?
ESTRAGON:
I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.
VLADIMIR:
You should have been a poet.
ESTRAGON:
I was. (Gesture towards his rags.) Isn't that obvious?
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Where was I . . . How's your foot?
ESTRAGON:
Swelling visibly.
VLADIMIR:
Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story?
ESTRAGON:
No.
VLADIMIR:
Shall I tell it to you?
ESTRAGON:
No.
VLADIMIR:
It'll pass the time. (Pause.) Two thieves, crucified at the same time as our Saviour. One—
ESTRAGON:
Our what?
VLADIMIR:
Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other . . . (he searches for the contrary of saved) . . . damned.
ESTRAGON:
Saved from what?
VLADIMIR:
Hell.
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
He does not move.
VLADIMIR:
And yet . . . (pause) . . . how is it –this is not boring you I hope– how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there –or thereabouts– and only one speaks of a thief being saved. (Pause.) Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a while?
ESTRAGON:
(with exaggerated enthusiasm). I find this really most extraordinarily interesting.
VLADIMIR:
One out of four. Of the other three, two don't mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him.
ESTRAGON:
Who?
VLADIMIR:
What?
ESTRAGON:
What's all this about? Abused who?
VLADIMIR:
The Saviour.
ESTRAGON:
Why?
VLADIMIR:
Because he wouldn't save them.
ESTRAGON:
From hell?
VLADIMIR:
Imbecile! From death.
ESTRAGON:
I thought you said hell.
VLADIMIR:
From death, from death.
ESTRAGON:
Well what of it?
VLADIMIR:
Then the two of them must have been damned.
ESTRAGON:
And why not?
VLADIMIR:
But one of the four says that one of the two was saved.
ESTRAGON:
Well? They don't agree and that's all there is to it.
VLADIMIR:
But all four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?
ESTRAGON:
Who believes him?
VLADIMIR:
Everybody. It's the only version they know.
ESTRAGON:
People are bloody ignorant apes.
He rises painfully, goes limping to extreme left, halts, gazes into distance off with his hand screening his eyes, turns, goes to extreme right, gazes into distance. Vladimir watches him, then goes and picks up the boot, peers into it, drops it hastily.
VLADIMIR:
Pah!
He spits. Estragon moves to center, halts with his back to auditorium.
ESTRAGON:
Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts facing auditorium.) Inspiring prospects. (He turns to Vladimir.) Let's go.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We're waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
(despairingly). Ah! (Pause.) You're sure it was here?
VLADIMIR:
What?
ESTRAGON:
That we were to wait.
VLADIMIR:
He said by the tree. (They look at the tree.) Do you see any others?
ESTRAGON:
What is it?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know. A willow.
ESTRAGON:
Where are the leaves?
VLADIMIR:

It must be dead.


ESTRAGON:
No more weeping.
VLADIMIR:
Or perhaps it's not the season.
ESTRAGON:
Looks to me more like a bush.
VLADIMIR:
A shrub.
ESTRAGON:
A bush.
VLADIMIR:
A—. What are you insinuating? That we've come to the wrong place?
ESTRAGON:
He should be here.
VLADIMIR:
He didn't say for sure he'd come.
ESTRAGON:
And if he doesn't come?
VLADIMIR:
We'll come back tomorrow.
ESTRAGON:
And then the day after tomorrow.
VLADIMIR:
Possibly.
ESTRAGON:
And so on.
VLADIMIR:
The point is—
ESTRAGON:
Until he comes.
VLADIMIR:
You're merciless.
ESTRAGON:
We came here yesterday.
VLADIMIR:
Ah no, there you're mistaken.
ESTRAGON:
What did we do yesterday?
VLADIMIR:
What did we do yesterday?
ESTRAGON:
Yes.
VLADIMIR:
Why . . . (Angrily.) Nothing is certain when you're about.
ESTRAGON:
In my opinion we were here.
VLADIMIR:
(looking round). You recognize the place?
ESTRAGON:
I didn't say that.
VLADIMIR:
Well?
ESTRAGON:
That makes no difference.
VLADIMIR:
All the same . . . that tree . . . (turning towards auditorium) that bog . . .
ESTRAGON:
You're sure it was this evening?
VLADIMIR:
What?
ESTRAGON:
That we were to wait.
VLADIMIR:
He said Saturday. (Pause.) I think.
ESTRAGON:
You think.
VLADIMIR:
I must have made a note of it. (He fumbles in his pockets, bursting with miscellaneous rubbish.)
ESTRAGON:
(very insidious). But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or Friday?
VLADIMIR:
(looking wildly about him, as though the date was inscribed in the landscape). It's not possible!
ESTRAGON:
Or Thursday?
VLADIMIR:
What'll we do?
ESTRAGON:
If he came yesterday and we weren't here you may be sure he won't come again today.
VLADIMIR:
But you say we were here yesterday.
ESTRAGON:
I may be mistaken. (Pause.) Let's stop talking for a minute, do you mind?
VLADIMIR:
(feebly). All right. (Estragon sits down on the mound. Vladimir paces agitatedly to and fro, halting from time to time to gaze into distance off. Estragon falls asleep. Vladimir halts finally before Estragon.) Gogo! . . . Gogo! . . . GOGO!
Estragon wakes with a start.
ESTRAGON:
(restored to the horror of his situation). I was asleep! (Despairingly.) Why will you never let me sleep?
VLADIMIR:
I felt lonely.
ESTRAGON:
I had a dream.
VLADIMIR:
Don't tell me!
ESTRAGON:
I dreamt that—
VLADIMIR:
DON'T TELL ME!
ESTRAGON:
(gesture toward the universe). This one is enough for you? (Silence.) It's not nice of you, Didi. Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you?
VLADIMIR:
Let them remain private. You know I can't bear that.
ESTRAGON:
(coldly.) There are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be better for us to part.
VLADIMIR:
You wouldn't go far.
ESTRAGON:
That would be too bad, really too bad. (Pause.) Wouldn't it, Didi, be really too bad? (Pause.) When you think of the beauty of the way. (Pause.) And the goodness of the wayfarers. (Pause. Wheedling.) Wouldn't it, Didi?
VLADIMIR:
Calm yourself.
ESTRAGON:
(voluptuously.) Calm . . . calm . . . The English say cawm. (Pause.) You know the story of the Englishman in the brothel?
VLADIMIR:
Yes.
ESTRAGON:
Tell it to me.
VLADIMIR:
Ah stop it!
ESTRAGON:
An Englishman having drunk a little more than usual proceeds to a brothel. The bawd asks him if he wants a fair one, a dark one or a red-haired one. Go on.
VLADIMIR:
STOP IT!
Exit Vladimir hurriedly. Estragon gets up and follows him as far as the limit of the stage. Gestures of Estragon like those of a spectator encouraging a pugilist. Enter Vladimir. He brushes past Estragon, crosses the stage with bowed head. Estragon takes a step towards him, halts.
ESTRAGON:
(gently.) You wanted to speak to me? (Silence. Estragon takes a step forward.) You had something to say to me? (Silence. Another step forward.) Didi . . .
VLADIMIR:
(without turning). I've nothing to say to you.
ESTRAGON:
(step forward). You're angry? (Silence. Step forward). Forgive me. (Silence. Step forward. Estragon lays his hand on Vladimir's shoulder.) Come, Didi. (Silence.) Give me your hand. (Vladimir half turns.) Embrace me! (Vladimir stiffens.) Don't be stubborn! (Vladimir softens. They embrace. #

Estragon recoils.) You stink of garlic!
VLADIMIR:
It's for the kidneys. (Silence. Estragon looks attentively at the tree.) What do we do now?
ESTRAGON:
Wait.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, but while waiting.
ESTRAGON:
What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR:
Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
ESTRAGON:
(highly excited). An erection!
VLADIMIR:
With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
ESTRAGON:
Let's hang ourselves immediately!
VLADIMIR:
From a bough? (They go towards the tree.) I wouldn't trust it.
ESTRAGON:
We can always try.
VLADIMIR:
Go ahead.
ESTRAGON:
After you.
VLADIMIR:
No no, you first.
ESTRAGON:
Why me?
VLADIMIR:
You're lighter than I am.
ESTRAGON:
Just so!
VLADIMIR:
I don't understand.
ESTRAGON:
Use your intelligence, can't you?
Vladimir uses his intelligence.
VLADIMIR:
(finally). I remain in the dark.
ESTRAGON:
This is how it is. (He reflects.) The bough . . . the bough . . . (Angrily.) Use your head, can't you?
VLADIMIR:
You're my only hope.
ESTRAGON:
(with effort). Gogo light—bough not break—Gogo dead. Didi heavy—bough break—Didi alone. Whereas—
VLADIMIR:
I hadn't thought of that.
ESTRAGON:
If it hangs you it'll hang anything.
VLADIMIR:
But am I heavier than you?
ESTRAGON:
So you tell me. I don't know. There's an even chance. Or nearly.
VLADIMIR:
Well? What do we do?
ESTRAGON:
Don't let's do anything. It's safer.
VLADIMIR:
Let's wait and see what he says.
ESTRAGON:
Who?
VLADIMIR:
Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Good idea.
VLADIMIR:
Let's wait till we know exactly how we stand.
ESTRAGON:
On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes.
VLADIMIR:
I'm curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we'll take it or leave it.
ESTRAGON:
What exactly did we ask him for?
VLADIMIR:
Were you not there?
ESTRAGON:
I can't have been listening.
VLADIMIR:
Oh . . . Nothing very definite.
ESTRAGON:
A kind of prayer.
VLADIMIR:
Precisely.
ESTRAGON:
A vague supplication.
VLADIMIR:
Exactly.
ESTRAGON:
And what did he reply?
VLADIMIR:
That he'd see.
ESTRAGON:
That he couldn't promise anything.
VLADIMIR:
That he'd have to think it over.
ESTRAGON:
In the quiet of his home.
VLADIMIR:
Consult his family.
ESTRAGON:
His friends.
VLADIMIR:
His agents.
ESTRAGON:
His correspondents.
VLADIMIR:
His books.
ESTRAGON:
His bank account.
VLADIMIR:
Before taking a decision.
ESTRAGON:
It's the normal thing.
VLADIMIR:
Is it not?
ESTRAGON:
I think it is.
VLADIMIR:
I think so too.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
(anxious). And we?
VLADIMIR:
I beg your pardon?
ESTRAGON:
I said, And we?
VLADIMIR:
I don't understand.
ESTRAGON:
Where do we come in?
VLADIMIR:
Come in?
ESTRAGON:
Take your time.
VLADIMIR:
Come in? On our hands and knees.
ESTRAGON:
As bad as that?
VLADIMIR:
Your Worship wishes to assert his prerogatives?
ESTRAGON:
We've no rights any more?
Laugh of Vladimir, stifled as before, less the smile.
VLADIMIR:
You'd make me laugh if it wasn't prohibited.
ESTRAGON:
We've lost our rights?
VLADIMIR:
(distinctly). We got rid of them.
Silence. They remain motionless, arms dangling, heads sunk, sagging at the knees.
ESTRAGON:
(feebly). We're not tied? (Pause.) We're not—
VLADIMIR:
Listen!
They listen, grotesquely rigid. #

ESTRAGON:
I hear nothing.
VLADIMIR:
Hsst! (They listen. Estragon loses his balance, almost falls. He clutches the arm of Vladimir, who totters. They listen, huddled together.) Nor I.
Sighs of relief. They relax and separate.
ESTRAGON:
You gave me a fright.
VLADIMIR:
I thought it was he.
ESTRAGON:
Who?
VLADIMIR:
Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Pah! The wind in the reeds.
VLADIMIR:
I could have sworn I heard shouts.
ESTRAGON:
And why would he shout?
VLADIMIR:
At his horse.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
(violently). I'm hungry!
VLADIMIR:
Do you want a carrot?
ESTRAGON:
Is that all there is?
VLADIMIR:
I might have some turnips.
ESTRAGON:
Give me a carrot. (Vladimir rummages in his pockets, takes out a turnip and gives it to Estragon who takes a bite out of it. Angrily.) It's a turnip!
VLADIMIR:
Oh pardon! I could have sworn it was a carrot. (He rummages again in his pockets, finds nothing but turnips.) All that's turnips. (He rummages.) You must have eaten the last. (He rummages.) Wait, I have it. (He brings out a carrot and gives it to Estragon.) There, dear fellow. #

(Estragon wipes the carrot on his sleeve and begins to eat it.) Make it last, that's the end of them.
ESTRAGON:
(chewing). I asked you a question.
VLADIMIR:
Ah.
ESTRAGON:
Did you reply?
VLADIMIR:
How's the carrot?
ESTRAGON:
It's a carrot.
VLADIMIR:
So much the better, so much the better. (Pause.) What was it you wanted to know?
ESTRAGON:
I've forgotten. (Chews.) That's what annoys me. (He looks at the carrot appreciatively, dangles it between finger and thumb.) I'll never forget this carrot. (He sucks the end of it meditatively.) Ah yes, now I remember.
VLADIMIR:
Well?
ESTRAGON:
(his mouth full, vacuously). We're not tied?
VLADIMIR:
I don't hear a word you're saying.
ESTRAGON:
(chews, swallows). I'm asking you if we're tied.
VLADIMIR:
Tied?
ESTRAGON:
Ti-ed.
VLADIMIR:
How do you mean tied?
ESTRAGON:
Down.
VLADIMIR:
But to whom? By whom?
ESTRAGON:
To your man.
VLADIMIR:
To Godot? Tied to Godot! What an idea! No question of it. (Pause.) For the moment.
ESTRAGON:
His name is Godot?
VLADIMIR:
I think so.
ESTRAGON:
Fancy that. (He raises what remains of the carrot by the stub of leaf, twirls it before his eyes.) Funny, the more you eat the worse it gets.
VLADIMIR:
With me it's just the opposite.
ESTRAGON:
In other words?
VLADIMIR:
I get used to the muck as I go along.
ESTRAGON:
(after prolonged reflection). Is that the opposite?
VLADIMIR:
Question of temperament.
ESTRAGON:
Of character.
VLADIMIR:
Nothing you can do about it.
ESTRAGON:
No use struggling.
VLADIMIR:
One is what one is.
ESTRAGON:
No use wriggling.
VLADIMIR:
The essential doesn't change.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing to be done. (He proffers the remains of the carrot to Vladimir.) Like to finish it?
A terrible cry, close at hand. Estragon drops the carrot. They remain motionless, then together make a sudden rush towards the wings. Estragon stops halfway, runs back, picks up the carrot, stuffs it in his pocket, runs to rejoin Vladimir who is waiting for him, stops again, runs back, picks up his boot, runs to rejoin Vladimir. Huddled together, shoulders hunched, cringing away from the menace, they wait. #

Enter Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo drives Lucky by means of a rope passed round his neck, so that Lucky is the first to enter, followed by the rope which is long enough to let him reach the middle of the stage before Pozzo appears. Lucky carries a heavy bag, a folding stool, a picnic basket and a greatcoat, Pozzo a whip.
POZZO:
(off). On! (Crack of whip. Pozzo appears. They cross the stage. Lucky passes before Vladimir and Estragon and exit. Pozzo at the sight of Vladimir and Estragon stops short. The rope tautens. Pozzo jerks at it violently.) Back!
Noise of Lucky falling with all his baggage. Vladimir and Estragon turn towards him, half wishing half fearing to go to his assistance. Vlamdimir takes a step towards Lucky, Estragon holds him back by the sleeve.
VLADIMIR:
Let me go!
ESTRAGON:
Stay where you are!
POZZO:
Be careful! He's wicked. (Vladimir and Estragon turn towards Pozzo.) With strangers.
ESTRAGON:
(undertone). Is that him?
VLADIMIR:
Who?
ESTRAGON:
(trying to remember the name). Er . . .
VLADIMIR:
Godot?
ESTRAGON:
Yes.
POZZO:
I present myself: Pozzo.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). Not at all!
ESTRAGON:
He said Godot.
VLADIMIR:
Not at all!
ESTRAGON:
(timidly, to Pozzo). You're not Mr. Godot, Sir?
POZZO:
(terrifying voice). I am Pozzo! (Silence.) Pozzo! (Silence.) Does that name mean nothing to you? (Silence.) I say does that name mean nothing to you?
Vladimir and Estragon look at each other questioningly.
ESTRAGON:
(pretending to search). Bozzo . . . Bozzo . . .
VLADIMIR:
(ditto). Pozzo . . . Pozzo . . .
POZZO:
PPPOZZZO!
ESTRAGON:
Ah! Pozzo . . . let me see . . . Pozzo . . .
VLADIMIR:
Is it Pozzo or Bozzo?
ESTRAGON:
Pozzo . . . no . . . I'm afraid I . . . no . . . I don't seem to . . .
Pozzo advances threateningly.
VLADIMIR:
(conciliating). I once knew a family called Gozzo. The mother had the clap.
ESTRAGON:
(hastily). We're not from these parts, Sir.
POZZO:
(halting). You are human beings none the less. (He puts on his glasses.) As far as one can see. (He takes off his glasses.) Of the same species as myself. (He bursts into an enormous laugh.) Of the same species as Pozzo! Made in God's image!
VLADIMIR:
Well you see—
POZZO:
(peremptory). Who is Godot?
ESTRAGON:
Godot?
POZZO:
You took me for Godot.
VLADIMIR:
Oh no, Sir, not for an instant, Sir.
POZZO:
Who is he?
VLADIMIR:
Oh he's a . . . he's a kind of acquaintance.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing of the kind, we hardly know him.
VLADIMIR:
True . . . we don't know him very well . . . but all the same . . .
ESTRAGON:
Personally, I wouldn't even know him if I saw him.
POZZO:
You took me for him.
ESTRAGON:
(recoiling before Pozzo). That's to say . . . you understand . . . the dusk . . . the strain . . . waiting . . . I confess . . . I imagined . . . for a second . . .
POZZO:
Waiting? So you were waiting for him?
VLADIMIR:
Well you see—
POZZO:
Here? On my land?
VLADIMIR:
We didn't intend any harm.
ESTRAGON:
We meant well.
POZZO:
The road is free to all.
VLADIMIR:
That's how we looked at it.
POZZO:
It's a disgrace. But there you are.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing we can do about it.
POZZO:
(with magnanimous gesture). Let's say no more about it. (He jerks the rope.) Up pig! (Pause.) Every time he drops he falls asleep. (Jerks the rope.) Up hog! (Noise of Lucky getting up and picking up his baggage. Pozzo jerks the rope.) Back! (Enter Lucky backwards.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Turn! (Lucky turns. To Vladimir and Estragon, affably.) Gentlemen, I am happy to have met you. (Before their incredulous expression.) Yes yes, sincerely happy. (He jerks the rope.) Closer! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Yes, the road seems long when one journeys all alone for . . . (he consults his watch) . . . yes . . . (he calculates) . . . yes, six hours, that's right, six hours on end, and never a soul in sight. (To Lucky.) Coat! (Lucky puts down the bag, advances, gives the coat, goes back to his place, takes up the bag.) Hold that! (Pozzo holds out the whip. Lucky advances and, both his hands being occupied, takes the whip in his mouth, then goes back to his place. Pozzo begins to put on his coat, stops.) Coat! (Lucky puts down the bag, basket and stool, helps Pozzo on with his coat, goes back to his place and takes up bag, basket and stool.) Touch of autumn in the air this evening. (Pozzo finishes buttoning up his coat, stoops, inspects himself, straightens up.) Whip! (Lucky advances, stoops, Pozzo snatches the whip from his mouth, Lucky goes back to his place.) Yes, gentlemen, I cannot go for long without the society of my likes (he puts on his glasses and looks at the two likes) even when the likeness is an imperfect one. (He takes off his glasses.) Stool! (Lucky puts down bag and basket, advances, opens stool, puts it down, goes back to his place, takes up bag and basket.) Closer! (Lucky puts down bag and basket, advances, moves stool, goes back to his place, takes up bag and basket. Pozzo sits down, places the butt of his whip against Lucky's chest and pushes.) Back! (Lucky takes a step back.) Further! (Lucky takes another step back.) Stop! (Lucky stops. To Vladimir and Estragon.) That is why, with your permission, I propose to dally with you a moment, before I venture any further. Basket! (Lucky advances, gives the basket, goes back to his place.) The fresh air stimulates the jaded appetite. (He opens the basket, takes out a piece of chicken and a bottle of wine.) Basket! (Lucky advances, picks up the basket and goes back to his place.) Further! (Lucky takes a step back.) He stinks. Happy days!
He drinks from the bottle, puts it down and begins to eat. Silence. #

Vladimir and Estragon, cautiously at first, then more boldly, begin to circle about Lucky, inspecting him up and down. Pozzo eats his chicken voraciously, throwing away the bones after having sucked them. Lucky sags slowly, until bag and basket touch the ground, then straightens up with a start and begins to sag again. Rhythm of one sleeping on his feet.
ESTRAGON:
What ails him?
VLADIMIR:
He looks tired.
ESTRAGON:
Why doesn't he put down his bags?
VLADIMIR:
How do I know? (They close in on him.) Careful!
ESTRAGON:
Say something to him.
VLADIMIR:
Look!
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
(pointing). His neck!
ESTRAGON:
(looking at the neck). I see nothing.
VLADIMIR:
Here.
Estragon goes over beside Vladimir.
ESTRAGON:
Oh I say!
VLADIMIR:
A running sore!
ESTRAGON:
It's the rope.
VLADIMIR:
It's the rubbing.
ESTRAGON:
It's inevitable.
VLADIMIR:
It's the knot.
ESTRAGON:
It's the chafing.
They resume their inspection, dwell on the face.
VLADIMIR:
(grudgingly). He's not bad looking.
ESTRAGON:
(shrugging his shoulders, wry face.) Would you say so?
VLADIMIR:
A trifle effeminate.
ESTRAGON:
Look at the slobber.
VLADIMIR:
It's inevitable.
ESTRAGON:
Look at the slaver.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps he's a halfwit.
ESTRAGON:
A cretin.
VLADIMIR:
(looking closer). Looks like a goiter.
ESTRAGON:
(ditto). It's not certain.
VLADIMIR:
He's panting.
ESTRAGON:
It's inevitable.
VLADIMIR:
And his eyes!
ESTRAGON:
What about them?
VLADIMIR:
Goggling out of his head. #

ESTRAGON:
Looks like his last gasp to me.
VLADIMIR:
It's not certain. (Pause.) Ask him a question.
ESTRAGON:
Would that be a good thing?
VLADIMIR:
What do we risk?
ESTRAGON:
(timidly). Mister . . .
VLADIMIR:
Louder.
ESTRAGON:
(louder). Mister . . .
POZZO:
Leave him in peace! (They turn toward Pozzo who, having finished eating, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.) Can't you see he wants to rest? Basket! (He strikes a match and begins to light his pipe. Estragon sees the chicken bones on the ground and stares at them greedily. As Lucky does not move Pozzo throws the match angrily away and jerks the rope.) Basket! (Lucky starts, almost falls, recovers his senses, advances, puts the bottle in the basket and goes back to his place. Estragon stares at the bones. Pozzo strikes another match and lights his pipe.) What can you expect, it's not his job. (He pulls at his pipe, stretches out his legs.) Ah! That's better.
ESTRAGON:
(timidly). Please Sir . . .
POZZO:
What is it, my good man?
ESTRAGON:
Er . . . you've finished with the . . . er . . . you don't need the . . . er . . . bones, Sir?
VLADIMIR:
(scandalized). You couldn't have waited?
POZZO:
No no, he does well to ask. Do I need the bones? (He turns them over with the end of his whip.) No, personally I do not need them any more. (Estragon takes a step towards the bones.) But . . . (Estragon stops short) . . . but in theory the bones go to the carrier. He is therefore the one to ask. (Estragon turns towards Lucky, hesitates.) Go on, go on, don't be afraid, ask him, he'll tell you.
Estragon goes towards Lucky, stops before him.
ESTRAGON:
Mister . . . excuse me, Mister . . .
POZZO:
You're being spoken to, pig! Reply! (To Estragon.) Try him again.
ESTRAGON:
Excuse me, Mister, the bones, you won't be wanting the bones?
Lucky looks long at Estragon.
POZZO:
(in raptures). Mister! (Lucky bows his head.) Reply! Do you want them or don't you? (Silence of Lucky. To Estragon.) They're yours. (Estragon makes a dart at the bones, picks them up and begins to gnaw them.) I don't like it. I've never known him to refuse a bone before. (He looks anxiously at Lucky.) Nice business it'd be if he fell sick on me!
He puffs at his pipe.
VLADIMIR:
(exploding). It's a scandal!
Silence. Flabbergasted, Estragon stops gnawing, looks at Pozzo and Vladimir in turn. Pozzo outwardly calm. Vladimir embarrassed.
POZZO:
(To Vladimir). Are you alluding to anything in particular?
VLADIMIR:
(stutteringly resolute). To treat a man . . . (gesture towards Lucky) . . . like that . . . I think that . . . no . . . a human being . . . no . . . it's a scandal!
ESTRAGON:
(not to be outdone). A disgrace!
He resumes his gnawing.
POZZO:
You are severe. (To Vladimir.) What age are you, if it's not a rude question? (Silence.) Sixty? Seventy? (To Estragon.) What age would you say he was?
ESTRAGON:
Eleven.
POZZO:
I am impertinent. (He knocks out his pipe against the whip, gets up.) I must be getting on. Thank you for your society. (He reflects.) Unless I smoke another pipe before I go. What do you say? (They say nothing.) Oh I'm only a small smoker, a very small smoker, I'm not in the habit of smoking two pipes one on top of the other, it makes (hand to heart, sighing) my heart go pit-a-pat. (Silence.) It's the nicotine, one absorbs it in spite of one's precautions. (Sighs.) You know how it is. (Silence.) But perhaps you don't smoke? Yes? No? It's of no importance. (Silence.) But how am I to sit down now, without affectation, now that I have risen? Without appearing to –how shall I say– without appearing to falter. (To Vladimir.) I beg your pardon? (Silence.) Perhaps you didn't speak? (Silence.) It's of no importance. Let me see . . .
He reflects.
ESTRAGON:
Ah! That's better.
He puts the bones in his pocket.
VLADIMIR:
Let's go.
ESTRAGON:
So soon?
POZZO:
One moment! (He jerks the rope.) Stool! (He points with his whip. Lucky moves the stool.) More! There! (He sits down. Lucky goes back to his place.) Done it!
He fills his pipe.
VLADIMIR:
(vehemently). Let's go!
POZZO:
I hope I'm not driving you away. Wait a little longer, you'll never regret it.
ESTRAGON:
(scenting charity). We're in no hurry.
POZZO:
(having lit his pipe). The second is never so sweet . . . (he takes the pipe out of his mouth, contemplates it) . . . as the first I mean. (He puts the pipe back in his mouth.) But it's sweet just the same.
VLADIMIR:
I'm going.
POZZO:
He can no longer endure my presence. I am perhaps not particularly human, but who cares? (To Vladimir.) Think twice before you do anything rash. Suppose you go now while it is still day, for there is no denying it is still day. (They all look up at the sky.) Good. (They stop looking at the sky.) What happens in that case– (he takes the pipe out of his mouth, examines it) –I'm out– (he relights his pipe) –in that case– (puff) –in that case– (puff) –what happens in that case to your appointment with this . . . Godet . . . Godot . . . Godin . . . anyhow you see who I mean, who has your future in his hands . . . (pause) . . . at least your immediate future?
VLADIMIR:
Who told you?
POZZO:
He speaks to me again! If this goes on much longer we'll soon be old friends.
ESTRAGON:
Why doesn't he put down his bags?
POZZO:
I too would be happy to meet him. The more people I meet the happier I become. From the meanest creature one departs wiser, richer, more conscious of one's blessings. Even you . . . (he looks at them ostentatiously in turn to make it clear they are both meant) . . . even you, who knows, will have added to my store.
ESTRAGON:
Why doesn't he put down his bags?
POZZO:
But that would surprise me.
VLADIMIR:
You're being asked a question.
POZZO:
(delighted). A question! Who? What? A moment ago you were calling me Sir, in fear and trembling. Now you're asking me questions. No good will come of this!
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). I think he's listening.
ESTRAGON:
(circling about Lucky). What?
VLADIMIR:
You can ask him now. He's on the alert.
ESTRAGON:
Ask him what?
VLADIMIR:
Why he doesn't put down his bags.
ESTRAGON:
I wonder.
VLADIMIR:
Ask him, can't you?
POZZO:
(who has followed these exchanges with anxious attention, fearing lest the question get lost). You want to know why he doesn't put down his bags, as you call them.
VLADIMIR:
That's it.
POZZO:
(to Estragon). You are sure you agree with that?
ESTRAGON:
He's puffing like a grampus.
POZZO:
The answer is this. (To Estragon). But stay still, I beg of you, you're making me nervous!
VLADIMIR:
Here.
ESTRAGON:
What is it?
VLADIMIR:
He's about to speak.
Estragon goes over beside Vladimir. Motionless, side by side, they wait.
POZZO:
Good. Is everybody ready? Is everybody looking at me? (He looks at Lucky, jerks the rope. Lucky raises his head.) Will you look at me, pig! (Lucky looks at him.) Good. (He puts the pipe in his pocket, takes out a little vaporizer and sprays his throat, puts back the vaporizer in his pocket, clears his throat, spits, takes out the vaporizer again, sprays his throat again, puts back the vaporizer in his pocket.) I am ready. Is everybody listening? Is everybody ready? (He looks at them all in turn, jerks the rope.) Hog! (Lucky raises his head.) I don't like talking in a vacuum. Good. Let me see.
He reflects.
ESTRAGON:
I'm going.
POZZO:
What was it exactly you wanted to know?
VLADIMIR:
Why he—
POZZO:
(angrily). Don't interrupt me! (Pause. Calmer.) If we all speak at once we'll never get anywhere. (Pause.) What was I saying? (Pause. Louder.) What was I saying?
Vladimir mimics one carrying a heavy burden. Pozzo looks at him, puzzled.
ESTRAGON:
(forcibly). Bags. (He points at Lucky.) Why? Always hold. (He sags, panting.) Never put down. (He opens his hands, straightens up with relief.) Why?
POZZO:
Ah! Why couldn't you say so before? Why he doesn't make himself comfortable? Let's try and get this clear. Has he not the right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you. And why doesn't he want to? (Pause.) Gentlemen, the reason is this.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). Make a note of this.
POZZO:
He wants to impress me, so that I'll keep him.
ESTRAGON:
What?
POZZO:
Perhaps I haven't got it quite right. He wants to mollify me, so that I'll give up the idea of parting with him. No, that's not exactly it either.
VLADIMIR:
You want to get rid of him?
POZZO:
He wants to cod me, but he won't.
VLADIMIR:
You want to get rid of him?
POZZO:
He imagines that when I see how well he carries I'll be tempted to keep him on in that capacity.
ESTRAGON:
You've had enough of him?
POZZO:
In reality he carries like a pig. It's not his job.
VLADIMIR:
You want to get rid of him?
POZZO:
He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As though I were short of slaves! (All three look at Lucky.) Atlas, son of Jupiter! (Silence.) Well, that's that, I think. Anything else?
Vaporizer.
VLADIMIR:
You want to get rid of him?
POZZO:
Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not willed otherwise. To each one his due.
VLADIMIR:
You waagerrim?
POZZO:
I beg your pardon?
VLADIMIR:
You want to get rid of him?
POZZO:
I do. But instead of driving him away as I might have done, I mean instead of simply kicking him out on his arse, in the goodness of my heart I am bringing him to the fair, where I hope to get a good price for him. The truth is you can't drive such creatures away. The best thing would be to kill them.
Lucky weeps.
ESTRAGON:
He's crying!
POZZO:
Old dogs have more dignity. (He proffers his handkerchief to Estragon.) Comfort him, since you pity him. (Estragon hesitates.) Come on. (Estragon takes the handkerchief.) Wipe away his tears, he'll feel less forsaken.
Estragon hesitates.
VLADIMIR:
Here, give it to me, I'll do it.
Estragon refuses to give the handkerchief.
Childish gestures.
POZZO:
Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!
Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.
ESTRAGON:
Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!
POZZO:
I told you he didn't like strangers.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). Show me. (Estragon shows his leg. To Pozzo, angrily.) He's bleeding!
POZZO:
It's a good sign.
ESTRAGON:
(on one leg). I'll never walk again!
VLADIMIR:
(tenderly). I'll carry you. (Pause.) If necessary.
POZZO:
He's stopped crying. (To Estragon.) You have replaced him as it were. (Lyrically.) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. (He laughs.) Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all. (Pause. Judiciously.) It is true the population has increased.
VLADIMIR:
Try and walk.
Estragon takes a few limping steps, stops before Lucky and spits on him, then goes and sits down on the mound.
POZZO:
Guess who taught me all these beautiful things. (Pause. Pointing to Lucky.) My Lucky!
VLADIMIR:
(looking at the sky.) Will night never come?
POZZO:
But for him all my thoughts, all my feelings, would have been of common things. (Pause. With extraordinary vehemence.) Professional worries! (Calmer.) Beauty, grace, truth of the first water, I knew they were all beyond me. So I took a knook.
VLADIMIR:
(startled from his inspection of the sky). A knook?
POZZO:
That was nearly sixty years ago . . . (he consults his watch) . . . yes, nearly sixty. (Drawing himself up proudly.) You wouldn't think it to look at me, would you? Compared to him I look like a young man, no? (Pause.) Hat! (Lucky puts down the basket and takes off his hat. His long white hair falls about his face. He puts his hat under his arm and picks up the basket.) Now look. (Pozzo takes off his hat. [All four wear bowlers.] He is completely bald. He puts on his hat again.) Did you see?
VLADIMIR:
And now you turn him away? Such an old and faithful servant!
ESTRAGON:
Swine!
Pozzo more and more agitated.
VLADIMIR:
After having sucked all the good out of him you chuck him away like a . . . like a banana skin. Really . . .
POZZO:
(groaning, clutching his head). I can't bear it . . . any longer . . . the way he goes on . . . you've no idea . . . it's terrible . . . he must go . . . (he waves his arms) . . . I'm going mad . . . (he collapses, his head in his hands) . . . I can't bear it . . . any longer . . .
Silence. All look at Pozzo.
VLADIMIR:
He can't bear it.
ESTRAGON:
Any longer.
VLADIMIR:
He's going mad.
ESTRAGON:
It's terrible.
VLADIMIR:
(to Lucky). How dare you! It's abominable! Such a good master! Crucify him like that! After so many years! Really!
POZZO:
(sobbing). He used to be so kind . . . so helpful . . . and entertaining . . . my good angel . . . and now . . . he's killing me.
ESTRAGON:
( to Vladimir). Does he want to replace him?
VLADIMIR:
What?
ESTRAGON:
Does he want someone to take his place or not?
VLADIMIR:
I don't think so.
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know.
ESTRAGON:
Ask him.
POZZO:
(calmer). Gentlemen, I don't know what came over me. Forgive me. Forget all I said. (More and more his old self.) I don't remember exactly what it was, but you may be sure there wasn't a word of truth in it. (Drawing himself up, striking his chest.) Do I look like a man that can be made to suffer? Frankly? (He rummages in his pockets.) What have I done with my pipe?
VLADIMIR:
Charming evening we're having.
ESTRAGON:
Unforgettable.
VLADIMIR:
And it's not over.
ESTRAGON:
Apparently not.
VLADIMIR:
It's only beginning.
ESTRAGON:
It's awful.
VLADIMIR:
Worse than the pantomime.
ESTRAGON:
The circus.
VLADIMIR:
The music-hall.
ESTRAGON:
The circus.
POZZO:
What can I have done with that briar?
ESTRAGON:
He's a scream. He's lost his dudeen.
Laughs noisily.
VLADIMIR:
I'll be back.
He hastens towards the wings.
ESTRAGON:
End of the corridor, on the left.
VLADIMIR:
Keep my seat.
Exit Vladimir.
POZZO:
(on the point of tears). I've lost my Kapp and Peterson!
ESTRAGON:
(convulsed with merriment). He'll be the death of me!
POZZO:
You didn't see by any chance– (He misses Vladimir.) Oh! He's gone! Without saying goodbye! How could he! He might have waited!
ESTRAGON:
He would have burst.
POZZO:
Oh! (Pause.) Oh well then of course in that case . . .
ESTRAGON:
Come here.
POZZO:
What for?
ESTRAGON:
You'll see.
POZZO:
You want me to get up?
ESTRAGON:
Quick! (Pozzo gets up and goes over beside Estragon. Estragon points off.) Look!
POZZO:
(having put on his glasses). Oh I say!
ESTRAGON:
It's all over.
Enter Vladimir, somber. He shoulders Lucky out of his way, kicks over the stool, comes and goes agitatedly.
POZZO:
He's not pleased.
ESTRAGON:
(to Vladimir). You missed a treat. Pity.
Vladimir halts, straightens the stool, comes and goes, calmer.
POZZO:
He subsides. (Looking round.) Indeed all subsides. A great calm descends. (Raising his hand.) Listen! Pan sleeps.
VLADIMIR:
Will night never come?
All three look at the sky.
POZZO:
You don't feel like going until it does?
ESTRAGON:
Well you see—
POZZO:
Why it's very natural, very natural. I myself in your situation, if I had an appointment with a Godin . . . Godet . . . Godot . . . anyhow, you see who I mean, I'd wait till it was black night before I gave up. (He looks at the stool.) I'd very much like to sit down, but I don't quite know how to go about it.
ESTRAGON:
Could I be of any help?
POZZO:
If you asked me perhaps.
ESTRAGON:
What?
POZZO:
If you asked me to sit down.
ESTRAGON:
Would that be a help?
POZZO:
I fancy so.
ESTRAGON:
Here we go. Be seated, Sir, I beg of you.
POZZO:
No no, I wouldn't think of it! (Pause. Aside.) Ask me again.
ESTRAGON:
Come come, take a seat I beseech you, you'll get pneumonia.
POZZO:
You really think so?
ESTRAGON:
Why it's absolutely certain.
POZZO:
No doubt you are right. (He sits down.) Done it again! (Pause.) Thank you, dear fellow. (He consults his watch.) But I must really be getting along, if I am to observe my schedule.
VLADIMIR:
Time has stopped.
POZZO:
(cuddling his watch to his ear). Don't you believe it, Sir, don't you believe it. (He puts his watch back in his pocket.) Whatever you like, but not that.
ESTRAGON:
(to Pozzo). Everything seems black to him today.
POZZO:
Except the firmament. (He laughs, pleased with this witticism.) But I see what it is, you are not from these parts, you don't know what our twilights can do. Shall I tell you? (Silence. Estragon is fiddling with his boot again, Vladimir with his hat.) I can't refuse you. (Vaporizer.) A little attention, if you please. (Vladimir and Estragon continue their fiddling, Lucky is half asleep. Pozzo cracks his whip feebly.) What's the matter with this whip? (He gets up and cracks it more vigorously, finally with success. Lucky jumps. Vladimir's hat, Estragon's boot, Lucky's hat, fall to the ground. Pozzo throws down the whip.) Worn out, this whip. (He looks at Vladimir and Estragon.) What was I saying?
VLADIMIR:
Let's go.
ESTRAGON:
But take the weight off your feet, I implore you, you'll catch your death.
POZZO:
True. (He sits down. To Estragon.) What is your name?
ESTRAGON:
Adam.
POZZO:
(who hasn't listened). Ah yes! The night. (He raises his head.) But be a little more attentive, for pity's sake, otherwise we'll never get anywhere. (He looks at the sky.) Look! (All look at the sky except Lucky who is dozing off again. Pozzo jerks the rope.) Will you look at the sky, pig! (Lucky looks at the sky.) Good, that's enough. (They stop looking at the sky.) What is there so extraordinary about it? Qua sky. It is pale and luminous like any sky at this hour of the day. (Pause.) In these latitudes. (Pause.) When the weather is fine. (Lyrical.) An hour ago (he looks at his watch, prosaic) roughly (lyrical) after having poured forth even since (he hesitates, prosaic) say ten o'clock in the morning (lyrical) tirelessly torrents of red and white light it begins to lose its effulgence, to grow pale (gesture of the two hands lapsing by stages) pale, ever a little paler, a little paler until (dramatic pause, ample gesture of the two hands flung wide apart) pppfff! finished! it comes to rest. But– (hand raised in admonition)– but behind this veil of gentleness and peace, night is charging (vibrantly) and will burst upon us (snaps his fingers) pop! like that! (his inspiration leaves him) just when we least expect it. (Silence. Gloomily.) That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.
Long silence.
ESTRAGON:
So long as one knows.
VLADIMIR:
One can bide one's time.
ESTRAGON:
One knows what to expect.
VLADIMIR:
No further need to worry.
ESTRAGON:
Simply wait.
VLADIMIR:
We're used to it.
He picks up his hat, peers inside it, shakes it, puts it on.
POZZO:
How did you find me? (Vladimir and Estragon look at him blankly.) Good? Fair? Middling? Poor? Positively bad?
VLADIMIR:
(first to understand). Oh very good, very very good.
POZZO:
(to Estragon). And you, Sir?
ESTRAGON:
Oh tray bong, tray tray tray bong.
POZZO:
(fervently). Bless you, gentlemen, bless you! (Pause.) I have such need of encouragement! (Pause.) I weakened a little towards the end, you didn't notice?
VLADIMIR:
Oh perhaps just a teeny weeny little bit.
ESTRAGON:
I thought it was intentional.
POZZO:
You see my memory is defective.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
In the meantime, nothing happens.
POZZO:
You find it tedious?
ESTRAGON:
Somewhat.
POZZO:
(to Vladimir). And you, Sir?
VLADIMIR:
I've been better entertained.
Silence. Pozzo struggles inwardly.
POZZO:
Gentlemen, you have been . . . civil to me.
ESTRAGON:
Not at all!
VLADIMIR:
What an idea!
POZZO:
Yes yes, you have been correct. So that I ask myself is there anything I can do in my turn for these honest fellows who are having such a dull, dull time.
ESTRAGON:
Even ten francs would be a help.
VLADIMIR:
We are not beggars!
POZZO:
Is there anything I can do, that's what I ask myself, to cheer them up? I have given them bones, I have talked to them about this and that, I have explained the twilight, admittedly. But is it enough, that's what tortures me, is it enough?
ESTRAGON:
Even five.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon, indignantly). That's enough!
ESTRAGON:
I couldn't accept less.
POZZO:
Is is enough? No doubt. But I am liberal. It's my nature. This evening. So much the worse for me. (He jerks the rope. Lucky looks at him.) For I shall suffer, no doubt about that. (He picks up the whip.) What do you prefer? Shall we have him dance, or sing, or recite, or think, or—
ESTRAGON:
Who?
POZZO:
Who! You know how to think, you two?
VLADIMIR:
He thinks?
POZZO:
Certainly. Aloud. He even used to think very prettily once, I could listen to him for hours. Now . . . (he shudders). So much the worse for me. Well, would you like him to think something for us?
ESTRAGON:
I'd rather he dance, it'd be more fun.
POZZO:
Not necessarily.
ESTRAGON:
Wouldn't it, Didi, be more fun?
VLADIMIR:
I'd like well to hear him think.
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps he could dance first and think afterwards, if it isn't too much to ask him.
VLADIMIR:
(to Pozzo). Would that be possible?
POZZO:
By all means, nothing simpler. It's the natural order.
He laughs briefly.
VLADIMIR:
Then let him dance.
Silence.
POZZO:
Do you hear, hog?
ESTRAGON:
He never refuses?
POZZO:
He refused once. (Silence.) Dance, misery!
Lucky puts down bag and basket, advances towards front, turns to Pozzo. Lucky dances. He stops.
ESTRAGON:
Is that all?
POZZO:
Encore!
Lucky executes the same movements, stops.
ESTRAGON:
Pooh! I'd do as well myself. (He imitates Lucky, almost falls.) With a little practice.
POZZO:
He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig, the fandango and even the hornpipe. He capered. For joy. Now that's the best he can do. Do you know what he calls it?
ESTRAGON:
The Scapegoat's Agony.
VLADIMIR:
The Hard Stool.
POZZO:
The Net. He thinks he's entangled in a net.
VLADIMIR:
(squirming like an aesthete). There's something about it . . .
Lucky makes to return to his burdens.
POZZO:
Woaa!
Lucky stiffens.
ESTRAGON:
Tell us about the time he refused.
POZZO:
With pleasure, with pleasure. (He fumbles in his pockets.) Wait. (He fumbles.) What have I done with my spray? (He fumbles.) Well now isn't that . . . (He looks up, consternation on his features. Faintly.) I can't find my pulverizer!
ESTRAGON:
(faintly). My left lung is very weak! (He coughs feebly. In ringing tones.) But my right lung is as sound as a bell!
POZZO:
(normal voice). No matter! What was I saying. (He ponders.) Wait. (Ponders.) Well now isn't that . . . (He raises his head.) Help me!
ESTRAGON:
Wait!
VLADIMIR:
Wait!
POZZO:
Wait!
All three take off their hats simultaneously, press their hands to their foreheads, concentrate.
ESTRAGON:
(triumphantly). Ah!
VLADIMIR:
He has it.
POZZO:
(impatient). Well?
ESTRAGON:
Why doesn't he put down his bags?
VLADIMIR:
Rubbish!
POZZO:
Are you sure?
VLADIMIR:
Damn it haven't you already told us?
POZZO:
I've already told you?
ESTRAGON:
He's already told us?
VLADIMIR:
Anyway he has put them down.
ESTRAGON:
(glance at Lucky). So he has. And what of it?
VLADIMIR:
Since he has put down his bags it is impossible we should have asked why he does not do so.
POZZO:
Stoutly reasoned!
ESTRAGON:
And why has he put them down?
POZZO:
Answer us that.
VLADIMIR:
In order to dance.
ESTRAGON:
True!
POZZO:
True!
Silence. They put on their hats.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!
VLADIMIR:
(to Pozzo). Tell him to think.
POZZO:
Give him his hat.
VLADIMIR:
His hat?
POZZO:
He can't think without his hat.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). Give him his hat.
ESTRAGON:
Me! After what he did to me! Never!
VLADIMIR:
I'll give it to him.
He does not move.
ESTRAGON:
(to Pozzo). Tell him to go and fetch it.
POZZO:
It's better to give it to him.
VLADIMIR:
I'll give it to him.
He picks up the hat and tenders it at arm's length to Lucky, who does not move.
POZZO:
You must put it on his head.
ESTRAGON:
(to Pozzo). Tell him to take it.
POZZO:
It's better to put it on his head.
VLADIMIR:
I'll put it on his head.
He goes round behind Lucky, approaches him cautiously, puts the hat on his head and recoils smartly. Lucky does not move. Silence.
ESTRAGON:
What's he waiting for?
POZZO:
Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky. Pozzo jerks the rope. Lucky looks at Pozzo.) Think, pig! (Pause. Lucky begins to dance.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Forward! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Think!
Silence.
LUCKY:
On the other hand with regard to—
POZZO:
Stop! (Lucky stops.) Back! (Lucky moves back.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Turn! (Lucky turns towards auditorium.) Think!

During Lucky's tirade the others react as follows.
1) Vladimir and Estragon all attention, Pozzo dejected and disgusted.
2) Vladimir and Estragon begin to protest, Pozzo's sufferings increase.
3) Vladimir and Estragon attentive again, Pozzo more and more agitated and groaning.
4) Vladimir and Estragon protest violently. Pozzo jumps up, pulls on the rope. General outcry. Lucky pulls on the rope, staggers, shouts his text. All three throw themselves on Lucky who struggles and shouts his text.

LUCKY:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labors of men that as a result of the labors unfinished of Testew and Cunnard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labors of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea in a word I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell fades away I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and then the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull fading fading fading and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations)

#

. . . tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .
POZZO:
His hat!
Vladimir seizes Lucky's hat. Silence of Lucky. He falls. Silence. Panting of the victors.
ESTRAGON:
Avenged!
Vladimir examines the hat, peers inside it.
POZZO:
Give me that! (He snatches the hat from Vladimir, throws it on the ground, tramples on it.) There's an end to his thinking!
VLADIMIR:
But will he be able to walk?
POZZO:
Walk or crawl! (He kicks Lucky.) Up pig!
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps he's dead.
VLADIMIR:
You'll kill him.
POZZO:
Up scum! (He jerks the rope.) Help me!
VLADIMIR:
How?
POZZO:
Raise him up!
Vladimir and Estragon hoist Lucky to his feet, support him an instant, then let him go. He falls.
ESTRAGON:
He's doing it on purpose!
POZZO:
You must hold him. (Pause.) Come on, come on, raise him up.
ESTRAGON:
To hell with him!
VLADIMIR:
Come on, once more.
ESTRAGON:
What does he take us for?
They raise Lucky, hold him up.
POZZO:
Don't let him go! (Vladimir and Estragon totter.) Don't move! (Pozzo fetches bag and basket and brings them towards Lucky.) Hold him tight! (He puts the bag in Lucky's hand. Lucky drops it immediately.) Don't let him go! (He puts back the bag in Lucky's hand. Gradually, at the feel of the bag, Lucky recovers his senses and his fingers finally close round the handle.) Hold him tight! (As before with basket.) #

Now! You can let him go. (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky who totters, reels, sags, but succeeds in remaining on his feet, bag and basket in his hands. Pozzo steps back, cracks his whip.) Forward! (Lucky totters forward.) Back! (Lucky totters back.) Turn! (Lucky turns.) Done it! He can walk. (Turning to Vladimir and Estragon.) Thank you, gentlemen, and let me . . . (he fumbles in his pockets) . . . let me wish you . . . (fumbles) . . . wish you . . . (fumbles) . . . what have I done with my watch? (Fumbles.) A genuine half-hunter, gentlemen, with deadbeat escapement! (Sobbing.) Twas my granpa gave it to me! (He searches on the ground, Vladimir and Estragon likewise. Pozzo turns over with his foot the remains of Lucky's hat.) Well now isn't that just—
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps it's in your fob.
POZZO:
Wait! (He doubles up in an attempt to apply his ear to his stomach, listens. Silence.) I hear nothing. (He beckons them to approach, Vladimir and Estragon go over to him, bend over his stomach.) Surely one should hear the tick-tick.
VLADIMIR:
Silence!
All listen, bent double. #

ESTRAGON:
I hear something.
POZZO:
Where?
VLADIMIR:
It's the heart.
POZZO:
(disappointed). Damnation!
VLADIMIR:
Silence!
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps it has stopped.
They straighten up.
POZZO:
Which of you smells so bad?
ESTRAGON:
He has stinking breath and I have stinking feet.
POZZO:
I must go.
ESTRAGON:
And your half-hunter?
POZZO:
I must have left it at the manor.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Then adieu.
POZZO:
Adieu.
VLADIMIR:
Adieu.
POZZO:
Adieu.
Silence. No one moves.
VLADIMIR:
Adieu.
POZZO:
Adieu.
ESTRAGON:
Adieu.
Silence.
POZZO:
And thank you.
VLADIMIR:
Thank you.
POZZO:
Not at all.
ESTRAGON:
Yes yes.
POZZO:
No no.
VLADIMIR:
Yes yes.
ESTRAGON:
No no.
Silence.
POZZO:
I don't seem to be able . . . (long hesitation) . . . to depart.
ESTRAGON:
Such is life.
Pozzo turns, moves away from Lucky towards the wings, paying out the rope as he goes.
VLADIMIR:
You're going the wrong way.
POZZO:
I need a running start. (Having come to the end of the rope, i.e., off stage, he stops, turns and cries.) Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon stand back, look towards Pozzo. Crack of whip.) On! On!
ESTRAGON:
On!
VLADIMIR:
On!
Lucky moves off.
POZZO:
Faster! (He appears, crosses the stage preceded by Lucky. Vladimir and Estragon wave their hats. Exit Lucky.) On! On! (On the point of disappearing in his turn he stops and turns. The rope tautens. Noise of Lucky falling off.) Stool! (Vladimir fetches stool and gives it to Pozzo who throws it to Lucky.) Adieu!
VLADIMIR and ESTRAGON:
(waving). Adieu! Adieu!
POZZO:
Up! Pig! (Noise of Lucky getting up.) On! (Exit Pozzo.) Faster! On! Adieu! Pig! Yip! Adieu!
Long silence.
VLADIMIR:
That passed the time.
ESTRAGON:
It would have passed in any case.
VLADIMIR:
Yes, but not so rapidly.
Pause.
ESTRAGON:
What do we do now?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know.
ESTRAGON:
Let's go.
VLADIMIR:
We can't.
ESTRAGON:
Why not?
VLADIMIR:
We're waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
(despairingly). Ah!
Pause.
VLADIMIR:
How they've changed!
ESTRAGON:
Who?
VLADIMIR:
Those two.
ESTRAGON:
That's the idea, let's make a little conversation.
VLADIMIR:
Haven't they?
ESTRAGON:
What?
VLADIMIR:
Changed.
ESTRAGON:
Very likely. They all change. Only we can't.
VLADIMIR:
Likely! It's certain. Didn't you see them?
ESTRAGON:
I suppose I did. But I don't know them.
VLADIMIR:
Yes you do know them.
ESTRAGON:
No I don't know them.
VLADIMIR:
We know them, I tell you. You forget everything. (Pause. To himself.) Unless they're not the same . . .
ESTRAGON:
Why didn't they recognize us then?
VLADIMIR:
That means nothing. I too pretended not to recognize them. And then nobody ever recognizes us.
ESTRAGON:
Forget it. What we need– Ow! (Vladimir does not react.) Ow!
VLADIMIR:
(to himself). Unless they're not the same . . .
ESTRAGON:
Didi! It's the other foot!
He goes hobbling towards the mound.
VLADIMIR:
Unless they're not the same . . .
BOY:
(off). Mister!
Estragon halts. Both look towards the voice.
ESTRAGON:
Off we go again.
VLADIMIR:
Approach, my child.
Enter Boy, timidly. He halts.
BOY:
Mister Albert . . . ?
VLADIMIR:
Yes.
ESTRAGON:
What do you want?
VLADIMIR:
Approach!
The Boy does not move.
ESTRAGON:
(forcibly). Approach when you're told, can't you?
The Boy advances timidly, halts.
VLADIMIR:
What is it?
BOY:
Mr. Godot . . .
VLADIMIR:
Obviously . . . (Pause.) Approach.
ESTRAGON:
(violently). Will you approach! (The Boy advances timidly.) What kept you so late?
VLADIMIR:
You have a message from Mr. Godot?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Well, what is it?
ESTRAGON:
What kept you so late?
The Boy looks at them in turn, not knowing to which he should reply.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). Let him alone.
ESTRAGON:
(violently). You let me alone. (Advancing, to the Boy.) Do you know what time it is?
BOY:
(recoiling). It's not my fault, Sir.
ESTRAGON:
And whose is it? Mine?
BOY:
I was afraid, Sir.
ESTRAGON:
Afraid of what? Of us? (Pause.) Answer me!
VLADIMIR:
I know what it is, he was afraid of the others.
ESTRAGON:
How long have you been here?
BOY:
A good while, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
You were afraid of the whip?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
The roars?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
The two big men.
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Do you know them?
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Are you a native of these parts? (Silence.) Do you belong to these parts?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
ESTRAGON:
That's all a pack of lies. (Shaking the Boy by the arm.) Tell us the truth!
BOY:
(trembling). But it is the truth, Sir!
VLADIMIR:
Will you let him alone! What's the matter with you? #

(Estragon releases the Boy, moves away, covering his face with his hands. Vladimir and the Boy observe him. Estragon drops his hands. His face is convulsed.) What's the matter with you?
ESTRAGON:
I'm unhappy.
VLADIMIR:
Not really! Since when?
ESTRAGON:
I'd forgotten.
VLADIMIR:
Extraordinary the tricks that memory plays! (Estragon tries to speak, renounces, limps to his place, sits down and begins to take off his boots. To Boy.) Well?
BOY:
Mr. Godot—
VLADIMIR:
I've seen you before, haven't I?
BOY:
I don't know, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
You don't know me?
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
It wasn't you came yesterday?
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
This is your first time?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Words words. (Pause.) Speak.
BOY:
(in a rush). Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won't come this evening but surely tomorrow.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Is that all?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
You work for Mr. Godot?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
What do you do?
BOY:
I mind the goats, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Is he good to you?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
He doesn't beat you?
BOY:
No Sir, not me.
VLADIMIR:
Whom does he beat?
BOY:
He beats my brother, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Ah, you have a brother?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
What does he do?
BOY:
He minds the sheep, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
And why doesn't he beat you?
BOY:
I don't know, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
He must be fond of you.
BOY:
I don't know, Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
Does he give you enough to eat? (The Boy hesitates.) Does he feed you well?
BOY:
Fairly well, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
You're not unhappy? (The Boy hesitates.) Do you hear me?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
Well?
BOY:
I don't know, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
You don't know if you're unhappy or not?
BOY:
No Sir.
VLADIMIR:
You're as bad as myself. (Silence.) Where do you sleep?
BOY:
In the loft, Sir.
VLADIMIR:
With your brother?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR:
In the hay?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
All right, you may go.
BOY:
What am I to tell Mr. Godot, Sir?
VLADIMIR:
Tell him . . . (he hesitates) . . . tell him you saw us. (Pause.) You did see us, didn't you?
BOY:
Yes Sir.
He steps back, hesitates, turns and exit running. The light suddenly fails. In a moment it is night. The moon rises at back, mounts in the sky, stands still, shedding a pale light on the scene.
VLADIMIR:
At last! (Estragon gets up and goes towards Vladimir, a boot in each hand. He puts them down at edge of stage, straightens and contemplates the moon.) #

What are you doing?
ESTRAGON:
Pale for weariness.
VLADIMIR:
Eh?
ESTRAGON:
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us.
VLADIMIR:
Your boots, what are you doing with your boots?
ESTRAGON:
(turning to look at the boots). I'm leaving them there. (Pause.) Another will come, just as . . . as . . . as me, but with smaller feet, and they'll make him happy.
VLADIMIR:
But you can't go barefoot!
ESTRAGON:
Christ did.
VLADIMIR:
Christ! What has Christ got to do with it. You're not going to compare yourself to Christ!
ESTRAGON:
All my life I've compared myself to him.
VLADIMIR:
But where he lived it was warm, it was dry!
ESTRAGON:
Yes. And they crucified quick.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
We've nothing more to do here.
ESTRAGON:
Nor anywhere else.
VLADIMIR:
Ah Gogo, don't go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better.
ESTRAGON:
How do you make that out?
VLADIMIR:
Did you not hear what the child said?
ESTRAGON:
No.
VLADIMIR:
He said that Godot was sure to come tomorrow. (Pause.) What do you say to that?
ESTRAGON:
Then all we have to do is to wait on here.
VLADIMIR:
Are you mad? We must take cover. (He takes Estragon by the arm.) Come on.
He draws Estragon after him. Estragon yields, then resists. They halt.
ESTRAGON:
(looking at the tree). Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.
VLADIMIR:
Come on. It's cold.
He draws Estragon after him. As before.
ESTRAGON:
Remind me to bring a bit of rope tomorrow.
VLADIMIR:
Yes. Come on.
He draws him after him. As before.
ESTRAGON:
How long have we been together all the time now?
VLADIMIR:
I don't know. Fifty years maybe.
ESTRAGON:
Do you remember the day I threw myself into the Rhone?
VLADIMIR:
We were grape harvesting.
ESTRAGON:
You fished me out.
VLADIMIR:
That's all dead and buried.
ESTRAGON:
My clothes dried in the sun.
VLADIMIR:
There's no good harking back on that. Come on.
He draws him after him. As before.
ESTRAGON:
Wait!
VLADIMIR:
I'm cold!
ESTRAGON:
Wait! (He moves away from Vladimir.) I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have been better off alone, each one for himself. (He crosses the stage and sits down on the mound.) We weren't made for the same road.
VLADIMIR:
(without anger). It's not certain.
ESTRAGON:
No, nothing is certain.
Vladimir slowly crosses the stage and sits down beside Estragon. #

VLADIMIR:
We can still part, if you think it would be better.
ESTRAGON:
It's not worthwhile now.
Silence.
VLADIMIR:
No, it's not worthwhile now.
Silence.
ESTRAGON:
Well, shall we go?
VLADIMIR:
Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

Curtain.

[link source]

"Imagination Dead Imagine" by Samuel Beckett (1906-89)

This specimen of Beckett's later fiction was written in 1965, when the author was 59 years old. Beckett first wrote it in French (Imagination morte imaginez), his language of preference, then translated it into English himself. At this point Beckett had almost taken leave of language altogether. "Sentence structure is essentially intact," Richard Seaver assures us, but this is small consolation.

What is it about? I am tempted to cop out with "It's not a 'What is it about' sort of piece." That won't really do, though. If the pig's snout is a food-seeking organ, the human brain is a meaning-seeking organ. That, in fact, in a way, is what it's about.

Try again. (Reading Beckett, you start to sound like him.) Richard Seaver, a close friend of Beckett's, one of his first and longest admirers, and translator of some of his work, suggests "eternity." I read it more as a lament on human solitude, the solitude of the mind, trapped in its "ring of bone," vanishing, or being misplaced, at last to who knows where?, to do who knows what? Why are there two humans in the rotunda, though, and why are they of opposite sexes? (Disgracefully heteronormative nowadays, I suppose.) Perhaps Beckett is saying that pairing-off is as fundamentally human as existence itself. Or perhaps something quite different.

The definitive reading was given by the fine Irish actor Jack MacGowran for BBC radio. The Beeb must have it in their archives somewhere, but so far as I can judge from googling around, they have never put it on sale.

(Listen to the reading)

No trace anywhere of life, you say, pah, no difficulty there, imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine. Islands, waters, azure, verdure, one glimpse and vanished, endlessly, omit. Till all white in the whiteness the rotunda. No way in, go in, measure. Diameter three feet, three feet from ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles AB CD divide the white ground into two semicircles ACB BDA. Lying on the ground two white bodies, each in its semicircle. White too the vault and the round wall eighteen inches high from which it springs. Go back out, a plain rotunda, all white in the whiteness, go back in, rap, solid throughout, a ring as in the imagination the ring of bone. The light that makes all so white no visible source, all shines with the same white shine, ground, wall, vault, bodies, no shadow. Strong heat, surfaces hot but not burning to the touch, bodies sweating. Go back out, move back, the little fabric vanishes, ascend, it vanishes, all white in the whiteness, descend, go back in. Emptiness, silence, heat, whiteness, wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds, all the greys, the light goes out, all vanishes. At the same time the temperature goes down, to reach its minimum, say freezing-point, at the same instant that the black is reached, which may seem strange. Wait, more or less long, light and heat come back, all grows white and hot together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds, all the greys, till the initial level is reached whence the fall began. More or less long, for there may intervene, experience shows, between end of fall and beginning of rise, pauses of varying length, from the fraction of the second to what would have seemed, in other times, other places, an eternity. Same remark for the other pause, between end of rise and beginning of fall. The extremes, as long as they last, are perfectly stable, which in the case of the temperature may seem strange, in the beginning. It is possible too, experience shows, for rise and fall to stop short at any point and mark a pause, more or less long, before resuming, or reversing, the rise now fall, the fall rise ,these in their turn to be completed, or to stop short and mark a pause, more or less long, before resuming, or again reversing, and so on, till finally one or the other extreme is reached. Such variations of rise and fall, combining in countless rhythms, commonly attend the passage from white and heat to black and cold, and vice versa. The extremes alone are stable as is stressed by the vibration to be observed when a pause occurs at some intermediate stage, no matter what its level and duration. Then all vibrates, ground, wall, vault, bodies, ashen or leaden or between the two, as may be. But on the whole, experience shows, such uncertain passage is not common. And most often, when the light begins to fail, and along with it the heat, the movement continues unbroken until, in the space of some twenty seconds, pitch black is reached and at the same instant say freezing-point. Same remark for the reverse movement, towards heat and whiteness. Next most frequent is the fall or rise with pauses of varying length in these feverish greys, without at any moment reversal of the movement. But whatever its uncertainties the return sooner or later to a temporary calm seems assured, for the moment, in the black dark or the great whiteness, with attendant temperature, world still proof against enduring tumult. Rediscovered miraculously after what absence in perfect voids it is no longer quite the same, from this point of view, but there is no other. Externally all is as before and the sighting of the little fabric quite as much a matter of chance, its whiteness merging in the surrounding whiteness. But go in now briefer lulls and never twice the same storm. Light and heat remain linked as though supplied by the same source of which still no trace. Still on the ground, bent in three, the head against the wall at B, the arse against the wall at A, the knees against the wall between B and C, the feet against the wall between C and A, that is to say inscribed in the semicircle ACB, merging in the white ground were it not for the long hair of strangely imperfect whiteness, the white body of a woman finally. Similarly inscribed in the other semicircle, against the wall his head at A, his arse at B, his knees between A and D, his feet between D and B, the partner. On their right sides therefore both and back to back head to arse. Hold a mirror to their lips, it mists. With their left hands they hold their left legs a little below the knee, with their right hands their left arms a little above the elbow. In this agitated light, its great white calm now so rare and brief, inspection is not easy. Sweat and mirror notwithstanding they might well pass for inanimate but for the left eyes which at incalculable intervals suddenly open wide and gaze in unblinking exposure long beyond what is humanly possible. Piercing pale blue the effect is striking, in the beginning. Never the two gazes together except once, when the beginning of one overlapped the end of the other, for about ten seconds. Neither fat nor thin, big nor small, the bodies seem whole and in fairly good condition, to judge by the surfaces exposed to view. The faces too, assuming the two sides of a piece, seem to want nothing essential. Between their absolute stillness and the convulsive light the contrast is striking, in the beginning, for one who still remembers having been struck by the contrary. It is clear however, from a thousand little signs too long to imagine, that they are not sleeping. Only murmur ah, no more, in this silence, and at the same instant for the eye of prey the infinitesimal shudder instantaneously suppressed. Leave them there, sweating and icy, there is better elsewhere. No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness, to see if they still lie still in the stress of that storm, or of a worse storm, or in the black dark for good, or the great whiteness unchanging, and if not what they are doing.

::link source

Act Without Words II: A mime for two player

by Samuel Beckett

Written, according to Beckett, at about the same time as Act Without Words I (1956). Translated from the French by the author and first published in New Departure, vol. 1 (Summer, 1959). First performed probably at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 25 January 1960.

NOTE
This mime should be played on a low and narrow platform at back of stage, violently lit in its entire length, the rest of the stage being in darkness. Frieze effect.
A is slow, awkward (gags dressing and undressing), absent. B brisk, rapid, precise. The two actions therefore, though B has more to do than A, should have approximately the same duration.

ARGUMENT
Beside each other on ground, two yards from right wing, two sacks, A's and B's, A's being to right (as seen from auditorium) of B's, i.e. nearer right wing. On ground beside sack B a little pile of clothes (C) neatly folded (coat and trousers surmounted by boots and hat).


mark_1.gifEnter goad right, strictly horizontal. The point stops a foot short of sack A. Pause. The point draws back, pauses, darts forward into sack, withdraws, recoils to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack does not move. The point draws back again, a little further than before, pauses, dart forward again into sack, withdraws, recoils to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack moves. Exit goad.
A, wearing shirt, crawls out of sack, halts, broods, prays, broods, gets to his feet, broods, takes a little bottle of pills from his shirt pocket, broods, swallows a pill, puts bottle back, broods, goes to clothes, broods, puts on clothes, broods, takes a large partly eaten carrot from coat pocket, bites off a piece, chews an instant, spits it out with disgust, puts carrot back, broods, picks up two sacks, carries them bowed and staggering half-way to left wing, sets tem down, broods, tales off clothes (except shirt), lets them fall in an untidy heap, broods, takes another pill, broods, kneels, prays, crawls into sack and lies still, sack A being now to left of sack B.

Pause.

mark_1.gifEnter goad right on wheeled support (one wheel). The point stops a foot short of sack B. Pause. The point draws back, pauses, darts forward into sack, withdraws, recoils to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack moves. Exit goad.
B, wearing shirt, crawls out of sack, gets to his feet, takes from shirt pocket and consults a large watch, puts watch back, does exercises, consults a large watch, puts watch back, does exercises, consults watch, takes a tooth brush from shirt pocket and brushes teeth vigorously, puts brush back, rubs scalp vigorously, takes a comb from shirt pocket and combs hair, puts comb back, consults watch, goes to clothes, puts them on, consults watch, takes a brush from coat pocket and brushes clothes vigorously, brushes hair vigorously, puts brush back, takes a little mirror from coat pocket and inspects appearance, puts mirror back, takes carrot from coat pocket, bites off a piece, chews and swallows with appetite, puts carrot back, consults watch, takes a map from coat pocket and consults it, puts map back, consults watch, takes a compass from coat pocket and consults it, puts compass back, consults watch, picks up two sacks and carries them bowed and staggering to two yards short of left wing, sets them down, consults watch, takes off clothes (except shirt), folds them in a neat pile, consults watch, does exercises, consults watch, rubs scalp, combs hair, brushes teeth, consults and winds watch, crawls into sack and lies still, sack B being now to left of sack A as originally.

Pause.

mark_1.gifEnter goad right on wheeled support (two wheels). The point stops a foot short of sack A. Pause. The point draws back, pauses, darts forward into sack, withdraws, recoils to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack does not move. The point draws back again, a little further than before, pauses, darts forward again into sack, withdraws, recoils to a foot short of sack. Pauses. The sack moves. Exit goad.

A crawls out of sack, halts, broods, prays.

::source: http://www.drama21c.net/text/actIIbeckett.htm

Modern British Authors: "Rupert Brooke" ( 1887-1915)

"A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life."

These lines were written by Frances Cornford for Brooke, called by W. B. Yeats, "The most handsome man in England."

Rupert Brooke was born into a well-to-do, academic family; his father was a housemaster at Rugby School, where Rupert was educated before going on to King's College, Cambridge. He was a good student and athlete, and--in part because of his strikingly handsome looks--a popular young man who eventually numbered among his friends E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, and Edward Thomas. Even as a student he was familiar in literary circles and came to know many important political, literary and social figures before the war.

Brooke actually saw little combat during the war; he contracted blood-poisoning from a small neglected injury and died in April, 1915, in the Aegean. Brooke's reputation, aside from the myth of the fallen "golden warrior" that his friends set about creating almost immediately after his death, rests on the five war sonnets of 1914. Some of his earlier poetry--"Fish," Helen and Menelaus," and "Heaven"--however, shows us a much different side of Brooke's talent and temperament.

Some critics doubt that he would have written the sonnets later in the war had he lived. They show an enthusiasm that most soldiers and poets eventually lost; another poet, Charles Sorley, said of Brooke's poetry, "He has clothed his attitudes in fine words: but he has taken the sentimental attitude." Sorley held, as a matter of fact, a low opinion of most war poetry: "The voice of our poets and men of letters is finely trained and sweet to hear; it teems with sharp saws and rich sentiment: it is a marvel of delicate technique: it pleases, it flatters, it charms, it soothes: it is a living lie." Sorley was killed in 1915, so he did not live to see the brutal turn poetry would take in the works of Owen, Sassoon and Rosenberg.

How Brooke's poetry would have changed in tone and imagery we can only guess. Fair or not, Brooke is remembered as a "war poet" who inspired patriotism in the early months of the Great War. Jon Stallworthy comments on the unfairness of this assessment, but acknowledges that Brooke assumed a symbolic role that eventually turned into the myth of a young and beautiful fallen warrior--Frances Cornford's "young Apollo, golden haired." Stallworthy notes that "England at that time needed a focal point for its griefs, ideals and aspirations, and the valedictory that appeared in The Times [April 26, 1915] over the initials of Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, sounded a note that was to swell over the months and years that followed:

The thoughts to which he gave expression in the very few incomparable war sonnets which he has left behind will be shared by many thousands of young men moving resolutely and blithely forward into this, the hardest, cruellest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought. They are a whole history and revelation of Rupert Brooke himself. Joyous, fearless, versatile, deeply instructed, with classic symmetry of mind and body, he was all that one would wish England's noblest sons to be in days when no sacrifice but the most precious is acceptable, and the most precious is that which is most freely proffered.

For an excellent short account of Brooke's life and literary reputation, read Jon Stallworthy's contribution in Tim Cross's The Lost Voices of World War I, pp. 52-58.

::source: www.english.emory.edu

"Ulysses" a novel by James Joyce

1922 first edition cover
Author : James Joyce
Country : France
Language : English
Genre(s) : Novel
Publisher : Sylvia Beach
Publication date : 1922
Media type : Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages : 644-1,000, depending on edition
ISBN : ISBN 0-679-72276-9
Preceded by : A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1916)
Followed by : Finnegans Wake
(1939)

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is one of the most important works of Modernist literature[1].

Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). June 16 is now celebrated by Joyce's fans worldwide as Bloomsday.

Ulysses totals 250,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,000 words, with most editions containing between 644 and 1000 pages. Divided into 18 'episodes', as they are referred to in most scholarly circles, the book has been the subject of much controversy and scrutiny since its publication, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual 'Joyce Wars'. Ulysses's groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and highly experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterizations and broad humour, have made the book perhaps the most highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[2]
Background

Joyce's first acquaintance with Odysseus was via Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses - an adaptation of the Odyssey for children, which seems to have established the Roman name in Joyce‘s mind. At school he wrote an essay on Ulysses as his 'favourite hero' (Gorman, p. 45). He thought about calling Dubliners Ulysses in Dublin (Borach, p. 325), but the idea grew from a story in Dubliners in 1906, to a 'short book' in 1907 (Ellmann, p. 265), to the vast novel which he began writing in 1914.

Structure and themes

See also: Linati schema for Ulysses and Gilbert schema for Ulysses

Ulysses is divided into eighteen chapters or 'episodes.' At first glance much of the book may appear unstructured and chaotic, but the two schemata which Stuart Gilbert and Herbert Gorman released after publication to defend Joyce from the obscenity accusations make the links to the Odyssey, and much internal structure, linkable.

Every episode of Ulysses has an assigned theme, technique and, tellingly, correspondences between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The episode titles and the correspondences were not included in the original text but are known from the Linati and Gilbert schema. Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. He took the titles from Victor Bérard’s two-volume Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée which he consulted in 1918 in the Zentralbibliothek of Zürich. Bérard’s book was the source of Joyce’s idiosyncratic rendering of some of the Homeric titles: 'Nausikaa', the 'Telemachia'. It is believed that Joyce wrote some of the novel in The Mullingar House In Chapelizod.

More about Ulysses, plot summary, theme, etc, click here