ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
How The Life Of Samuel Beckett Informed The Words He Wrote
“I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life
without having left a stain upon the silence”
– Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett is a rare playwright in that his name is often recognized outside the field of theatre. Even those who cannot immediately identify him by name might know the 1953 play which first gave him widespread fame: Waiting for Godot. While understanding what Beckett’s life entailed may not lead to a conclusive explanation of his work, it can illuminate what circumstances might have made him choose to leave “a stain on the silence.”
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in the suburbs of Dublin on April 13, 1906 into a solidly middle class family. While in adulthood, Beckett would claim France as his home country, his formative years as an Irishman cannot be ignored. Beckett came of age during a time of tremendous tension and revolution. As part of the United Kingdom, Ireland entered World War I in 1914, which occurred in tandem with a major shift in national political support, from the Irish Parliamentary Party to the republican Sinn Féin movement and the rise of the Irish Free State.The Easter Rising of April 1916, an armed insurrection against British government and oppressive British rule, left hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned. In the aftermath, Beckett's father took young Sam and his brother to see Dublin in flames, an image that would remain with Beckett for the rest of his life. It would not be the last time in his life that he would witness violence and war.
Beckett received a first-rate education and was an exemplary student. He attended primary school at Earlsfort House, a deliberately multi denominational school which emphasized religious and racial tolerance, a pedagogy that helped to shape Beckett’s intolerance for prejudice. He enrolled at Trinity College in Dublin, where he studied French and Italian languages. During his years as an undergraduate, it was a very rich time for Irish theatre. Beckett was a regular member of the audience at the Abbey Theatre in the 1920s, where he encountered the work of John Millington Synge, Sean O’Casey, and W.B. Yeats. He was especially influenced by Synge’s ability to fuse the seemingly trivial aspects of everyday Irish life into the universal and unforgettable. Beckett also hunted the National Gallery in Dublin, and developed a longstanding fascination with visual art and painting. Upon graduation, Beckett received a coveted teaching position at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. It was there that he would begin to meet characters who would influence his life and career, including poet Tom McGreevy and author James Joyce. Following his post in Paris, Beckett returned to Trinity College in Dublin as a lecturer. However, he quickly became disillusioned with teaching, and in 1930 made the decision to forgo the stability of a career in academia and pursue his ambition as a writer.
The 1930s were hard years for Beckett, as he struggled to establish stability in his personal and professional life. The sudden death of his father in 1933 affected him profoundly. Beckett began to suffer from debilitating anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. He sought out psychotherapy, and his discoveries through this treatment sparked an interest in the workings of the mind, the effects of isolation, and the recognition of mortality. In 1938, Beckett was stabbed in the chest by a small-time pimp in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason, and it narrowly missed his heart. He survived, but it would not be long before the threat of danger would find him again.
Beckett's path, and the world's, was interrupted by the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of World War II. As an Irishman, Beckett had the choice to remain neutral; instead, he became actively involved with the French Resistance and translated information obtained by French spies into English to be smuggled into England. He would claim later, “I was fighting against the Germans who were making life hell for my friends, and not for the French nation.” After the arrest of several of Beckett's friends by German authorities, he fled a small village, Roussillion, with Suzanne Decheveaux-Dumesnil, his then-girlfriend. Throughout his life, he referred to his work with the Resistance as “boy scout stuff.”
“I wrote Godot to come into the light. I needed a habitable space, and I found it on the stage.” – Beckett, 1985
After the war ended, Beckett experienced an epiphany about his purpose as his writer. He changed the focus in his work from an external observation of human life to an examination of the self. This kicked off what he referred to as a “frenzy of writing.” In the post-war years, Beckett wrote three novels: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. However, it was his play Waiting for Godot that thrust Beckett into the spotlight and would change his life forever. The play made its world premiere (as En attendant Godot) in Paris on January 5, 1953. Overnight, Beckett came to international acclaim at the age of 42. The success of this singular work opened a new world of opportunity for Beckett.
Following Waiting for Godot, Beckett wrote and produced three full-length plays for the stage: Fin de Partie (Endgame), Happy Days, and Krapp's Last Tape. As he moved forward in his work, his plays became shorter and sparser, but their meaning became richer and more complex. The four plays that Beckett Bites includes - Play, Footfalls, Rockaby and Come and Go - are part of a later body of work marked by an even greater shift towards the examination of the internal workings of the mind and Beckett's development as a theatre practitioner. Since Beckett was a writer of literature first, his exposure to the practical and technical elements in theatre had an indelible influence on his plays. As he gained a greater understanding of the mechanisms of theatre – specifically, the power of specific lighting, costumes and sound – he directly applied it to his work.
“The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of.” Beckett, in a letter to Alan Schneider
Beckett maintained a close circle of treasured and trusted collaborators and friends in his life, such as actors Jack MacGowran, Roger Blin and Billie Whitelaw, and director Alan Schneider, with whom he would work for throughout his career. While he married Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumnesil, their relationship was not exclusive. In 1957, Beckett would meet and begin an affair with translator and writer Barbara Bray, and the two maintained a close intimate and intellectual relationship until the end of Beckett’s life. While Beckett was not keen to imply autobiographical content in his plays, it is widely inferred that the love triangle in Play is an exception.
Beckett was never a man who enjoyed fame. Upon the announcement that he was to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, his went into hiding for ten days. Suzanne, his wife, declared the situation a "catastrophe." He gave the award money he received away immediately. This move was in line with his character, for Beckett was known for deep generosity and gave away his later-found wealth freely throughout his life. In the 1960s and 1970s, Beckett experienced the loss of beloved friends, family members and colleagues. He faced a multitude of health issues himself, but always pressed on and never abandoned his work as a writer. In the late 1980s, Beckett’s health began to decline significantly. In 1988, he was discovered unconscious in his kitchen, believed to have had a stroke. After he regained his mobility and speech, he wrote his final work, a poem titled Comment Dire (What is the Word.) He completed it in the rest home where he would spend the final year of his life. He died of respiratory failure on December 22nd 1989, less than six months after the death of his wife , and was buried beside her in Paris.
Beckett's legacy is immeasurable and enduring. There is a bottomless trove of scholarship dedicated to Beckett, as well as an enormous quantity of records associated with his work and life. His letters and correspondence to colleagues and friends are all extant. Manuscripts of his plays and novels are available for those to hold in hand. Ever the writer, he kept diaries and theatrical notebooks that provide illuminative clues and content for his process.
Beckett’s work pokes at the most tender and vulnerable aspects of human existence, often avoided in the broad light of day. However, in the dark of the theatre, artists and audiences might experience a deeper, more expansive (dare I say hopeful?) perspective of Beckett's unique theatrical storytelling.