ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author shows that at 16 the play was speaking to him with the transformative directness that electrified the San Quentin prisoners. There are numerous testimonies to its strange and transformative power. Students may know that, just at the time when it was puzzling and antagonising audiences round the world, it was performed in front of prisoners in San Quentin jail in the States. The reception was electrifyingly responsive; they knew, after all, about waiting and about deferred hopes. Their uncomplicated response fits well with Beckett’s nice exasperation with the more refined of critics who, as he knew, could only complicate simple things, like his play.
