ABSTRACT
Even 45 years after the first production of Waiting for Godot, this remains a challenging question, though many people, including Beckett himself, have thought this was not necessarily a productive place to start from, since it threatens to lead one away from the plays themselves. Estragon and Vladimir appear to have virtually nothing except the clothes they wear. They have no project, except, at Vladimir’s insistence, to wait for Mr Godot, who has promised to see them and who seems to offer some kind of indeterminate hope. Endgame is the bleakest of Beckett’s plays. The sense of imprisonment of the characters in their relations with each other and in the physical space they inhabit is almost total. Happy Days is unusual in Beckett’s work in having a central female character. The play is set in blazing light on scorched ground. Centre-stage is Winnie, buried up to her waist in a mound.
