ABSTRACT

Advocating an emotional rather than an intellectual approach to his theatre, Beckett once wrote the following famous words to Jessica Tandy about Not I: ‘I hope the piece may work on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect’.2 Thus, it seems logical that in his works the Irish dramatist endeavoured to achieve a certain effect of musicality, for, as Katharine Worth puts it simply, ‘music must affect the emotional imagination of the listener in some way’.3 Beckett frequently stressed the importance of the orchestration of various sounds and voices in his plays. One of the most representative examples of this idea can be found in a well-known statement made in a letter to Alan Schneider in which the playwright contends: ‘My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else’.4 Although this comment was made specifically with reference to Endgame, it seems equally relevant to other dramatic works by Beckett whose musicality has interested numerous contemporary critics.