ABSTRACT
In his 1961 book The Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Esslin focuses on the plays of Samuel Beckett, in a section entitled “The Search for the Self.” In this chapter, I make a case that Beckett’s early plays Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp’s Last Tape are influenced, not only by philosophy, psychology, and existentialism, but also the comedy, clown performances and silent films he saw in his youth, forms that grew from the sixteenth-century Commedia dell’ Arte which Esslin mentions but does not expand.
