Endgame Summary
Samuel Beckett

Biography EssaySamuel Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot has influenced several generations of contemporary playwrights throughout the world, was a dramatist who considered himself a much better n... Read more

Samuel Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot has influenced several generations of contemporary playwrights throughout the world, is a dramatist who considers himself a much better novelist. He thinks... Read more

When Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969, the Swedish Academy stated that it was for "a body of work that in new forms of fiction and the theatre, has transmuted the desti... Read more

Critical Review by Robert Hatch Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that! There is no bottom to the nihilism of Samuel Beckett, but... Read more

Critical Essay by Kristin Morrison After the little canters of Waiting for Godot, Beckett composed a substantial "chronicle" for Endgame, providing one of the best examples of extended ... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Dutton Endgame, like Waiting for Godot has its echo of The Tempest. But where Lucky remembered divine Miranda, Hamm derisively recalls the world-weary Prospero: 'Our ... Read more

Critical Essay by Shimon Levy In a play "you have definite space and people in this space. That's relaxing" Ruby Cohn, Back to Beckett, 1973. But the actual locations Beckett cho... Read more

Critical Essay by Hugh Kenner The stage is a place to wait. The place itself waits, when no one is in it. When the curtain rises on Endgame, sheets drape all visible objects as in a furniture warehou... Read more

Critical Essay by Antony Easthope One way in which a play holds the attention of an audience for the duration of its performance is by presenting an action which may be formulated as a question: Who ... Read more

Interview by Jack MacGowran with Richard Toscan Toscan: What about Endgame, in which you played Clov? [MacGowran]: Endgame presented different problems [from Waiting for Godot]. The world upon whi... Read more

Critical Review by Harold Clurman Samuel Beckett's Endgame is a Mystery of final things: as death, the end of an age. Being altogether modern, it is also a comedy. We do not weep in the theate... Read more

In the following essay, Williams explores the rejection of God and God's works in Endgame, and underscores humankind's ability and almost eagerness to self-destruct in a nuclear era. ... Read more