Endgame (play) Critical Essay | 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 theater nowadays over futility, protracted dreariness or doom: we laugh.

"Endgame" is a technical term signifying the last stage in playing a hand, the position of the important card having been generally known, and the play being determined accordingly; or the point in the game when the forces (in chess or checkers) have been greatly reduced.

The central image of the piece is that of Hamm, a blind man, paralyzed, shut off in a bare, gray room with his legless parents who remain immobilized in two dustbins. His condition does not change from first to last. Hamm has an alter ego, Clov, who might be likened to an enslaved son. There is much scurrying about on Clov's part but little...
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