¹ “Samuel Beckett” in Preuves, no. 61, mars 1956, pp. 71–76.

² The Times Literary Supplement, 10 February 1956.

³ In a penetrating study called “Drama Stripped for Inaction: Beckett's Godot” YFS, no. 14, Winter 1954–55), Edith Kern takes a similar position when she writes of “the strong notion which it conveys of the non-existence of a personal Heavenly Father” and of Beckett's characters who “in this play glorify … the all-surpassing power of human tenderness which alone makes bearable man's long and ultimately futile wait for a redeemer and which, in fact, turns out itself to be the redeemer of man in his forlornness” (pp. 46–47).

⁴ The Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 1956.

⁵ Samuel Beckett, En Attendant Godot (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1952). All quotations will be from this edition and will be followed immediately by the page reference.

⁶ Kenneth Douglas has been kind enough to point out that “Camogie also is a form of hockey: the female form of Irish hurling, a kind of primitive field hockey almost devoid of rules.” It is well to note, finally, that in addition to the sexual implications of both prefixes for a French audience, the general pejorative meaning of con and its compounds like connerie is matched by the Irish prefix cam, which indicates error, deceit, perversity, etc., and which is used, for example, to form the word for harlot. Both terms, then, play a double role in the attack on sports.

⁷ Reported by Leo Spitzer in “Language of Poetry” in Language: An Enquiry into its Meaning and Function, ed. Ruth N. Anshen (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), p. 202.

⁸ In order to avoid any possible misunderstanding, let me repeat here a convenient distinction, set forth by Robert Champigny in “Existentialism and the Modern French Novel” (Thought, xxxi, cxxii, Autumn, 1956), between existentialist literature, in which “fundamental themes are deliberately linked to an existential philosophy” (p. 367), and existential literature which has to do with the human condition and man's fate but which lacks such a direct link. This study is concerned only with the existential nature of Beckett's play.

⁹ One is reminded of the medieval legend that tells how a branch of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, planted in the mouth of Adam after his death, grew into the tree that eventually furnished the wood for the cross.

¹⁰ The critic of the Times elaborates this view, “The orthodoxy of this symbolism, from a Christian point of view, is obvious. The tramps with their rags and their misery represent the fallen state of man. The squalor of their surroundings, their lack of a ‘stake in the world,‘ represents the idea that here in this world we can build no abiding city. The ambiguity of their attitude towards Godot, their mingled hope and fear, the doubtful tone of the boy's messages, represents the state of tension and uncertainty in which the average Christian must live in this world, avoiding presumption and also avoiding despair … Didi and Gogo stand for the contemplative life. Pozzo and Lucky stand for the life of practical action, mistakenly, as an end in itself … Didi and Gogo are bound to each other by something it is not absurd to call charity … their odd relationship, always tugging away from each other, but always drawn together again, is among other things an emblem of marriage” (10 February 1956).

¹¹ Thus the Times critic writes, “What is dismissed in Lucky's speech is perhaps Liberalism, Progress, Popular Education … The Nietzschean and the Liberal hypothesis being put out of court, the Christian hypothesis is left holding the stage” (10 February 1956).

¹² If one wishes to seek out Christian symbols—and every word counts in this play—it would not be hard to see in this three-in-one pattern a verbal representation of the Trinity.

¹³ “Samuel Beckett” in Prévues, no. 61, mars 1956, p. 72.

¹⁴ Two examples of this correspondence of characters: in the hat-passing scene, Vladimir ends up with the hat of Lucky, the erstwhile thinker; later Vladimir and Estragon play at being Lucky and Pozzo, and the “casting” fits the scheme of analogies (123). Pozzo and Lucky are somewhat older than Vladimir and Estragon, who, therefore, become the spectators of their own future fate. Death, of course, levels all, and in the second act extreme old age has already obliterated many of the differences between Pozzo and Lucky. One further remark on this subject: Gogo and Didi, as Professor David Roberts, a colleague raised in China and himself nicknamed Gogo, informs me, mean older and younger brother in Chinese. It may seem strange, therefore, to find Estragon in the superior position in the hierarchy, since he is obviously the more dependent of the two. But Pozzo likewise becomes dependent on his slave, Lucky. The irony here turns the social categories inside out. Society's superficial judgement is reversed and the intellectual guides the materialist. (This is not to say that the intellectual himself is in any way immune from satire.)

¹⁵ In Language, p. 205.

¹⁶ Robert Poulet in La Lanterne Magique (Paris: Debresse, 1958) writes, “II est difficile d'expliquer pourquoi cette comédie comprend deux actes, plutôt qu'un seul ou que dix tous semblables” (p. 241). In a similar vein, Thomas Barbour in “Beckett and Ionesco” (in The Hudson Review, summer 1958) seems to feel that the second act, essentially a repetition of the first act, is, therefore, less successful. Mr. Spitzer's insight, applied to Godot, would suggest on the contrary that, far from being an arbitrary appendage, the second act completes a structure that harmonizes with and helps to express the essential meaning of the play.

¹⁷ See Edith Kern, p. 45; David Grossvogel, The Self-Conscious Stage in Modern French Drama (New York, 1958), p. 324; and Robert Poulet, pp. 240–241.