Endgame (play)

Endgame is a one-act play with four characters by Samuel Beckett. It was originally written in French, entitled Fin de partie; as was his custom, it was translated into English by Beckett himself. Published in 1957, it is commonly considered, along with such works as Waiting for Godot, to be among Beckett's most important works.

Synopsis

File:Endgame.jpg

Michael Gambon as Hamm and Lee Evans as Clov in Endgame

Its protagonists are Hamm, an aged master, who is blind and can't stand up, and his servant Clov, who can't sit down. They exist in a tiny house by the sea, although the dialogue suggests that there is nothing left outside--no sea, no sun, no clouds. The two characters, mutually dependent, have been fighting for years and continue to do so as the play progresses. Clov always wants to leave but never seems to be able. Also present are Hamm's legless parents Nagg and Nell, who live in rubbish bins upstage and initially request food or argue inanely.

Interpretation

The English title is taken from the last part of a chess game, when there are very few pieces left. (The French title can be applied to games besides chess, and Beckett lamented the fact that there was no precise English equivalent). Beckett himself was known to be an avid player of the game, and the struggle of Hamm to accept the end can be compared to the refusal of amateur chess players to admit an inevitable defeat, though professional players usually resign after facing a major setback.

The literary critic Harold Bloom considers 'Hamm' to be an allusion to Hamlet and finds an intertext (transumptive litotes) within Hamm's line:

'...it's time it ended...[a]nd yet I hesitate, I hesitate to...to end.'

Bloom contends this is an intertext with Hamlet's famous 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, in which doubt prevents the character in Hamlet's revised version of The Mousetrap from taking decisive action, and Endgame is a play devoid of action, in Beckett's typical absurdist style.

It has also been suggested that Hamm also relates to 'ham actor' and Ham, son of Noah, while Clov is a truncated version of Clown, as well as suggesting cloven hoof (of the devil) and glove (a distant echo of hand and glove, perhaps). Nagg suggests 'nagging' and the German 'nagen' (to gnaw), while Nell recalls Dickens' Little Nell. (Theodor Adorno Trying to Understand Endgame). Equally Hamm could be short for Hammer and Clov be 'clove' (etymologically 'nail'[1]), hammer and nail representing one aspect of their relationship. In this light, Nagg and Nell, taken together, may suggest the German 'Nagel' (nail).

Ruby Cohn, in her book Back to Beckett, writes that "Beckett's favorite line in the play is Hamm's deduction from Clov's observation that Nagg is crying: 'Then he's living.' But in Berlin he felt that the most important sentence is Nell's 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' And he directed his play to show the fun of unhappiness."

The implication in the play is that the characters live in an unchanging, static state. Each day contains the actions and reactions of the day before, until each event takes on an almost ritualistic quality. It is made clear, through the text, that the characters have a past (most notably through Nagg and Nell who conjure up memories of tandem rides in the Ardennes). However, there is no indication that they may have a future. Even the death of Nell, which occurs towards the end of the play, is greeted with a lack of surprise. The isolated setting, and the constant references to aspects of civilisation that no longer exist, have led many to suggest the play is post-nuclear. However, Beckett always denied this.

It has also been theorized that Hamm is an actual person who on his death bed is imagining this gloomy reality due to the onset of death. As plausible a theory as this is, there is no proof from the author, his past, or his acquaintances to support it.

External links

References

Adorno, Theodor W. Trying to Understand Endgame [1961], The New German Critique, no. 26, (Spring-Summer 1982) pp.119-150. In The Adorno Reader ed. Brian O'Connor. Blackwell Publishers. 2000.
Cohn, Ruby. Back to Beckett. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1973.