Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

1956

Brasch PQ2603 E378 E5 A2 1956

London: Faber and Faber

MacNeice suggests that parables often take the form of a quest, in which case Samuel Beckett’s absurdist tragicomedy is ‘a static quest.’ As depicted in the production shot on the cover, Beckett’s two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait and wait for Godot to arrive but he fails to show in either act. Waiting for Godot is, in Vivian Mercier’s words, ‘a play in which nothing happens, twice.’ Beckett’s characters often find themselves in situations that will repeat endlessly and have been compared to personified vices and virtues in medieval mystery plays.