In this regard, comparisons with Albert Camus and existentialism make sense in that both are often taken to be more serious than they actually are: or rather, they are deadly serious but also alive to the comedy in everyday desperation and futility.Īn important aspect of Camus’ ‘ Myth of Sisyphus’ is being able to laugh at the absurdity of human endeavour and the repetitive and futile nature of our lives – which all sounds like a pretty good description of Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot is a play which cuts through pretence and sees the comedy as well as the quiet tragedy in human existence.Īmong Beckett’s many influences, we can detect, in the relationship and badinage between Vladimir and Estragon, the importance of music-hall theatre and the comic double act and vaudeville performers wouldn’t last five minutes up on stage if they indulged in pretentiousness. But it is clear that they are fairly well-educated, given their vocabularies and frames of reference.Īnd yet, cutting across their philosophical and theological discussions is their plain-speaking and unpretentious attitude to these topics. Precisely what social class Vladimir and Estragon come from is not known. The other well-known thing about Waiting for Godot is that Vladimir and Estragon are tramps – except that the text never mentions this fact, and Beckett explicitly stated that he ‘saw’ the two characters dressed in bowler hats (otherwise, he said, he couldn’t picture what they should look like): hardly the haggard and unkempt tramps of popular imagination. The key lies not so much in the what as in the how. So, what made Beckett’s play so innovative to 1950s audiences? As Michael Patterson observes in The Oxford Guide to Plays (Oxford Quick Reference), the theme of promised salvation which never arrives had already been explored by a number of major twentieth-century playwrights, including Eugene O’Neill ( The Iceman Cometh) and Eugène Ionesco ( The Chairs).Īnd plays in which ‘nothing happens’ were already established by this point, with conversation and meandering and seemingly aimless ‘action’ dominating other twentieth-century plays. However, contrary to popular belief, this is not what made Waiting for Godot such a revolutionary piece of theatre. It is always just beyond the horizon, in the future, arriving ‘tomorrow’. With this structure in mind, it is hardly surprising that the play is often interpreted as a depiction of the pointless, uneventful, and repetitive nature of modern life, which is often lived in anticipation of something which never materialises.
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