Abstract
The premiere of Fin de partie, which was to become Endgame in Samuel Beckett’s English translation, took place at the Royal Court Theatre in April 1957. Despite the fact that Beckett’s first produced play, En attendant Godot, had been very successful, Roger Blin was unable to find a theatre in Paris that would accept this new play, and the Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square provided its initial home. Consequently, the French text of this expatriate Irish playwright’s next drama opened in Britain with French actors playing to an English-speaking audience. Beckett soon translated the text as Endgame, and Alan Schneider, the Russian-born Ameri can director, staged the premiere of the English version at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York in 1958. Later that year, the Royal Court produced the first British performance of the English text with George Devine as director.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
M. Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (1961), rev. edn (New York: Anchor, 1969) p. 19.
E. Said, ‘The World, the Text, the Critic’, in J. Harari (ed.), Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979) p. 182. The new quotation from Joyce is A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (New York: Viking, 1964) p. 189.
E. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) p. 308.
C. R. Lyons, ‘Beckett’s Fundamental Theatre’, in J. Acheson and K. Arthur (eds), Beckett’s Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for Company (Macmillan, 1987) p. 93.
H. P. Abbott, ‘Tyranny and Theatricality: The Example of Samuel Beckett’, Theatre Journal, 40 (Mar 1988) 86–7.
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) pp. 228–67.
S. Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954) pp. 22a–22b.
G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Hurley, Seem and Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983) p. 76.
C. R. Lyons, ‘Beckett’s Endgame: An Anti-Myth of Creation’, Modern Drama 7 (Fall 1964) 206.
A. L. Béquin, ‘Limites de l’histoire littéraire’, Esprit, Jan 1955, p. 169;
tr. and cited in S. Lawall, Critics of Consciousness: The Existential Structures of Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969) p. 70.
See for example C. Whitman, Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951);
L. C. Knights, Some Shakespearean Themes (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960);
W. Kaufmann, From Shakespeare to Existentialism (New York: Doubleday, 1959).
To refer once more to Esslin and Lyons, note the existentially oriented readings of Brecht in M. Esslin, Brecht: A Choice of Evils (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959);
and C. R. Lyons, Bertolt Brecht: the Despair and the Polemic (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968).
M. Esslin, Mediations (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980) p. 123.
C. R. Lyons, ‘Some Analogies between the Epic Brecht and the Absurdist Beckett’, Comparative Drama, i (Winter, 1967–8) 303.
G. Lukács, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, tr. J. and N. Manden (Merlin Press, 1963) pp. 66–7.
S. Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958) p. 38. Page references of further quotations are given in parenthesis following the quotations.
G. Lukacs, ‘Historical Drama and Historical Novel’, The Historical Novel (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1963) p. 122.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1991 The Editorial Board, Lumiere (Co-operative) Press Ltd
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lyons, C.R. (1991). Fin de Partie/Endgame as Political Drama. In: Hyland, P., Sammells, N. (eds) Irish Writing. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21755-7_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21755-7_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-52542-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21755-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)