Name Samuel Beckett
Also known as Samuel Barclay Beckett
Occupation Playwright
Born 13 April 1906, Foxrock, co. Dublin, Ireland
Died 22 December 1989, Paris, France
Gender : Male
Literary period 20th century
Forms Drama
- Waiting for Godot (1953)
- Endgame (1957),
- Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
- Happy Days (1961).
Novels:
Molly( 1951)
Study Points:
- Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906, where as a young man he studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College.
- He went to Paris for the first time in 1928 – he would spend most of his adult life there – to teach English.
- During World War Two, his Irish citizenship allowed him to remain in Paris and he worked as a courier for the French resistance.
- Following the arrest of members of the group by the Gestapo, he fled to the unoccupied zone, where he remained until the end of the war.
- After the war Beckett settled in Paris and began a prolific period as a writer.
- His most famous play, Waiting for Godot – the play in which, as one critic put it, nothing happens, twice – was first performed in 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone on the Left Bank in Paris.
- A young Peter Hall directed the English language premiere in 1955 at the Arts Theatre in London, where, with its emphasis on silence and repetition, it confused some critics – Harold Hobson, while positive, found nothing in it ‘to seduce the senses’ – and delighted others – Kenneth Tynan believed that the play had changed the rules of theatre.
- After Waiting for Godot, Beckett went on to write Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) and Happy Days (1961).
- While most of his work was written in French and later translated into English by Beckett, Krapp and Happy Days were written in English.
- His work became increasingly experimental and minimalist, stripped down to only the most essential elements.
- Play, written in 1962, places its characters in funeral urns with only their heads visible.
- In the 1950s Beckett also published three novels, including Molloy (1951).
- He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
- He revisited Waiting for Godot in 1975, directing his own production at the Schiller Theatre in Berlin.
- Beckett died in 1989 and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
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