A Piece of Monologue

by Samuel Beckett

A fifteen-minute play. It followed a request for a “play about death” by the actor David Warrilow.

Genres: Plays, Drama

6 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's Last Tape in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.

Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.

People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.

People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".

In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.

Reviews

[Amirsaman]

خوانش اول با ترجمه‌ی علی‌اکبر علیزاد، حین دیدن اقتباس رابین لوفور از اثر.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lacks the uncanny deja vu of Beckett's best work - the feeling it can sometimes evoke of taking me back to a place I'm sure I've been but didn't remember, or a moment I can remember.but not place - but I can't not give four stars to a 6-page play with these lines:

The dead and gone. The dying and the going. From the word go. The word begone. Such as the light going now. Beginning to go. In the room. Where else? Unnoticed by him staring beyond. The globe alone. Not the other. The unaccountable. From nowhere. On all sides nowhere. Unutterably faint. The globe alone. Alone gone.

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Common themes but with the usual thoughtful touch and quotable lines. Beckett believed he remembered being in utero and having a difficult birth.

‘My birth was my death.’

[Margret Melissa (ladybug) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I keep trying to understand Samuel Beckett. I feel like such a dufus. :( His writing is like trying to understand someone who should be on medication.

[Adi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read his works. Samuel Beckett is becoming more of an enigma to me.

[Martin Foroz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main text looks like stage direction. Phrases topping one another with little cohesion and contextual auxiliaries. Mathematics may have a little role here though I would refer to it as cataloging technique with the same number of repetition. The only thing I liked about the play is the description of the word “birth” signifying as Beckett puts it, “birth is the death of him.” I feel this play is even beyond what we may call Theatre of Absurd!

[sch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Final piece in 2006 Naxos recording (perf. Peter Marinker). The speaker speaks in a medley of "stage directions" for (presumably) himself, as if recollecting/reflecting on his own actions. "Monologue" is a strange word for this.