Waiting for Godot Read online

  Waiting for Godot

  Works by Samuel Beckett published by Grove Press

  COLLECTED POEMS IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

  THE COLLECTED SHORTER PLAYS

  (All That Fall, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II, Krapp’s Last Tape, Rough for Theatre I, Rough For Theatre II, Embers, Rough for Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds . . . , A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht and Träume, What Where)

  THE Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989

  (Assumption, Sedendo et Quiescendo, Text, A Case in a Thousand, First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing 1–13, From an Abandoned Work, The Image, All Strange Away, Imagination Dead Imagine, Enough, Ping, Lessness, The Lost Ones, Fizzles 1–8, Heard in the Dark 1, Heard in the Dark 2, One Evening, As the story was told, The Cliff, neither, Stirrings Still, Variations on a “Still” Point, Faux Départs, The Capital of the Ruins)

  DISJECTA:

  Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment

  ENDGAME AND ACT WITHOUT

  WORDS

  FIRST LOVE AND OTHER SHORTS

  HAPPY DAYS

  HOW IT IS

  I CAN’T GO ON, I’LL GO ON:

  A Samuel Beckett Reader

  KRAPP’S LAST TAPE (All That Fall, Embers, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II)

  MERCIER AND CAMIER

  MOLLOY

  MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS

  (Dante and the Lobster, Fingal, Ding-Dong, A Wet Night, Love and Lethe, Walking Out, What a Misfortune, The Smeraldina’s Billet Doux, Yellow, Draff)

  MURPHY

  NOHOW ON (Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho)

  STORIES AND TEXTS FOR NOTHING

  (The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing 1–13)

  THREE NOVELS (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

  WAITING FOR GOGOT

  WATT

  HAPPY DAYS:

  Production Notebooks

  WAITING FOR GOGOT:

  Theatrical Notebooks

  WAITING FOR GODOT

  tragicomedy in 2 acts by samuel beckett translated from the original french text by the author

  Copyright © 1954 by Grove Press, Inc.; copyright © renewed 1982 by Samuel Beckett Copyright renewed © 1982 by Samuel Beckett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [email protected].

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  First-class professional applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance, before rehearsals begin, to Georges Borchardt, Inc., 136 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022. Stock and amateur applications to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance, before rehearsals begin, to Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 440 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-6803

  ISBN: 978-0-8021-9882-2 (e-book)

  Grove Press

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  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  Estragon

  Vladimir

  Lucky

  Pozzo

  a boy

  ACT I

  A country road. A tree.

  Evening.

  Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before.

  Enter Vladimir.

  ESTRAGON: (giving up again). Nothing to be done.

  VLADIMIR: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.

  ESTRAGON: Am I?

  VLADIMIR: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone for ever.

  ESTRAGON: Me too.

  VLADIMIR: Together again at last! We’ll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.

  ESTRAGON: (irritably). Not now, not now.

  VLADIMIR: (hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?

  ESTRAGON: In a ditch.

  VLADIMIR: (admiringly). A ditch! Where?

  ESTRAGON: (without gesture). Over there.

  VLADIMIR: And they didn’t beat you?

  ESTRAGON: Beat me? Certainly they beat me.

  VLADIMIR: The same lot as usual?

  ESTRAGON: The same? I don’t know.

  VLADIMIR: When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be . . . (Decisively.) You’d be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

  ESTRAGON: And what of it?

  VLADIMIR: (gloomily). It’s too much for one man. (Pause. Cheerfully.) On the other hand what’s the good of losing heart now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.

  ESTRAGON: Ah stop blathering and help me off with this bloody thing.

  VLADIMIR: Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it’s too late. They wouldn’t even let us up. (Estragon tears at his boot.) What are you doing?

  ESTRAGON: Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?

  VLADIMIR: Boots must be taken off every day, I’m tired telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?

  ESTRAGON: (feebly). Help me!

  VLADIMIR: It hurts?

  ESTRAGON: (angrily). Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

  VLADIMIR: (angrily). No one ever suffers but you. I don’t count. I’d like to hear what you’d say if you had what I have.

  ESTRAGON: It hurts?

  VLADIMIR: (angrily). Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

  ESTRAGON: (pointing). You might button it all the same.

  VLADIMIR: (stooping). True. (He buttons his fly.) Never neglect the little things of life.

  ESTRAGON: What do you expect, you always wait till the last moment.

  VLADIMIR: (musingly). The last moment . . . (He
meditates.) Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?

  ESTRAGON: Why don’t you help me?

  VLADIMIR: Sometimes I feel it coming all the same. Then I go all queer. (He takes off his hat, peers inside it, feels about inside it, shakes it, puts it on again.) How shall l say? Relieved and at the same time . . . (he searches for the word) . . . appalled. (With emphasis.) AP-PALLED. (He takes off his hat again, peers inside it.) Funny. (He knocks on the crown as though to dislodge a foreign body, peers into it again, puts it on again.) Nothing to be done. (Estragon with a supreme effort succeeds in pulling off his boot. He peers inside it, feels about inside it, turns it upside down, shakes it, looks on the ground to see if anything has fallen out, finds nothing, feels inside it again, staring sightlessly before him.) Well?

  ESTRAGON: Nothing.

  VLADIMIR: Show.

  ESTRAGON: There’s nothing to show.

  VLADIMIR: Try and put it on again.

  ESTRAGON: (examining his foot). I’ll air it for a bit.

  VLADIMIR: There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. (He takes off his hat again, peers inside it, feels about inside it, knocks on the crown, blows into it, puts it on again.) This is getting alarming. (Silence. Vladimir deep in thought, Estragon pulling at his toes.) One of the thieves was saved. (Pause.) It’s a reasonable percentage. (Pause.) Gogo.

  ESTRAGON: What?

  VLADIMIR: Suppose we repented.

  ESTRAGON: Repented what?

  VLADIMIR: Oh . . . (He reflects.) We wouldn’t have to go into the details.

  ESTRAGON: Our being born?

  Vladimir breaks into a hearty laugh which he immediately stifles, his hand pressed to his pubis, his face contorted.

  VLADIMIR: One daren’t even laugh any more.

  ESTRAGON: Dreadful privation.

  VLADIMIR: Merely smile. (He smiles suddenly from ear to ear, keeps smiling, ceases as suddenly.) It’s not the same thing. Nothing to be done. (Pause.) Gogo.

  ESTRAGON: (irritably). What is it?

  VLADIMIR: Did you ever read the Bible?

  ESTRAGON: The Bible . . . (He reflects.) I must have taken a look at it.

  VLADIMIR: Do you remember the Gospels?

  ESTRAGON: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That’s where well go, I used to say, that’s where well go for our honeymoon. We’ll swim. We’ll be happy.

  VLADIMIR: You should have been a poet.

  ESTRAGON: I was. (Gesture towards his rags.) Isn’t that obvious?

  Silence.

  VLADIMIR: Where was I . . . How’s your foot?

  ESTRAGON: Swelling visibly.

  VLADIMIR: Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story?

  ESTRAGON: No.

  VLADIMIR: Shall I tell it to you?

  ESTRAGON: No.

  VLADIMIR: It’ll pass the time. (Pause.) Two thieves, crucified at the same time as our Saviour. One—

  ESTRAGON: Our what?

  VLADIMIR: Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other . . . (he searches for the contrary of saved) . . . damned.

  ESTRAGON: Saved from what?

  VLADIMIR: Hell.

  ESTRAGON: I’m going.

  He does not move.

  VLADIMIR: And yet . . . (pause) . . . how is it—this is not boring you I hope—how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there—or thereabouts—and only one speaks of a thief being saved. (Pause.) Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can’t you, once in a way?

  ESTRAGON: (with exaggerated enthusiasm). I find this really most extraordinarily interesting.

  VLADIMIR: One out of four. Of the other three two don’t mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him.

  ESTRAGON: Who?

  VLADIMIR: What?

  ESTRAGON: What’s all this about? Abused who?

  VLADIMIR: The Saviour.

  ESTRAGON: Why?

  VLADIMIR: Because he wouldn’t save them.

  ESTRAGON: From hell?

  VLADIMIR: Imbecile! From death.

  ESTRAGON: I thought you said hell.

  VLADIMIR: From death, from death.

  ESTRAGON: Well what of it?

  VLADIMIR: Then the two of them must have been damned.

  ESTRAGON: And why not?

  VLADIMIR: But one of the four says that one of the two was saved.

  ESTRAGON: Well? They don’t agree and that’s all there is to it.

  VLADIMIR: But all four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?

  ESTRAGON: Who believes him?

  VLADIMIR: Everybody. It’s the only version they know.

  ESTRAGON: People are bloody ignorant apes.

  He rises painfully, goes limping to extreme left, halts, gazes into distance off with his hands creening his eyes, turns, goes to extreme right, gazes into distance. Vladimir watches him, then goes and picks up the boot, peers into it, drops it hastily.

  VLADIMIR: Pah!

  He spits. Estragon moves to center, halts with his back to auditorium.

  ESTRAGON: Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts facing auditorium.) Inspiring prospects. (He turns to Vladimir.) Let’s go.

  VLADIMIR: We can’t.

  ESTRAGON: Why not?

  VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Godot.

  ESTRAGON: (despairingly). Ah! (Pause.) You’re sure it was here?

  VLADIMIR: What?

  ESTRAGON: That we were to wait.

  VLADIMIR: He said by the tree. (They look at the tree.) Do you see any others.

  ESTRAGON: What is it?

  VLADIMIR: I don’t know. A willow.

  ESTRAGON: Where are the leaves?

  VLADIMIR: It must be dead.

  ESTRAGON: No more weeping.

  VLADIMIR: Or perhaps it’s not the season.

  ESTRAGON: Looks to me more like a bush.

  VLADIMIR: A shrub.

  ESTRAGON: A bush.

  VLADIMIR: A—. What are you insinuating? That we’ve come to the wrong place?

  ESTRAGON: He should be here.

  VLADIMIR: He didn’t say for sure he’d come.

  ESTRAGON: And if he doesn’t come?

  VLADIMIR: We’ll come back to-morrow.

  ESTRAGON: And then the day after to-morrow.

  VLADIMIR: Possibly.

  ESTRAGON: And so on.

  VLADIMIR: The point is—

  ESTRAGON: Until he comes.

  VLADIMIR: You’re merciless.

  ESTRAGON: We came here yesterday.

  VLADIMIR: Ah no, there you’re mistaken.

  ESTRAGON: What did we do yesterday?

  VLADIMIR: What did we do yesterday?

  ESTRAGON: Yes.

  VLADIMIR: Why . . . (Angrily.) Nothing is certain when you’re about.

  ESTRAGON: In my opinion we were here.

  VLADIMIR: (looking round). You recognize the place?

  ESTRAGON: I didn’t say that.

  VLADIMIR: Well?

  ESTRAGON: That makes no difference.

  VLADIMIR: All the same . . . that tree . . . (turning towards auditorium) that bog . . .

  Estragon: You’re sure it was this evening?

  VLADIMIR: What?

  ESTRAGON: That we were to wait.

  VLADIMIR: He said Saturday. (Pause.) I think.

  ESTRAGON: You think.

  VLADIMIR: I must have made a note of it. (He fumbles in his pockets, bursting with miscellaneous rubbish.)

  ESTRAGON: (very insidious). But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or Friday?

  VLADIMIR: (looking wildly about him, as though the date was inscribed in the landscape). It’s not possible!

  ESTRAGON: Or Thursday?

  VLADIMIR: What’ll we do?

  ESTRAGON: If he c
ame yesterday and we weren’t here you may be sure he won’t come again to-day.

  VLADIMIR: But you say we were here yesterday.

  ESTRAGON: I may be mistaken. (Pause.) Let’s stop talking for a minute, do you mind?

  VLADIMIR: (feebly). All right. (Estragon sits down on the mound. Vladimir paces agitatedly to and fro, halting from time to time to gaze into distance off. Estragon falls asleep. Vladimir halts finally before Estragon.) Gogo! . . . Gogo! . . . GOGO! Estragon wakes with a start.

  ESTRAGON: (restored to the horror of his situation). I was asleep! (Despairingly.) Why will you never let me sleep?

  VLADIMIR: I felt lonely.

  ESTRAGON: I had a dream.

  VLADIMIR: Don’t tell me!

  ESTRAGON: I dreamt that—

  VLADIMIR: DON’T TELL ME!

  ESTRAGON: (gesture towards the universe). This one is enough for you? (Silence.) It’s not nice of you, Didi. Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can’t tell them to you?

  VLADIMIR: Let them remain private. You know I can’t bear that.

  ESTRAGON: (coldly). There are times when I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us to part.

  VLADIMIR: You wouldn’t go far.

  ESTRAGON: That would be too bad, really too bad. (Pause.)

  Wouldn’t it, Didi, be really too bad? (Pause.)

  When you think of the beauty of the way. (Pause.)

  And the goodness of the wayfarers. (Pause. Wheedling.) Wouldn’t it, Didi?

  VLADIMIR: Calm yourself.

  ESTRAGON: (voluptuously). Calm . . . calm . . . The English say cawm. (Pause.) You know the story of the Englishman in the brothel?

  VLADIMIR: Yes.

  ESTRAGON: Tell it to me.

  VLADIMIR: Ah stop it!

  ESTRAGON: An Englishman having drunk a little more than usual proceeds to a brothel. The bawd asks him if he wants a fair one, a dark one or a red-haired one. Go on.

  VLADIMIR: STOP IT!

  Exit Vladimir hurriedly. Estragon gets up and follows him as far as the limit of the stage. Gestures of Estragon like those of a spectator encouraging a pugilist. Enter Vladimir. He brushes past Estragon, crosses the stage with bowed head. Estragon takes a step towards him, halts.

  ESTRAGON: (gently). You wanted to speak to me? (Silence. Estragon takes a step forward.) You had something to say to me? (Silence. Another step forward.) Didi . . .

  VLADIMIR: (without turning). I’ve nothing to say to you.