!"#$"%%&'()*+,-(.)*+,. /0%1234'56(7+80"*(!"#$"%%(+9:(!"39+3:(;<(=0$23" 7203#"6(>:0#+%?29+*(@1"+%3"(A2039+*-(B2*<(CD-(E2<(C(4F+3<-(CGHI5-(JJ<(CGKLM )0N*?'1":(N,6(@1"(A219'(O2J$?9'(P9?Q"3'?%,()3"'' 7%+N*"(PRS6(http://www.jstor.org/stable/3204922 /##"''":6(CMTCUTLUUV(UC6IC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Educational Theatre Journal. http://www.jstor.org BECKETT'SPLAY, PLAY BERNARD F. DUKORE When the curtain rises on Samuel now a memory and seem absurd. Even Beckett's new play, called Play, we this recapitulation of the absurd events see, in a dim, dusky light-a glow that may eventually appear to be equally may resemble the grey that Clov tells absurd. "I know now," says the man, Hamm he sees when he looks at the "all that was just . play. And all ocean in Endgame-three grey urns, this? When will all this-" He is in- each about three feet high, each ex- terrupted as the spotlight moves from actly like the others. From the mouth him to the wife and then to the mis- of each urn protrudes a head: that of tress; when it returns to him he con- a man from the center urn, that of a tinues: "All this, when will all this woman from each of the others. When have been ... just play?" We feel com- a spotlight hits one of these faces it passion for three souls in torment; but starts talking, stopping when the in- we also laugh, for that which torments quisitorial light turns to another face. them is absurd. At the apparent con- Occasionally, all three faces are illumi- clusion of Play, we find the stage direc- nated at the same time. tions "Repeat play exactly." Since one be taken as The story they tell is that of the repetition may symbolic of can be familiar romantic triangle, and the char- numerous repetitions, there endless recollections of these acters are designated not in terms of events, individual identities but in terms of endless torment for the three partici- endless their roles in that triangle: M, Wi, and pants, absurdity. W2. The man (M) is or had been mar- One might evolve from this play an ried to the woman on his left (Wi). anti-Aristotelian aesthetic (which is also The woman on his right (W2) was once suggested, though to a lesser extent, his mistress. When the wife accused him by Happy Days and Krapp's Last Tape). of adultery he first denied the charge, Play is not a tragedy but, as its subtitle then confessed, then remained with the indicates, "A Play." Tragedy, according wife, then went off with the mistress. to the Butcher translation of Aristotle's Now, he is no longer with the mistress; Poetics, is "the imitation of an action"; he has not returned to the wife; and Play is largely the memory of an action. each of the three speculates whether The action of tragedy is "serious, com- the other two might be together. Their plete, and of a certain magnitude"; the relationships, once so important, are action of Play is comic, incomplete (since it is repeated, it may therefore Bernard Dukore is a member of the Depart- be regarded as having neither begin- ment of Speech and Drama, Los Angeles State College, California. ning nor end), and of very little mag- EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNAL nitude. The spectacle of the three suf- nection with either of the preceding ferers trying to explain these events speeches-"Personally I always pre- (which appear to have little importance ferred Lipton's." The sentence, which to any but themselves) is not noble but seems to emerge from nowhere, pro- pitiful-pitiful and laughable. Tragedy vides a comic jolt. Upon examination, has "language embellished with each the reader discovers that the line refers kind of artistic ornament, the several to one of the man's previous speeches in kinds being found in separate parts of which he wonders whether the two the play"; Play's language, though rhyth- women might not now be drinking tea mic, is flat and unadorned. Tragedy is together. "in the form of action, not of narrative"; The characters, it seems, talk not to Play is narrative, not action. Tragedy each other but to the spotlight. When "through pity and fear [effects] the the spotlight is at full strength, they tell proper purgation of these emotions"; the events that the three have in com- in Play pity is minimal, fear is absent, mon. When the spotlight is at half its and we dwell on the absurdity of the usual strength (which it is at the start situation. of the play, shortly after which it comes to full intensity; then, almost halfway Each of the stories complements the through the play, it becomes dim again) others and their juxtaposition creates they speculate and try to make sense ironic and comic effects. At one point, of the events. Although the speeches for example, the man talks of truth and of each character may be connected to the mistress laughs. The strikes laugh those of the others, are us as a comment on the man's state- they independ- ent monologues. It would be useful to ment; but the mistress is not laughing examine the speeches of each character at him. Also, amusing linguistic con- as a monologue addressed to the prob- figurations emerge. The mistress quotes light, which we as the the wife: "I smell off him, she ing may regard you man it: an on and screamed, he stinks of bitch." The wife regards eye, turning off, for In then states that she hired a de- "Looking something. my private face. Some truth." tective to follow her husband: "I had The wife to be afraid of the him dogged for months a first-rate appears by she is disturbed the man"-and the husband later cor- truth; certainly by "Get off me!" she cries roborates this in a similar vein: "She prying light. several times, and one time, when the put a bloodhound on me." The wife light does no adds, puns, "he continued as . assiduous obey, (Vehement.) "Get off me!" For darkness would as ever" and comments that he had a her, be best; but since her isolation would "horror of the merely Platonic thing." be more complete with total darkness, Several times the wife says, "Get off then darkness would at the same time me." The initial impression, in per- be worse than even the "Hellish half- is to be that she is formance, likely quot- light." Still, the light torments her so ing herself when she spoke to the man. much that if "all [were] dark, then all When one reads the play, however, one [would be] well, for the time," since the realizes that she is addressing the spot- events which she repeats and repeats light. At another point, immediately would, she thinks, be "all over, wiped after the wife talks about trying to think out." As it is, she feels compelled to and the mistress speaks of seduction, search for the truth behind the events. the man states-with no apparent con- But she laments that she cannot find it, BECKETT'S PLAY, PLAY 21 complains that there is no sense even the light and with the attempts to in her efforts to do so, and hopes that make sense of the past. "Why go out?" the light will become "Weary of play- he sarcastically asks the light, which ing with me" and remove itself from moves away from him. "Why go down?" her face. It does not, and all she can he asks when it returns; and then it do is to return to the story exactly as moves away once more. When it returns she already told it. again he resumes with greater annoy- ance: not on at me As for the mistress, even though "Why keep glaring without ceasing? I might start to rave "some might say" that she is "a shade and- (hiccup) bring it up for you." gone, just a shade, in the head," she But he does not it He herself-after emitting a "faint wild "bring up." on the on and laugh"-claims, "I doubt it." She too speculates light going off, for the truth, and then, fears the penetrating light. "There are searching like the all he can do is to re- endurable moments," she tells it: those others, turn to the as he moments "When go out-and I go story exactly already you told it.