ARTicles vol. 7 i. 3: Critical Commentary on Endgame

From Conversations with and about Beckett, by Mel Gussow:
It’s not true that Beckett is shy, evasive, a philosopher of the ivory tower, a philosopher of despair.  He’s written about human distress not human despair.  Everything in his work ends with hope.  Hope, hope, in everything he writes.  I’ve never met a man with so much compassion for the human race.
— Jack MacGowran [Clov in the London premiere of Endgame]

From Understanding Samuel Beckett, by Alan Astro:

[One] critical tradition interprets the names with respect to the relationship between the characters.  Hamm would be the hammer, merciless against all humanity, who bears down on several nails: his slave Clov (clou in French means nail), his father Nagg (Nagel is German for nail), and his mother Nell (whose name sounds like nail).  An old woman to whom Hamm once refused aid is named Mother Pegg.  Nailing is of course part of another sacrifice central to humankind: the Crucifixion.  Thus some commentators have likened Clov’s opening of Endgame (‘Finished, it’s finished’) to Jesus’ words on the cross: ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30). . . .

It seems impossible for anything to finish in Endgame, for if all human life ceased, there would be nothingness, not an ‘end.’  In order that there be an end, a subjectivity is required to notice the ending; ends do not exist in themselves.  That is why a world, even an imagined one, without God, without humans, is impossible. . . .   The look of the other, as Sartre would say, is necessary to make us exist. . . .

Humans cannot really end, they can only play at ending.  This is one resonance of the title Endgame.  Actually ‘endgame’ is a term taken from chess, where it designates the final stage of a game, when few pieces are left on the board.  The chess metaphor has led to the comparison of Hamm to a king and of Clov, Nagg, and Nell to his pawns.

From Samuel Beckett, by Charles R. Lyons:

One has to give up the comfort or security of a single interpretation of Endgame, recognizing that the play does not work towards the clarification of meaning but, rather, towards the clarification of the impossibility of meaning…

The ultimate mystery of Endgame rests in the consciousness of Clov.  Is his pending departure the final movement of a conventional game shared by the two, or is this day special, the moment of his actual departure and Hamm’s death? . . .

Beckett’s unequivocal refusal to discuss his plays, clarify intentions or comment upon the meaning of his work must derive from his own awareness that the significance of his dramas depends upon their exercise of indeterminacies, not from their representation of experience that can be translated into interpretations of human behavior.  The radical simplicity of the environments he creates and the ambiguous nature of the time he imitates force his spectators to confront the very uncertainties that plague the minds of his characters.

From Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture, by John Orr:

Hamm is a travesty of a tragic monarch, a chess king moving one space at a time in the wrong direction.   Stuck in a decrepit sofa with castors that stands in for a movable throne, the blind Hamm who is no Hamlet hams his own nemesis.  He is the vestige of a tragic hero, too mean and limited to incite catharsis….

The ‘endgame’ is a known routine.  It is a move towards closure, but not closure itself.  Hamm is playing at apocalypse and if the end does not come we sense that he can play the routine all over again.  His waiting for the end and the end itself have no guaranteed convergence.  But their possible convergence is what creates the play’s dramatic suspense….

The vision of desolation could exist purely in Clov’s imagination or it could be the malicious lie of a weary servant.  But it could also be the desolate vision of the blind master, which the servant routinely feeds back to him with a sense of duty that has decayed into cynicism.  Whatever the case, each of these different interpretations leads towards the same conclusion.  For Beckett, there is not even the certainty of recognizing final desolation when it comes.  The apocalypse will go unrecognized.  It may only be the purgatorial vision inside a madman’s skull or it may be so immense and horrifying that it cannot be envisaged in advance, no matter how many times it has been rehearsed.  One thing alone is certain.  Humanity cannot go out in that blaze of glory called revelation.

From Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritage, edited by Lawrence Graver:

Among these four human beings there is no other solidarity than that arising from self-interest.  Nagg and Nell, who are Hamm’s parents, depend on him for the last few mouthfuls of pap that will prolong their mediocre lives; Hamm depends on his servant-son, Clov, for the attentions required by his condition; and if Clov refrains from dispatching Hamm, it is simply because he does not have the ‘combination to the cupboard’ where the last few biscuits are locked up.  And yet there is not one of these human beings who does not have his dream, a dream he tries to make the others share, to communicate to them: and this need to communicate is as vital to their lives as is the diminishing store of biscuits. —  Jacques Lemarchand’s review of the 1957 French premiere of Endgame in “Figaro Littéraire.,”

From Conversations with and about Beckett, by Mel Gussow:

At the root of his art was a philosophy of the deepest yet most courageous pessimism, exploring man’s relationship with his God.  With Beckett, one searched for hope amid despair and continued living with a kind of stoicism.
— Mel Gussow’s obituary of Beckett.

Heidi Nelson is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.