Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters. It was originally written in French (entitled Fin de partie); Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the Royal Court Theatre in London, opening on 3 April 1957. The follow-up to Waiting for Godot, it is commonly considered to be among Beckett's best works. The literary critic Harold Bloom called it the greatest prose drama of the 20th century, saying "I know of no other work of its reverberatory power", …
Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters. It was originally written in French (entitled Fin de partie); Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the Royal Court Theatre in London, opening on 3 April 1957. The follow-up to Waiting for Godot, it is commonly considered to be among Beckett's best works. The literary critic Harold Bloom called it the greatest prose drama of the 20th century, saying "I know of no other work of its reverberatory power", but stated that he could not handle reading it in old age for its harrowing, barebones existentialism. Samuel Beckett considered it his masterpiece. Briefly, it is about a blind, paralyzed man and his servant who await an unspecified “end” which seems to be the end of their relationship, death, and the end of the actual play itself. Much of the play consists of the characters bantering; the sole significant plot point is a story-within-a-story the character Hamm is telling.
I have to return to this at some point, and preferably see it performed. Beckett uses a surrealist dystopian setting to give a clear sense of stagnation and hopelessnes, but also leaving enough ambiguity to let any adaptation of the play be different (despite being very clear on how he wants it performed).
The also included "Act without words" did little for me, but I'm sure spending more time with it would be rewarding.
