Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Works by Samuel Beckett published by Grove Press

C
OLLECTED
P
OEMS IN
E
NGLISH AND
F
RENCH

T
HE
C
OLLECTED
S
HORTER
P
LAYS

(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)

T
HE
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)

D
ISJECTA
:

Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment

E
NDGAME AND
A
CT
W
ITHOUT

W
ORDS

F
IRST
L
OVE AND
O
THER
S
HORTS

H
APPY
D
AYS

H
OW
I
T
I
S

I C
AN'T
G
O
O
N
, I'
LL
G
O
O
N
:

A Samuel Beckett Reader

K
RAPP'S
L
AST
T
APE
(All That Fall, Embers, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II)

M
ERCIER AND
C
AMIER

M
OLLOY

M
ORE
P
RICKS THAN
K
ICKS

(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)

M
URPHY

N
OHOW
O
N
(Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho)

S
TORIES AND
T
EXTS FOR
N
OTHING

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

T
HREE
N
OVELS
(Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

W
AITING FOR
G
OGOT

W
ATT

H
APPY
D
AYS
:

Production Notebooks

W
AITING FOR
G
OGOT
:

Theatrical Notebooks

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].

C
AUTION
: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that
Waiting for Godot
is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

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
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
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New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

Estragon

Vladimir

Lucky

Pozzo

a boy

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.