Instead of conventional narrative, with linear development, 'Endgame' offers a radically different dramatic structure. For the characters, this day will be a repetition of every other 'bloody awful day,' though perhaps there is some air of things gathering to a finish. The characters are trapped in a bare space with nothing to do except routinely pass the present time, each waiting for what the future might bring.

Through the dialogue there weaves a variety of structural threads. Regularly, we find the motif of Hamm delivering his chronicle or Clov threatening (some twelve times) 'I'll leave you.' Upon Hamm's fifth request for his pain-killer, the pair launch one of their regular music-hall exchanges:

Hamm: Is it not time for my pain-killer?
Clov: Yes.
Hamm: Ah! At last! Give it to me! Quick! [Pause.]
Clov: There's no more pain-killer. [Pause.]
Hamm: [Appalled.] Good...! [Pause.] No more pain-killer!
Clov: No more pain-killer. You'll never get any more pain-killer.

Phraseology from one character can be echoed at a later point by a different speaker, as, for example, when Clov uses Nell's earlier enquiry: 'Why this farce, day after day?' or, halfway through the drama, Hamm repeating Clov's opening assertion that 'it's finished'.

Another pattern of the game they are playing is the continual questioning and answering, even if it is always 'the same questions, the same answers', as Clov complains. Indeed, Hamm readily acknowledges that 'the dialogue' is the only focus we have of any significance. But with 'All life long the same inanities', it is understandable that the greatest repetition in the drama is of silence, pauses routinely threading through more than half the duration of the play.

Comedy continually surfaces, Hamm insisting, for example, that 'We lose our hair' (rather than 'our ideals') and 'If age but knew' (instead of 'If youth but knew - if age but could'). Literary allusions (to Shakespeare, Descartes, Baudelaire) also abound.

At its end, the play's dialogue (and action) echoes its beginning just as its beginning announces that it's 'Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished'. This circularity - like the wheels on Hamm's armchair that always bring him back to stage-centre - and the static nature of the situation both contribute to the drama's static structure.