One Krapp listens as another Krapp speaks. The testimony from his younger, introspective self reveals how he had quite deliberately shut himself off from all others. His ledger's tape index calls Krapp's attention to three key accounts: 'Mother at rest at last', 'Memorable equinox' and 'Farewell to love'.

At 39, Krapp detached himself from his mother's dying, sitting on a weirside bench 'from where I could see her window … wishing she were gone'. As he rejects her so a passing nursemaid rejects him. At the moment of his mother's passing, he focuses on his playing with a little dog, thinking less of 'her moments' in a preference for 'my moments'. Old Krapp sardonically interposes with 'The dog's moments,' rejecting in disgust the 'stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago …'

At 69, Krapp can neither remember his younger self's 'memorable equinox' nor be impressed by the juvenile, pedantic style of delivery. The young, pompous Krapp had felt fired with a vision, even if it meant depriving himself of love. Whatever the idealistic 'vision' and 'the fire that set it alight', the promise of great works - his 'opus magnum' - never materialised. A beaten and melancholy old Krapp appreciates the magnitude of his deprivation and is overwhelmed by the grief of 'all that old misery'. Now he has wisdom but 'nothing to say, not a squeak'.

The 'farewell to love' recording reveals how he chose to pursue yet another empty illusion. With 'Plans for a less … [hesitates] … engrossing sexual life', he refused to share himself with the girl whom he 'lay down across' one memorable balmy day, telling her 'I thought it was hopeless and no good going on'. Now the pathetic, still-lonely Krapp is left to lie across his machine.

The earlier Krapp had so shut others from his heart that now 'the earth might be uninhabited'. Old Krapp concludes: 'What's a year now? The sour cud and the iron stool.' Pained by unrecoverable loss, unhappiness, regret and self-disgust, Krapp is left wordless with the inevitable approach of the tape's end and his own [VCR: 58.10]:

Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.

[Krapp motionless staring before him. The tape runs on in silence.]

The rest is silence and anguish. Krapp 'is eaten up by dreams. But without sentimentality. There's no resignation in him. It's the end. He sees very clearly that he's through with his work, with love and with religion,' observed Beckett.