'Happy Days' is largely a monologue (even though a second character appears occasionally) by a woman more than half buried in a mound of earth. Between 'the bell for waking and the bell for sleep' she kills time with words and with the contents of her capacious shopping bag. By the second, shorter and more serious act, she is buried to her neck, no longer able to handle the bag's contents and experiencing greater difficulty in thinking coherently.

The structure is static, not dynamic, ever circling round on itself. The sense of continuity and rhythm is created by a pattern of leitmotifs that run through the drama.

Both acts begin, for example, with the loud ringing bell that awakens Winnie and which, increasingly through the second act, prevents any respite from her predicament. Repeatedly, too, Winnie calls for Willie's attention and regularly recounts her memories, prayers and stories.

Both acts conclude with Winnie's often-repeated declaration: 'Oh this is a happy day! This will have been another happy day!' Other examples include her frequent assertions - 'That is what I find so wonderful' … 'I always find -' … 'great mercies' and 'in the old style'.

The rhythms of her seemingly casual and insignificant physical gestures are, in fact, carefully orchestrated, for example:

Indeed, the invasion of such silent intervals accounts for practically half of the play's entire duration.

The structure of 'Happy Days' also relies importantly on contrast. Winnie's several attempts to recall literary lines are mirrored in Willie quoting headlines from the popular press. When she clasps the musical box to her breast as it plays the Waltz Duet from 'The Merry Widow', Willie imitates with a 'brief burst of hoarse song without words'. Her incessant chatter (and several voices) contrasts with Willie's comparative silence. Winnie stands throughout, dreaming of escaping the earth's pull and floating 'up into the blue', whereas Willie crawls about on hands and knees or burrows into his underground tunnel. Their contrasting degrees of mobility are also somewhat reversed between the two acts.

Finally, the dream that Winnie harbours throughout Act 1 - longing that one day Willie will come round to the front of her mound where she could see him - seems finally realised, if ambiguously, at the end of Act 2.

Through such ably constructed verbal and visual repetitions, similarities and variations, Beckett imparts shape to apparent confusion.