Scenic and lighting design can affect nuances of interpretation. Compare and discuss the film set of 'Happy Days' with Beckett's script requirements:

Expanse of scorched grass rising centre to low mound. Gentle slopes down to front and either side of stage. Back an abrupter fall to stage level. Maximum of simplicity and symmetry.
Blazing light.
Very pompier trompe-l'oeil backcloth to represent unbroken plain and sky receding to meet in far distance.

Activity 2
Winnie's Literary Allusions

Several half-remembered literary allusions have been artfully inserted throughout 'Happy Days'. Explore their sources to identify what Winnie omits and for any ironic comparisons or contrasts, imagery, mood, themes and contexts of the original works.

1.
Winnie: - what are those wonderful lines - [wipes one eye] - woe woe is me - [wipes the other] - to see what I see

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.140

Source:

Ophelia: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

- Shakespeare: 'Hamlet', 111.i.168-9

2.
Winnie: [Takes up mirror, starts doing lips.] What is that wonderful line? [Lips.] Oh fleeting joys - [lips] - oh something lasting woe.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.141

Source:

'O fleeting joys/Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!'

- Milton: 'Paradise Lost', Bk. 10, 741-742

3.
Winnie: […Winnie finishes lips, inspects them in mirror held a little farther away.] Ensign crimson. [Willie turns page. Winnie lays down lipstick and mirror, turns towards bag.] Pale flag.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.142

Source:

Romeo: beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.

- Shakespeare: 'Romeo and Juliet', V. iii. 94-96

4.
Winnie: Fear no more the heat o' the sun.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.148

Source:

Guiderius: Fear no more the heat o' the sun.

- Shakespeare: 'Cymbeline', IV. Ii. 258

5.
Winnie: What is that wonderful line…laughing wild…something something laughing wild amid severest woe.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.150

Source:

And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.

- Thomas Gray, 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College', 79-80

6.
Winnie: paradise enow.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.151

Source:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread- And Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

- Edward Fitzgerald, 'The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám', 45-48

7.
Winnie: Ever uppermost, like Browning.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.151

Source:

I say confusedly what comes uppermost:
But there are times when patience proves a fault
As now: This morning's strange encounter-you
Beside me once again!

- Robert Browning: 'Paracelsus', III, 372-373

8.
Winnie: No, like the thrush, or the bird of dawning, with no thought of benefit, to oneself or anyone else.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 1, p.155

Source:

Marcellus: Some say, that ever 'gainst that season
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long.

- Shakespeare: 'Hamlet', 1.i.158-160

9.
Winnie: … Hail, holy light [Long pause.]

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 2, p.160

Source:

'Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!'

- Milton: 'Paradise Lost', Bk.3, 1

10.
Winnie: Ah yes…then…now…beechen green

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 2, p.161

Source:

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

- John Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale', 7-10.

11.
Winnie: [eyes left, distends cheeks again] … no … no damask.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 2, p.162

Source:

Viola: She never told her love,-
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek.

- Shakespeare: 'Twelfth Night', 11.iv.110-112

12.
Winnie: …I call to the eye of the mind … Mr Shower - or Cooker.

- 'Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works', 'Happy Days': Act 2, p.164

Source:

I call to the eye of the mind

- WB Yeats: 'At the Hawk's Well', 1