Play

Background

With one speech no sooner begun than the light switches to another, dialogue sounds incomprehensible:

W2: When you go out – and I go out. Some day you will tire of me and go out … for good.
W1: Hellish half-light.
M: Peace, yes, I suppose, a kind of peace, and all that pain as if… never been.

However, the 'dialogue' is actually three interlinked monologues, from characters unaware of the presence of each other. Reading the speeches of each character, in turn, more readily reveals these distinct and coherent narratives; their separate addresses to the light, for example:

W2: When you go out – and I go out. Some day you will tire of me and go out … for good.
W1: Hellish half-light.
M: Peace, yes, I suppose, a kind of peace, and all that pain as if…never been.
W2: Give me up, as a bad job. Go away and start poking and pecking at someone else. On the other hand–
W1: Get off me! Get off me!
M: It will come. Must come. There is no future in this.
W2: On the other hand things may disimprove, there is that danger.
M: Oh of course I know now–
W1: Is it that I do not tell the truth, is that it, that some day somehow I may tell the truth at last and then no more light at last, for the truth?
W2: You might get angry and blaze me clean out of my wits. Mightn't you?
M: I know now, all that was just … play. And all this? When will all this–
W1: Is that it?
W2: Mightn't you?
M: All this, when will all this have been … just play?

The final page of Play has a stage direction to 'Repeat play'. The second time through this two-part structure, the repetition suggests that the characters are compelled, involuntarily, to revisit, repeatedly, their lives' same tormenting experiences. The replay makes the tragedy of the situation more apparent to the audience. 'First time round, you laugh, and next time round it's harder to laugh,' observes the Beckett on Film director, Anthony Minghella. 'I assume if it kept repeating it would get more and more terrifying.'

Beckett described the cyclical structure of Play as comprising:
1. Chorus: all three characters speak
2. Narration: narrative of past events and relationships
3. Meditation: characters reflect on their present dilemma
4. Da capo: repeat of the above
5. Chorus: return to beginning


An article in Encounter (September 1975) detailed Beckett's specification for each part being softer but faster than its previous part, without end:

'If the speed of the first Chorus is 1 and its volume 1, then the speed of the first Narration must be 1 plus 5 per cent and its volume 1 minus 5 per cent. The speed of the following segment, the first Meditation, must then be (1 plus 5 per cent) plus 5 per cent, and its volume (1 minus 5 per cent) minus 5 per cent. The implication is quite clearly that any quantity plus or minus still has to be a finite quantity; however soft, however fast, the same text will go on ad infinitum, ever faster and ever softer without quite ceasing altogether.'