Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot
En attendant Godot, staging by Otomar Krejca, Avignon Festival, 1978
Written bySamuel Beckett
CharactersVladimir
Estragon
Pozzo
Lucky
A Boy
MuteGodot
Date premiered5 January 1953; 71 years ago (1953-01-05)
Place premieredThéâtre de Babylone [fr], Paris
Original languageFrench
GenreTragicomedy (play)

Waiting for Godot (/ˈɡɒdoʊ/ ⓘ GOD-oh or /ɡəˈdoʊ/ ⓘ gə-DOH[1]) is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives.[2] Waiting for Godot is Beckett's reworking of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts".[3] In a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre in 1998/99, it was voted as the "most significant English-language play of the 20th century".[4][5][6]

The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949.[7] The premiere, directed by Roger Blin, was on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone [fr], Paris. The English-language version of the play premiered in London in 1955.

  1. ^ Piepenburg, Erik (30 April 2009). "Anthony Page of Waiting for Godot Teaches Us How to Pronounce Its Title". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 26 March 2024. Well GOD-dough is what Samuel Beckett said. Also, the word has to echo Pozzo. That's the right pronunciation. Go-DOUGH is an Americanism, which isn't what the play intended.
  2. ^ Itzkoff, Dave (12 November 2013). "The Only Certainty Is That He Won't Show Up". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 July 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  3. ^ Ackerley & Gontarski 2006, p. 620.
  4. ^ Berlin 1999.
  5. ^ "Waiting for Godot voted best modern play in English" Archived 5 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine by David Lister, The Independent, 18 October 1998
  6. ^ Sierz, Aleks (2000). Barker, Clive; Trussler, Simon (eds.). "NT 2000: the Need to Make Meaning". New Theatre Quarterly. 16 (2). Cambridge University Press: 192–193. doi:10.1017/S0266464X00013713. ISBN 9780521789028. S2CID 191153800. Archived from the original on 21 May 2024. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  7. ^ Ackerley & Gontarski 2006, p. 172.