The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett
by Samuel Beckett
Category: Drama

"[Beckett] never set out to be a revolutionary but rather to investigate the particular advantages of theater for his characteristic meditations on being, dubious presence, seriocomic desolation, and the artistic imperative to `fail again, fail better.' In the process, though, he ended up turning the theater world---famously liberal politically yet notoriously conservative regarding received forms---on its head."---Jonathan Kalb, The New York Times A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Samuel Beckett is recognized as one of the pivotal geniuses of modern literature. He was a minimalist master and produced some of his most highly regarded work for the stage in the form of the short play. This complete and definitive collection of twenty-five plays and "playlets" includes Beckett's celebrated Krapp's Last Tape, Embers, Cascando, Play, Eh Joe, Not I, and Footfalls, as well as his mimes, all his radio and television plays, his screenplay for Film, his adaptation of Robert Pinget's The Old Tune, and shorter dramatic works written later in his life, Catastrophe, What Where, Quad, and Nacht und Traume (Night and Dreams). "I think there are perhaps four playwrights of the twentieth century that we could not have done without: Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, and Beckett. I think if you've got those four, you've got the century covered." ---Edward Albee "After Godot, plots could be minimal, exposition expendable, characters contradictory, settings unlocalized, and dialogue unpredictable. Blatant farce could jostle tragedy."---Ruby Cohn