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The Dying of the Light: An Actor Investigates Krapp's Last Tape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Amiel Schotz
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Extract

Samuel Beckett's monodrama, Krapp's Last Tape, presents great challenges to the actor. A short piece, it is complex, many-layered and laconic. As always, Beckett never uses even one word, where silence will do. I rehearsed and performed the play some years ago and have continued to reflect on the play and the role of Krapp.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1991 , pp. 39 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1991

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References

Notes

1. This and all subsequent references to the play are taken from Beckett, Samuel, Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces, New York: Grove Press 1958 (Evergreen Edition, 1960, p. 9.)Google Scholar

2. Gilbert, Sandra M., ‘All The Dead Voices’, Drama Survey, 1968, 6, 244–57.Google Scholar

3. Beckett, Samuel, From an Abandoned Work, London: Faber and Faber, 1958, pp. 143–4.Google Scholar

4. Beckett, Samuel, Molloy, in Three Novels by Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, New York: Grove Press, 1955. (Evergreen Edition, 1965, p. 81.)Google Scholar

5. Molloy, p. 194.Google Scholar

6. Kenner, Hugh, The Counterfeiters, Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973, p. 28.Google Scholar

7. Beckett, Samuel, Malone Dies, (in Three Novels, p. 179.)Google Scholar

8. Malone Dies, p. 25.Google Scholar

9. Malone Dies, p. 74Google Scholar. Molloy is a tramp who has sixteen stones which he sucks in turn as he travels the road. He tries, by increasingly sophisticated means, to ensure that he never sucks a stone out of turn.

10. Koestler, Arthur, The Act of Creation, London, Hutchinson, 1964.Google Scholar

11. Reference to Fontane's Effie Briest.