From an inauspicious beginning at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone in 1953, followed by bewilderment among American and British audiences, Waiting for Godot has become of the most important and enigmatic plays of the past fifty years and a cornerstone of twentieth-century drama. As Clive Barnes wrote, “Time catches up with genius … Waiting for Godot is one of the masterpieces of the century.” The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

"[Beckett's] specifications are preserved in the remarkable series of notebooks . . . now completed by S. E. Gontarski's exemplary edition of Beckett's ledgers for productions of his short late plays."--New York Review of Books

Shorter Plays follows Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape in this highly praised series of Beckett's notebooks, which show for the first time the extensive revisions made by Beckett during revivals of his plays and presents the complete and definitive texts for Play, Footfalls, Come and Go, What Where, That Time, Eh Joe, and Not I. From the mid-1960s, Samuel Beckett himself directed all his major plays in Berlin, Paris, and London. For most of these productions he meticulously prepared notebooks for his personal use. Beckett's theatrical notebooks, which are reproduced in facsimile here, offer a remarkable record of his involvement with the staging of his texts. They present his solutions to the practical problems of staging and also provide a unique insight into the way he envisaged his own plays. With additional information taken from Beckett's annotated and corrected copies of the plays, and using his experience as a director and scholar, S. E. Gontarski has been able to constitute a revised text for each of the plays, incorporating Beckett's many changes, corrections, additions, and cuts.

"The publication of Samuel Beckett's Theatrical Notebooks . . . is a major event which casts fascinating light on the thought processes of a great writer."--Review of English Studies From the mid-1960s, Samuel Beckett himself directed all his major plays in Berlin, Paris, or London. For most of these productions he meticulously prepared notebooks for his personal use. The Theatrical Notebooks of Beckett that are reproduced in facsimile here are translated and annotated and thus offer a remarkable record of his own involvement with the staging of his texts. They present his solutions to practical problems but also provide a unique insight into the ways he envisaged his plays. With additional information taken from Beckett's own annotated and corrected copies, the editors have been able to constitute a new revised text for each of the major plays. Beckett directed Krapp's Last Tape on four separate occasions: this volume offers a facsimile of his 1969 Schiller Theater notebook, which contains some of the most explicit analysis by the playwright of his own work ever revealed. The revised text incorporates many of the changes he made in the 1969 Schiller production, as well as subsequent changes in later productions. It reveals a flexibility and openness of approach often considered alien to Beckett's ways of working in the theatre.