The Complete Dramatic Works

Book excerpt: Samuel Beckett's bleak vision represents the attempts of an honest and heroic artist to find some hope in the no-man's-land of contemporary existence. His plays for the theatre and radio are imbued with listlessness, desolation and despair, but always some hope of redemption is to be found in the dogged stoicism and sardonic gallows humour of his characters. Like no other dramatist before him, or since, Beckett captured the pathos and ironies of modern life, yet still maintained his faith in man's capacity for compassion and survival, no matter how absurd his environment may have become.