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Endgame | Introduction

Endgame is Samuel Beckett’s second published play. The plot is continuous, unbroken by separate scenes or acts. Roger Blin first produced this play in France at the Royal Court, in 1957, and later Blin and Georges Devine produced it again in an English production. Both were badly received by almost all London critics. Only after the now famous Paris production of 1964, starring Patrick Magee and Jack Macgowran in the roles of Hamm and Clov, was Endgame recognized as a masterpiece.

As the play opens, Hamm is dying in a world that seems to be coming to an end. Hamm takes satisfaction in knowing that all of existence may fade to nothing. Hamm is confined to a chair, and throughout the play he discards, reluctantly, the continuing prospects of life: food; painkillers; his servant Clov, on whom he is totally dependent; the pole that enables him to move his wheelchair; and holding the dog, on which he lavishes his affection.

Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, having lost their legs many years ago in a bicycle accident, live in ashbins from which they occasionally emerge only to be cursed by their son. His mother dies and Hamm, knowing that Clov is leaving him, prepares for his last battle, first to outlive his father and then to face inevitable death without the help of the few objects that have given him comfort in his final days. Hamm soliloquizes in terms of the last moves in chess, a king evading checkmate as long as possible with stern asides on religion, ‘‘Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as yourself!’’ He echoes Pozzo’s gravedigger aphorism in Waiting for Godot when he says, ‘‘The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.’’ Clov prepares to leave, hating Hamm for past wrongs, yet now without pity for Hamm.

Endgame Summary

The play opens by establishing the only mise-en-scéne of the play. Clov begins his daily ritual of drawing back the curtains of two windows (first the sea window and then the earth window). He uncovers two ashbins and then Hamm, who is still asleep. Clov delivers the play’s opening soliloquy, setting up the thematic tension between characters that seek an ending, either to life or their habitual lifestyles, and their impotency in activating the means to that end. Clov states, ‘‘I can’t be punished anymore,’’ which reinforces his discontent as Hamm’s servant and expresses his desire to leave Hamm altogether.

Hamm delivers his first soliloquy and we are introduced to the master-servant relationship between Hamm and Clov. Hamm addresses his bloodstained handkerchief as ‘‘Old Stancher’’ and is convinced that his suffering is greater than all others and establishes the dual metaphor throughout the play: the rhetoric of chess strategy and drama as game and competition. The play’s dialogue begins with the word ‘‘finished’’ and Hamm expresses his wish to begin the day by going to bed. Hamm is terrified of being left alone and will do anything to keep Clov with him. Hamm asks Clov for his painkiller and Clov denies him. This is the first of six times that Hamm will ask Clov for his painkiller throughout the play. Later, when Hamm asks Clov why he does not kill him, Clov tells him that it is because he does not know the combination of the cupboard where the food supply is stored. Hamm dismisses Clov to the kitchen and then chastises his father, Nagg, who has emerged from one of the ashbins, demanding food. Hamm whistles Clov in to feed Nagg, and then Hamm orders Clov to push Nagg back into the bin and close the lid. Hamm continues to try to draw Clov into conversation but fails.

Nell, Hamm’s mother, is now introduced. Both she and Nagg, the two elderly characters of the play, are in ashbins, and although they are confined to these ashbins, they still strive for love and romance:

NELL: What is it, my pet? (Pause.) Time for love?

NAGG: Were you asleep?

NELL: Oh, no!

NAGG: Kiss me! Samuel Beckett

NELL: We can’t.

NAGG: Try. (Their heads strain towards each other, fail to meet, fall apart again.)

NELL: Why this farce, day after day?

Nagg and Nell discuss their loss of sight, hearing, and teeth, raging against Hamm for not providing them with adequate food and a regular change of sawdust in their ashbins. They tell each other jokes and reminisce over their romantic youth. One of the jokes Nagg tells is of an old Jewish tailor who took more than three months to make a decent pair of trousers, the results of which were more satisfactory than God’s six-day effort to create the world.

Hamm, annoyed by their nostalgia, interrupts his parents to tell them that he is experiencing physical distress. Nagg chuckles at Hamm’s pain. Nell concedes that ‘‘nothing is truly funnier than unhappiness.’’ Hamm demands silence and pleads for an end to his torment: ‘‘Will this never finish?’’ Nagg disappears into the ashbin, but Nell remains. Hamm shouts, ‘‘My kingdom for a nightman!’’ (a play on Shakepeare’s Richard III’s ‘‘My kingdom for a horse!’’ speech) and beckons Clov to rid him of Nagg and Nell.

Next is extended dialogue between Hamm and Clov. Hamm demonstrates that he is the center of attention. Clov again refuses Hamm his painkiller (for the third time), and Hamm demands that Clov take him for a spin around the room in his armchair, after which he ends up in the exact center of the room. While on the tour, Hamm lays his hand against the wall and says, ‘‘Beyond is the . . . other hell.’’... » Complete Endgame Summary