This collection of essays – the first volume in the Dialogue series – brings together new and experienced scholars to present innovative critical approaches to Samuel Beckett’s play
Endgame. These essays broach a broad range of topics, many of which are inherently controversial and have generated significant levels of debate in the past. Critical readings of the play in relation to music, metaphysics, intertextuality, and time are counterpointed by essays that consider the nature of performance, the history of the theater and the music hall, Beckett’s attitudes to directing his play, and his responses to other directors. This collection will be of special interest to Beckett scholars, to students of literature and drama, and to drama theorists and practitioners.
MARK S. BYRON is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has taught at the University of Washington, Seattle, and at the University of Sydney. His principal publications include essays on Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. He is currently co-editor of the Electronic Variorum Edition of Ezra Pound’s
Cantos, with Professor Richard Taylor, and is also working on an electronic edition of Samuel Beckett’s novel
Watt.
Mark S. BYRON: Introduction:
Endgame––Very Nearly, But Not Quite
Thomas MANSELL: Hard-to-hear Music in
Endgame Colin DUCKWORTH: Re-Evaluating
Endgame Jane E. GATEWOOD: Memory and Its Devices in
Endgame Michael GUEST: Paul Ricoeur and Watching
Endgame Russell SMITH:
Endgame’s Remainders
Natka BIANCHINI: Bare interiors, chicken wire cages and subway stations—re-thinking Beckett’s response to the ART
Endgame in light of earlier productions
Antonia Rodríguez GAGO: Transcultural
Endgame/s Mary F. CATANZARO: Masking and the Social Construct of the Body in Beckett's
Endgame Paul SHIELDS: Hamm Stammered: Beckett, Deleuze, and the Atmospheric Stuttering of
Endgame Paul STEWART: But Why Shakespeare? The Muted Role of Dickens in
Endgame Kate DORNEY: Hamming it up in
Endgame: A Theatrical Reading
Julie CAMPBELL:
Endgame and Performance
Essay Abstracts
About the Authors
Index