Editing Play (play) (section)

==Synopsis==

The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral "[[funerary urn|urns]]",<ref name="Ackerley, C. J 2006 p 443">Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 443</ref> about three feet tall by preference,<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 159">Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 159</ref> arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three [[stock character]]s. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his [[Mistress (lover)|mistress]] (W2). Their "[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns."<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 147">Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 147</ref> Beckett had used similar imagery before, Mahood's jar in ''[[The Unnamable (novel)|The Unnameable]]'', for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in ''[[Endgame (play)|Endgame]]''.
 
At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus";<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 159"/> the effect is unintelligible. The main part of this play is made up of short, occasionally fragmented sentences spoken in a "[r]apid [[tempo]] throughout"<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 147"/> "which in his 1978 rehearsals [he] likened to a [[lawn mower]] – a burst of energy followed by a pause, a renewed burst followed by another pause."<ref name="Ackerley, C. J 2006 p 445">Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 445</ref> "He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied."<ref>Bair, D., ''Samuel Beckett: A Biography'' (London: Vintage, 1990), p. 582</ref>

One character speaks at a time and only when a strong [[stage lighting#Spotlights|spotlight]] shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth's [[logorrhea (rhetoric)|logorrhoea]] in ''[[Not I]]'', the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use [[First-person narrative|first person]] [[English personal pronouns|pronouns]]. [[Clichés]] and [[pun]]s abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: "To think we were never together"<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 156</ref>) nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: "At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments"<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 152</ref>). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character's speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is "expressive of a unique [[inquisitor]]".<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 158</ref> [[Billie Whitelaw]] referred to it as "an instrument of torture."<ref>[http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num03/Num3Practicalaspectsoftheatre.htm From an unscripted interview with Billie Whitelaw by James Knowlson. A television recording made on 1 February 1977 for the University of London Audio-Visual Centre.]</ref> The spotlight is in effect the play's fourth character.

In an almost [[Fugue|fugal]] style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the [[past tense]] and each from his or her respective [[Point of view (literature)|points of view]]. It is one of Beckett's most 'musical' pieces with "a [[Choir|chorus]] for three voices, [[orchestration]], stage directions concerning tempo, [[Loudness|volume]] and [[Pitch (music)|tone]], a ''[[da capo]]''<ref>In ''Proust'', Beckett refers to "the beautiful convention of 'da capo' ... a testimony to the intimate and ineffable nature of an art that is perfectly intelligible and perfectly inexplicable." – ''Proust'', (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931), p. 15</ref> repeat of the entire action"<ref name="Ackerley, C. J 2006 p 443"/> and a short [[Coda (music)|coda]].

Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play."<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 157">Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 157</ref> Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. "[I]n the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words."<ref name="Ackerley, C. J 2006 p 445"/> The purpose of this is to suggest a gradual winding down of the action for he writes of "the impression of falling off which this would give, with the suggestion of a conceivable dark and silence in the end, or of an indefinite approximating towards it."<ref name="Knowlson, J. 1971 p 92">Knowlson, J., (Ed.) ''Samuel Beckett: an Exhibition'' (London: Turret Books, 1971), p. 92</ref> At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in ''Act Without Words II''), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops.

===The affair===

"The affair was unexceptional. From the moment when the man tried to escape his tired marriage and odious professional commitments by taking a mistress, [events took a predictable enough course:] the wife soon began to ‘smell her off him’;<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 151">Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 151</ref> there were painful recriminations when the wife accused the man, hired a [[Private investigator|private detective]], threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of ''[[Watt (novel)|Watt]]'' (and where the servant again is 'Erskine'<ref>Beckett, S., ''Watt'' (London: John Calder [1953] 1998), p. 55</ref>) ... The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who 'suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the [[French Riviera|Riviera]] or ... [[Gran Canaria|Grand Canary]],'<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 150">Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 150</ref> and then, [true to form], returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. [In time] their relationship too became jaded, and the man"<ref>Robinson, M., ''The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett'' (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p. 296</ref> abandons her as well.

According to Knowlson and John Pilling in ''Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett'', “"[T]he three figures in ''Play'' … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The [[stereotype]] predominates … [They] belong … to the artificial world of [[melodrama]] and romance embodied in [[Romance novel|romanticized fiction]]."<ref>Knowlson, J. and Pilling, J., ''Frescoes of the Skull'' (London: John Calder, 1979), p.
 115</ref>