Editing Play (play) (section)

==Interpretations==
“The earliest version (April 1962) was written for a woman and two men, Syke and Conk, figures in white boxes.<ref name="Ackerley, C. J 2006 p 443"/> In the final version we are presented instead with, as Michael Robinson describes it in ''The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett'', “the three corners of love’s eternal triangle (the emphasis here is on the eternal) … They have no names [now], simply the designations M, W1 and W2 which aim at anonymity but also stand for all men and women who have, like them, been caught up in a three-part love affair,”<ref>Robinson, M., ''The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett'' (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p 295</ref>

The play is entitled ''Play'', in the same way that Beckett's only venture into [[film]] is called ''[[Film (film)|Film]]'' but as always with Beckett there are other levels. “Speaking of his previous life the man remarks: ‘I know now, all that was just … play’, but what then is the meaning of ‘all this? And when will this become the same?’<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 153</ref> All three characters admit that life was senseless yet there appears to be ‘no sense in this … either, none whatsoever’; though this does not prevent them from making ‘the same mistakes as when it was the sun that shone, of looking for sense where possibly there is none.<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), pp 153,154</ref> They are playing … a pointless game with unending time of which they are the playthings.”<ref>Robinson, M., ''The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett'' (New York: Grove Press, 1969), pp 296,297</ref> This also could be a reference to one of the world's most famous theatrical [[metaphor]]s: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”<ref>[[Shakespeare]], W., ''[[As You Like It]]'' (Act 2, Scene 7)</ref>

In writing to [[George Devine]], who directed the Old Vic production, Beckett suggests that “the inquirer (light) begins to emerge as no less a victim of his inquiry than they and as needing to be free, within narrow limits, literally to act the part, i.e. to vary only slightly his speeds and intensities.”<ref name="Knowlson, J. 1971 p 92"/> But the role of the light is even more ambiguous, for it has also been seen as “a metaphor for our attention (relentless, all-consuming, whimsical)”<ref>Kenner, H., ''Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp 210,211</ref> and a way of “switching on and switching off speech exactly as a playwright does when he moves from one line of dialogue on his page to the next.”<ref>Fletcher, J. and Spurling, J., ''Beckett a Study of his Plays'' (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), p 107</ref> Neither of these analogies conflicts with the more popular views where the spotlight is believed to represent [[God]],<ref>”This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” – 1 John 1:5 (''King James Version'')</ref> or some other moral agent tasked with assessing, each character's case to be relieved from the binds of the urn by having them relive this relationship, which has ruined all their lives. This view ascribes a motive to the light beyond mere torture. That may not be the case. Just as easily as God, the light could represent the [[devil]].

This reliving of the details surrounding the affair only takes up the first half of the text however; Beckett called this part the ‘Narration.’<ref>Fletcher, B. S., Fletcher, J., Smith, B., and Bachem, W., ''A Student’s Guide to the Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London, Faber and Faber, 1978), pp 172,173</ref> As Paul Lawley says in "Beckett’s dramatic counterpoint: a reading of ''Play''", “[T]he second half of the text (preceded by a five second long blackout) – called ‘Meditation’ by Beckett himself – sheds a subtle new light on the first. In the Meditation each of the heads casts about for the sense of its situation, considers the nature of the light, probes for certainties amid the darkness and then makes an attempt to imagine what has happened to the other two corners of this particular Eternal Triangle ... We can now see that the heads are not chained exclusively to their ‘past’, their narration(s): they are victims of the light, certainly, but not only victims, for they can recognize themselves as such and can speak of the light when forced to speak by the light. The light obliges them to speak but it does not necessarily determine ''what'' they speak – yet we only realize this in the Meditation section of the text.”<ref name="Lawley, P. 1983">Lawley, P., ‘Beckett’s dramatic counterpoint: a reading of ''Play''’ in ''[[Journal of Beckett Studies]]'' 9 (1983)</ref>

“They cope with the light in various ways and natures. W1 screams at the light: ‘Get off me’<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 157"/> and she wonders what she must do to satisfy the disturbing and tormenting light. W2 is content with the idea that the light must know that she is doing her best. But she also wonders if she is perhaps a little ‘unhinged’<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 157"/> (meaning that she may go [[Insanity|mad]]).<ref>Ulu, B., ''[http://yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/~berkan/onsamuelbecketts.htm Play: A Dream-Shatterer Love Story]''</ref> For M the light enables fantasy. He imagines the two women drinking [[green tea]] together in the places they have each been with him and comforting each other. He fantasises waking up with both women and then going for a boat trip with the two of them on a summer's afternoon. “At the end of the second part, M is completely aware of the mechanism of the light but not aware of his own [[narcissism]]” however.<ref>Roof, J. A.,  ‘A Blink in the Mirror: From Oedipus to Narcissus and Back in the Drama of Samuel Beckett’ in Burkman, K. H., (Ed.) ''Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), p 158</ref>

“If the play consisted only of the Narration it would be as though the light were obliging them not only to speak, but to speak only of these events, to tell only this story.”<ref name="Lawley, P. 1983"/>

Many of Beckett's plays and prose pieces are located “in ‘places’ which may strike us as being most adequately described as ‘[[Hell]]’, ‘[[Limbo]]’ or ‘[[Purgatory]]’– and the parallels with [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]] are always tempting”<ref name="Lawley, P. 1983"/> – and indeed the most popular interpretation of ''Play'' is that the three are in some place like this. The use of urns to encase the bodies of the three players is thought to symbolise their entrapment inside the demons of their past; the way in which all three urns are described at the start of the play as "touching" each other is often deciphered as symbolising the shared problem which all three characters have endured.

“The whole situation resembles very closely that of ''[[Bérénice]]'', in which two men, the Emperor [[Titus]] and King Antiochus, are in love with the heroine; [[Berenice of Cilicia|Bérénice]], for her part, is in love with Titus and regards Antiochus as her dearest friend. Yet the tragedy ends, bloodlessly, with Titus remaining unwillingly in [[Rome]], while the other two reluctantly leave the city to go their separate ways. By the end of ''Bérénice'', all three major characters have threatened to commit [[suicide]]; perhaps the three characters in ''Play'' are being punished because they ''have'' committed suicide.<ref>Mercier, V., ''Beckett/Beckett'' (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), pp 80,81</ref> The text certainly indicates that very least the husband might have “sought refuge in death”<ref>Esslin, M., ‘Patterns of Rejection Sex and Love in Beckett’s Universe’ in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) ''Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives'' (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 61</ref> also “[n]ot only does W1 threaten both her own life and that of W2, but W1 describes herself as ‘Dying for dark,’<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'', p 157</ref> and W2 affirms, ‘I felt like death.’<ref name="Beckett, S. 1984 p 150"/> As so often with Beckett, the loose clichés assume an eerie literality.”<ref>Cohn, R., ‘The Femme Fatale on Beckett’s Stage’ in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) ''Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives'' (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 167</ref>

Beckett tasked himself with re-reading all of [[Jean Racine|Racine’s]] plays in the mid-1950s and James Knowlson suggests that “this daily diet of Racinian [[claustrophobia]] forced Beckett to concentrate on the true essentials of theatre: Time, Space and Speech [which] pointed him in the direction that made a tightly focused, monologic play like ''[[Happy Days (play)|Happy Days]]'' or ''Play'' possible.<ref>Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 426</ref>

It is conceivable that the three parties are not actually dead at all. Purgatory is, after all, not a [[Theology|theological]] concept Beckett would have been brought up with though Dante’s interpretation of it did catch his imagination. In the final paragraph of his 1929 essay "Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce" (whose strained, unpleasant second sentence reads, in full, "The conception of Philosophy and Philology as a pair of nigger minstrels out of the Teatro dei Piccoli is soothing, like the contemplation of a carefully folded ham-sandwich"), Beckett makes a striking comparison between [[The Divine Comedy|Dante's version of Purgatory]] and Joyce's: “Dante's is conical and consequently implies culmination. Mr. Joyce's is spherical and excludes culmination … On this earth that is [his] Purgatory.".<ref>Beckett, S., ‘Dante...Bruno. Vico... Joyce’ in ''Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic  Fragment''(London: Calder Publications, 1983), p.33; also at external link shown below</ref> If the trio are separated physically then each would be in a private hell where he or she imagines and reimagines what may have happened to the other two and relives the events of the narration in his or her own mind. If we view the three urns purely as a theatrical device to bring these separate points of view together this interpretation is also valid. “Life on earth, the endless recurring cycle of history, constitutes Purgatory for Joyce in ''[[Finnegans Wake]]''. From Joyce’s Purgatory there is no escape, not even for the individual human being, who dies only to be reborn into the cycle.<ref>Mercier, V., ''Beckett/Beckett'' (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 178</ref> Likewise Beckett’s take on Purgatory is that it “is a state rather than a process.”<ref>Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 471</ref>

===Music===

In 1965 [[Philip Glass]] composed music for a production of ''Play''. The piece was scored for two soprano [[saxophone]]s, and is his first work in a [[Minimalism|minimalist]] [[idiom]] – an idiom which was substantially influenced by the work of Beckett.

===Film===

====''Comédie'' (1966)====

In 1966 Beckett worked with a young director, [[Marin Karmitz]] (an assistant to [[Jean-Luc Godard]] as well as [[Roberto Rossellini]]), on a film version of ''Play'', resulting in the film, ''Comédie''. The cast included [[Michael Lonsdale]], Eléonore Hirt and [[Delphine Seyrig]].

====''Beckett on Film'' (2000)====

Another [[film]]ed version of ''Play'' was directed by [[Anthony Minghella]] for the ''[[Beckett on Film]]'' project, starring [[Alan Rickman]], [[Kristin Scott Thomas]] and [[Juliet Stevenson]].

For this particular interpretation of the play, it is assumed that the action takes place in Hell, perhaps in reference to [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]'s famous assertion, 'Hell is—other people'<ref>Sartre, Jean-Paul, ''No Exit and Three Other Plays'' (New York: Vintage International, 1976), p 45</ref> though [[T. S. Eliot]]’s rebuttal, “Hell is oneself,”<ref>Bowne, E. M., ''The Making of T. S. Eliot’s Plays'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p 233</ref> is probably more accurate. In this filmed version, the action is set in a vast landscape of "urn people", all speaking at once. “This [interpretation] was much turned over, along with doubts whether it should be there at all, in animated discussions that went on throughout the [[Barbican Arts Centre|Barbican]] meeting places.”<ref>Worth, K., ‘Sources of Attraction to Beckett’s Theater’ in Oppenheim, L., (Ed.) ''Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies'' (London: Palgrave, 2004), pp 221,222</ref>

A camera is used instead of a stage light to provoke the characters into action; Minghella uses a [[jump cut]] editing technique to make it seem as though there are even more than two repetitions of the text. He “made the equipment into a threatening force by switching it with bullying speed from one face to another, forcing unusual speed of delivery for the actors. Juliet Stevenson told [ [[Katharine Worth]] ] that during rehearsals she had wondered whether the lines were being delivered too fast for viewers to take in their sense [but] theatre critic, Alice Griffin ... thought that the lines ‘came across more clearly and more easily understandable than sometimes in the theatre.’ This she attributed partly to Minghella's use of [[close-up]], a recurring feature of the film versions naturally enough.”<ref>Worth, K., ‘Sources of Attraction to Beckett’s Theater’ in Oppenheim, L., (Ed.) ''Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies'' (London: Palgrave, 2004), p 221</ref>

The [[postmodern]] outlook of the film ("a field of urns in a dismal [[swamp]], a gnarled, blasted oak in the background, a lowering, [[Chernobyl disaster|Chernobyl]] sky") was however criticized by ''[[The Guardian]]'''s [[Art critic]] [[Adrian Searle]] as "[[Adolescence|adolescent]], and worse, [[cliché]]d and illustrational," adding: "Any minute, expect a [[dragon]]". It is also perhaps noteworthy that this version does not feature the last section of the script, in which the characters almost embark upon a third cycle of the text.

See also:
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20200201044827/https://beckettonfilm.com/ ''Beckett on Film''] Official site
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20130402064100/http://www.beckettonfilm.com/plays/play/synopsis.html ''Play''] at ''Beckett on Film'', Official site