Breath and Other Short Plays [Paperback]

Samuel Beckett (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Faber and Faber (March 6, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571097952
• ISBN-13: 978-0571097951
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,109,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1927. His made his poetry debut in 1930 with Whoroscope and followed it with essays and two novels before World War Two. He wrote one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, in 1949 but it wasn't published in English until 1954. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame and firmly established him as a leading figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett continued to write prolifically for radio, TV and the theatre until his death in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Beckett's most famous joke., February 2, 2001

By 

darragh o'donoghue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breath and Other Short Plays (Hardcover)

Breath is the testing ground on the merit not only of Samuel Beckett, but modern drama as a whole. When people (like my mother) want to sneer at either, they refer to 'Breath', a 45 second play of a heap of rubbish, a light fading up and out, two cries and a breath, breathing in and out. You could argue that the linking of the inhaling and exhaling breath with the lighting offers a profound comment on the nature of theatre. You might say that this linking of breathing, rubbish, crying, light and darkness is an allegory for life, although not as beautiful a one as the opening paragraph of Nabokov's 'Speak Memory' which uses similar terms. You could, but you'd just look pretentious and ridiculous.

It is important to remember, however, that 'Breath' was conceived as a joke. The critic Kenneth Tynan was putting on his infamous, erotic revue 'Oh Calcutta' and asked Beckett for a contribution. The dramatist responded with a comically literal interpretation of heavy breathing, a sardonic comment on the revue to follow. However, the biter was bit, as Tynan added unclad ladies to the rubbish to Beckett's fury (see James Knowlson's Beckett biography, 'Damned to Fame'). Serves him right!