Customer Reviews

Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett

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An essential tool for anyone interesting in producing Samuel Beckett's full-length play, Happy Days, this production notebook serves as an explanation to not only the author's sometimes unrecognized references and sources as well as difficulties with the technical elements of production (for example, how the original production coped with the necessity for a flaming parasol). Even if one is not looking to produce Happy Days for the stage, Beckett's production notebook is a great insight into the character Winnie, whose intelligence is equivocal to Beckett's own and draws (often without the reader's knowledge, save for this notebook) from Keats, Browning, and Shakespeare. Reading the author's notes on both the play as a piece of literature and as a theatrical event also gives one a better understanding of Beckett as playwright and as an imminent literary figure of the twentieth century. True scholars of Beckett will also enjoy the copies of handwritten notes, transcribed into type on adjoining pages. This notebook is a perfect tool for dramaturgy or for simply gaining a better understanding of this Beckettian masterpiece.