Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces: Includes: All That Fall; Embers; Acts Without Words, I and II; Mimes (Paperback)

by Samuel Beckett (Author) "A late evening in the future..." (more)
Key Phrases: Miss Fitt, Act Without Words

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This collection of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett's dramatic pieces includes a short stage play, two radio plays, and two pantomimes. The stage play, Krapp's Last Tape, evolves a shattering drama out of a monologue of a man who, at age sixty-nine, plays back the autobiographical tape he recorded on his thirty-ninth birthday.

The two radio plays were commissioned by the BBC; All That Fall "plumbs the same pessimistic depths [as Waiting for Godot] in what seems a no less despairing search for human dignity" (London Times), and Embers is equally unforgettable theater, born of the ramblings of an old man and his wife.

Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 14, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802151345
• ISBN-13: 978-0802151346
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #616,696 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beckett's most human drama., January 26, 2000

By	darragh o'donoghue (dublin, ireland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Although it is probably his most conventional play, this is my favourite Beckett work. It is as bleak as Godot and despairing as End Game. It is also as funny as these tragicomic masterpieces. What is different here is that Krapp is less of a pawn, or fragment of an idea than the other characters, we are given access to his past, to his fundamental ambivalences (the desire for solitude and companionship), his apprehension of beauty. It is remarkable to see on stage a whole series of seperate selves contained in the one entity Krapp. The play is depressingly, inevitable circular, and the sense of repetition (note the extraordinary variations on light and darkness) throughout the stories the younger Krapp tells is not continuity, but an awareness of death, failure, old age. The play is also a comment on the nature of theatre going itself: in listening to his old tapes, Krapp becomes, as well as an actor, an audience, and in interpreting what he hears, a critic. This Shakespearean self-reflexivity only adds to the melancholy of the film's close.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty by the master, February 5, 2006

By	Eddy (amazon.com) - See all my reviews

This play represents Beckett at what is without doubt his most accessible and possibly his most beautiful. Beckett adores using human memory and the pain of nostalgia in his works, and both of these themes are put to astonishing use in this play.

In 'Krapp's Last Tape', our protagonist Krapp, now in his late 60s, plays back tapes that he has recorded on previous birthdays. Every year this task becomes a more and more onerous one, and every year he is more and more embarassed by "that stupid b**tard I took myself for thirty years ago". The pain of reconstructing the past is a pain that Beckett uses to dolourous effect throughout his prose and dramatic works and its use is particularly powerful here.

Although this play is in fact a monologue, it would appear to take the form of a conversation between a past and present Krapp. This allows the spectator to witness a striking decline in the morale and optimism of the play's protagonist in the intervening thirty years. One is left to assume that the mental attitude of the character will continue to rot over the miserable years that are left to him.

This beautiful rendering of sadness and human pain, is typical of one of the most astonishing and talented writers of the modern era.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Krapp's Last Tape, March 24, 2008

By	Stephen Williams "Stephen Williams" (Hawthorne, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Krapp's Last Tape (Paperback)

Krapp's Last Tape

Published: 1958

Premiere: 1958

By: Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

There is a single character named Krapp. He is on stage with a tape recorder and old recordings of himself. The only lighting on stage illuminates Krapp (Crap?) and his table where the tape recorder rests. We don't see anything of the environment, only the center stage. We are expected to ask where the play is taking place. It could be an afterlife library where the story of our lives is kept in ledger books and on audio tapes. Krapp is forced to confront the details of his life as an atonement or penitence.

It could be Krapp's own library where he has kept a video/written record of his life. As Krapp faces the end of his life he chooses to relive his past before the last whimper of his extinction. Krapp is reading the ledger book of his life much as God and Saint Peter will read the ledger of our lives on judgment day.

Krapp gives a rambling and emotional monolog relating his life experiences and decisions. He speculates about things that might have been better.

At one point Krapp hears a noise from the shadows, outside where the stage directions indicate lighting. He either hears the rustling of the robes death or of the angel of death. He does not seem concerned that death is approaching implying that he is aware of his impending end. He gives a shrug and continues with his search of the ledgers.



Waiting for Godot

Endgame and Act Without Words


I completely enjoyed and highly recommend this book.