Ghost Trio (play)
Encyclopedia
Ghost Trio is a television play, written in English by Samuel Beckett
. It was written in 1975, taped in October 1976 and the first broadcast was on BBC2 on 17 April 1977 as part of the Lively Arts programme Beckett himself entitled Shades. Donald McWhinnie directed (supervised by Beckett) with Ronald Pickup
and Billie Whitelaw
. The play’s original title was to be Tryst. “On Beckett’s notebook, the word was crossed out vigorously and the new title Ghost Trio written next to it. On the title page of the BBC
script the same handwritten title change can be found, indicating that it must have been corrected at the very last minute.”
It was first published in Journal of Beckett Studies
1 (Winter 1976) and then collected in Ends and Odds (Grove Press, 1976; Faber, 1977).
Its three ‘acts’ reflect Beethoven
’s Fifth Piano Trio (Opus 70, #1)
, known as The Ghost because of the slightly spooky mood of the second movement, Largo. The passages selected by Beckett are from the “ghostly” second theme.
Geistertrio, directed by Beckett was recorded by Süddeutscher Rundfunk
, Stuttgart
in May 1977 with Klaus Herm
and Irmgard Först and “broadcast on 1st November 1977”.
The idea for the piece dates back to 1968. At the time, whilst Beckett was working on the French translation of Watt
, he had the first glimmerings of an idea for another television play. He discussed this with Josette Hayden who made the following note, which is probably all that remains of the original sketch:
Aside from the music, there are other trios at work here: there are three characters, the film is shot from three camera angles (which increase by three shots in each ‘act’) and the play is broken into three ‘acts’, each with a meaningful title.
The woman describes the room: a window, a door, a pallet, which in the BBC production is scarcely more than a mattress on the floor. She neglects to mention the mirror or the stool but she takes time to emphasise that there is no obvious source of light, that everything is illuminated evenly and that everything in the room is grey. “The play’s lighting seems indeed to be supernatural.” She apologises for stating what must seem obvious and then warns the viewer: “Keep that sound down.”
The camera cuts to a close-up of the floor, a rectangle 0.7m x 1.5m. It is covered in dust. She tells us that having seen this sample we have effectively seen the whole floor. The exercise is repeated with a section of the wall. There then follow a number of close-ups, of the door, the window and the pallet from above, each a rectangular image although the dimensions vary slightly.
Now aware of the kind of pallet, the kind of window, door, wall and floor we are told to look again at the room as a whole. The camera switches to a general view (A) and moves slowly to position B.
There is a man (F - Figure) “seated on a stool, bowed forward, face hidden, clutching a small cassette
” recorder, though, at this range, it’s not possible to identify it as such until the camera moves to position C and we are presented with a close-up of the man who resembles a “slumping marionette
”. Beckett is very clear about how the camera sees the man:
The camera then recedes to A.
There are three instances of music in Act I: when we see each close-up of the door and as the camera moves forward to look at the man and then backwards to its starting position. “The appearance of the protagonist
is thus linked to the entrance of the music with a pathos
that strangely contradicts the cold scrutiny of the camera and the emotionally detached tone of the voice.” The music does not emanate from the tape recorder however, it “exists outside human control, beyond words, outside time, space and the human dimension.”
The man goes back over to his pallet, then changes his mind and looks at himself in the mirror. The voice is surprised at this. “Ah!” she says; her narration called for him to go to the door. If he can hear her at all, which seems unlikely, she clearly is not in control of him. When he is done the man retrieves his cassette and takes up his opening position. The camera then repeats what it did at the end of Act I, it moves forward from position A to B and then to C where we get a close-up of the man. The camera then retreats as before.
Figure then gets up, goes back to the door and looks out once more. After ten seconds he lets it go and it closes slowly of itself. He goes back to the stool, irresolute.
The voice instructs the music to stop, which it does. After a brief pause she says, “Repeat.”
There are two instances of music this time, during the camera’s repeat of its Act I movements (a recapitulation
of the previous theme) and also when he opens the door the second time (which introduces the second subject of the movement).
, without narration but with the camera adopting Figure’s point of view
on occasion.”
Again, the man thinks he hears someone and goes to the door. This time we get to see down the corridor; predictably it is empty, grey and ends in darkness. When he goes to the window we get to see outside this time; it is night, rain is falling in the dim light. The camera returns to the pallet and to the mirror which is a small grey rectangle, the same dimensions as the cassette. There is nothing reflected in the mirror at first. When the camera returns we see the man in it. He closes his eyes, opens them and then bows his head. Each of the inspections is interspersed with a God-like view from above.
He returns to his opening position. The music stops and we the sound of approaching footsteps is heard. They stop and there is a faint knock on the door. After a pause, another, this time louder. When he opens to door there is a small boy dressed in a black oilskin
. The boy shakes his head faintly, pauses, shakes his head again, turns and leaves. Interestingly, in Beckett’s production of the play for German television, the boy does not wear oilskins, nor does he turn to go, but backs slowly away down the corridor. Beckett made the same change to his 1976 Schiller Theatre production of Waiting for Godot
, having the messenger leave the stage backwards.
Figure stands there cradling the cassette in his arms. The camera backs off and the scene fades out. A significant addition Beckett made to the films was to have “Figure raise his head, stare into the camera and offer a slight, enigmatic smile”, changing the tone completely from the printed texts, which, like Film
, have never been updated. It recalls an earlier play, That Time
, where Listener's final smile results from his release from the three narrating voices, endlessly recounting his past. It certainly suggests that the child's negative message held some positive implication for him.
There are three further instances of music here: at the opening, when Figure sits just before the boy’s footsteps are heard and after the boys has left and the man is standing there alone.
and Eh Joe
over infinity”, a rendezvous of old ghosts. Things are made clearer when you discover that, “on the typescript of Tryst (the first draft), Beckett penned ‘Macbeth’, Asked why he said that in his version of the trio, by Daniel Barenboim
, Beethoven’s music was linked to a planned opera
on Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
.” “‘The Ghost’ retained for Beckett something of Macbeth’s doom laden atmosphere and involvement in the spirit world”
“Krapp’s Last Tape
and Ghost Trio are not customarily thought of together; at first sight, the two plays do indeed appear to be quite different. Yet, on closer look, it is perhaps more puzzling why the two are not considered more alike. Both focus upon a man alone in his room thinking about a long lost other. Both men are prompted into deeper meditation by audio-recordings. Both are occasionally distracted away from their respective tapes, which stop and start several times. But each man eventually returns to his intent pose, crouching protectively, even lovingly, over the indispensable instrument of his reverie.”
There are many other motifs within the play that recall other works, none less than the appearance of the boy who may be saying, similar to the boys in Godot, “‘She’ will not come today, but surely tomorrow.”
On the surface the boy could simply be a go-between but, with the changes Beckett made – removing the oilskin and having the boy back away – it would appear that Beckett is looking to add significance to his small role. “It is almost as though the boy were F’s youth, coming to tell him he has not yet reached the end of his course and backing away into his past.” This interpretation is given weight by James Knowlson who suggests that “the man [is] perhaps about to die;” it may be that all he has been waiting on is the news that his beloved is not coming so he can let go. Perhaps this is what is intimated by the added smile. It has been noted too that, in the BBC version, the corridor surrounding the boy “resembles a coffin
.”
Is the awaited one a departed lover, reluctant muse or death herself? Does the voice we hear belong to her? Presumably she is deceased. It has even been suggested that the boy is “the ghost of the perhaps-unborn child” of the man’s relationship with the woman. The specifics are unclear but the mood is.
As with the radio play Words and Music
, the role of Beethoven’s music in this piece is to reflect the emotions of Figure and “his yearning for ‘her’. His thoughts persistently return to the Largo and the intensity of his feeling is expressed by the music’s increases in volume. In a sense ‘she’ is the music. It expresses her presence in Figure’s consciousness in much the same way as Croak urged both Words and Music to express his memory of ‘the face on the stairs.’”
Opinions differs greatly over the work and most critics tend to concentrate on descriptions rather than meanings, in fact, Beckett’s biographer and long-time friend, James Knowlson, goes as far as to admit that “no significant meaning can be abstracted” from the piece. At the same time it has also been called, “one of Beckett’s miniature masterpieces.”
, however, the most famous quote is from Murphy
: "all the puppet
s in this book whinge sooner or later, except Murphy, who is not a puppet."
Beckett had been very impressed by Heinrich von Kleist
's 1810 essay, Über das Marionettentheatre (On the Marionette Theatre) and his admiration was evidenced when he was rehearsing with Ronald Pickup for the BBC recording of Ghost Trio. Kleist envisioned the marionette as sublime, transcending not only the limits and flaws of the human body, but of the weight of self-consciousness. Self-awareness, he maintained, bred affectation, which destroys natural grace and charm in man. “Man is, therefore, a creature permanently off balance. He lacks the unity, harmony, symmetry and grace that characterizes the puppet.”
“In Ghost Trio … the male figure (F) acts as if he were virtually a puppet, turning his head sharply whenever he thinks ‘he hears her’ and moving around the room, as if he were being controlled by the woman’s voice, which issues what are, ambiguously, either commands or, more likely, anticipations of actions. The movements of his hand, as he pushes open the door or the window, and the movements of his head, as he bows it in front of the mirror, are all slow, deliberate, highly economical, and extremely graceful.” Beckett’s aim “was to achieve a musicality of gesture as striking as that of voice.” His argument was “that precision and economy would produce the maximum of grace.” and it was this aspect of Kleist's argument Beckett was using as the basis of his drama.
The figure in the room is somewhere betwixt marionette and man however, “one sustained, economical and flowing, the other abrupt and jerky … poised midway between two worlds … in spite of everything, a creature bound to a world of matter, not quite the still-life figure that at moments he appears to be. Nor is he totally free of self-consciousness, as his look in the mirror indicates, or wholly indifferent to the world of the non-self.”
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. It was written in 1975, taped in October 1976 and the first broadcast was on BBC2 on 17 April 1977 as part of the Lively Arts programme Beckett himself entitled Shades. Donald McWhinnie directed (supervised by Beckett) with Ronald Pickup
Ronald Pickup
-Life and career:Pickup was born in Chester, England, the son of Daisy and Eric Pickup, who was a lecturer. Pickup was educated at The King's School, Chester, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and became an Associate Member of RADA.His television work began with an episode...
and Billie Whitelaw
Billie Whitelaw
Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...
. The play’s original title was to be Tryst. “On Beckett’s notebook, the word was crossed out vigorously and the new title Ghost Trio written next to it. On the title page of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
script the same handwritten title change can be found, indicating that it must have been corrected at the very last minute.”
It was first published in Journal of Beckett Studies
Journal of Beckett Studies
The Journal of Beckett Studies publishes academic articles relating to the work of Samuel Beckett, , the Irish poet, dramatist and playwright. Published twice yearly by Edinburgh University Press in April and September, it was established in 1976, under the editorship of John Pilling and James...
1 (Winter 1976) and then collected in Ends and Odds (Grove Press, 1976; Faber, 1977).
Its three ‘acts’ reflect Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
’s Fifth Piano Trio (Opus 70, #1)
Piano Trios Nos. 5 - 6, Opus 70 (Beethoven)
Opus 70 is a set of two Piano Trios by Ludwig van Beethoven, written for piano, violin, and cello. They were published in 1809.The first, in D major, known as the Ghost, is one of his best known works in the genre . The D major trio features themes found in the second movement of Beethoven's...
, known as The Ghost because of the slightly spooky mood of the second movement, Largo. The passages selected by Beckett are from the “ghostly” second theme.
Geistertrio, directed by Beckett was recorded by Süddeutscher Rundfunk
Süddeutscher Rundfunk
The Süddeutscher Rundfunk was a German radio and television station operating in the northern part of the state of Baden-Württemberg. It existed from 1949 to 1998, when it was merged with the then Südwestfunk to form the Südwestrundfunk....
, Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
in May 1977 with Klaus Herm
Klaus Herm
Klaus Herm is a German television actor.He started his career with several stage engagements, for example 18 years at Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin.-Selected filmography:...
and Irmgard Först and “broadcast on 1st November 1977”.
The idea for the piece dates back to 1968. At the time, whilst Beckett was working on the French translation of Watt
Watt (novel)
Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English, largely written on the run in the south of France during the Second World War and published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953...
, he had the first glimmerings of an idea for another television play. He discussed this with Josette Hayden who made the following note, which is probably all that remains of the original sketch:
- A man is waiting, reading a newspaper, looking out of the window, etc., seen first at distance, then again in close-up, and the close-up forces a very intense kind of intimacy. His face, gestures, little sounds. Tired of waiting he ends up getting into bed. The close-up enters into the bed. No words or very few. Perhaps just a few murmurs.
Synopsis
Beckett’s stage layout is very precise. The setting yet another “familiar chamber”, as the woman’s voice puts it. In the text he includes a detailed diagram, a variation of which is reproduced aside.Aside from the music, there are other trios at work here: there are three characters, the film is shot from three camera angles (which increase by three shots in each ‘act’) and the play is broken into three ‘acts’, each with a meaningful title.
Act I Pre-action
The opening image is a general view of the room, taken from camera position A. After the fade-up we hear a woman’s voice addressing the audience directly:- “Good evening. Mine is a faint voice. Kindly tune accordingly. [Pause.] Good evening. Mine is a faint voice. Kindly tune accordingly. [Pause.] It will not be raised, nor lowered, whatever happens.”
The woman describes the room: a window, a door, a pallet, which in the BBC production is scarcely more than a mattress on the floor. She neglects to mention the mirror or the stool but she takes time to emphasise that there is no obvious source of light, that everything is illuminated evenly and that everything in the room is grey. “The play’s lighting seems indeed to be supernatural.” She apologises for stating what must seem obvious and then warns the viewer: “Keep that sound down.”
The camera cuts to a close-up of the floor, a rectangle 0.7m x 1.5m. It is covered in dust. She tells us that having seen this sample we have effectively seen the whole floor. The exercise is repeated with a section of the wall. There then follow a number of close-ups, of the door, the window and the pallet from above, each a rectangular image although the dimensions vary slightly.
Now aware of the kind of pallet, the kind of window, door, wall and floor we are told to look again at the room as a whole. The camera switches to a general view (A) and moves slowly to position B.
There is a man (F - Figure) “seated on a stool, bowed forward, face hidden, clutching a small cassette
Cassette deck
A cassette deck is a type of tape recorder for playing or recording audio compact cassettes. A deck was formerly distinguished from a recorder as being part of a stereo component system, while a recorder had a self-contained power amplifier...
” recorder, though, at this range, it’s not possible to identify it as such until the camera moves to position C and we are presented with a close-up of the man who resembles a “slumping marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
”. Beckett is very clear about how the camera sees the man:
- “It [the camera] should not explore, simply look. It stops and stares. […] This staring vision essential to the piece.”
The camera then recedes to A.
There are three instances of music in Act I: when we see each close-up of the door and as the camera moves forward to look at the man and then backwards to its starting position. “The appearance of the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
is thus linked to the entrance of the music with a pathos
Pathos
Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....
that strangely contradicts the cold scrutiny of the camera and the emotionally detached tone of the voice.” The music does not emanate from the tape recorder however, it “exists outside human control, beyond words, outside time, space and the human dimension.”
Act II Action
The bulk of Act II is filmed from position A. The woman’s voice advises us, “He will now think he hears her,” at which point F turns his head sharply towards the door. It is no one and he resumes his former pose. The next time her puts his cassette down, goes over to the door and listens. He opens it and checks but there is no one there, nor does he see anyone outside through the window. He drifts soundlessly “through space with no visible propulsion.”The man goes back over to his pallet, then changes his mind and looks at himself in the mirror. The voice is surprised at this. “Ah!” she says; her narration called for him to go to the door. If he can hear her at all, which seems unlikely, she clearly is not in control of him. When he is done the man retrieves his cassette and takes up his opening position. The camera then repeats what it did at the end of Act I, it moves forward from position A to B and then to C where we get a close-up of the man. The camera then retreats as before.
Figure then gets up, goes back to the door and looks out once more. After ten seconds he lets it go and it closes slowly of itself. He goes back to the stool, irresolute.
The voice instructs the music to stop, which it does. After a brief pause she says, “Repeat.”
There are two instances of music this time, during the camera’s repeat of its Act I movements (a recapitulation
Recapitulation (music)
In music theory, the recapitulation is one of the sections of a movement written in sonata form. The recapitulation occurs after the movement's development section, and typically presents once more the musical themes from the movement's exposition...
of the previous theme) and also when he opens the door the second time (which introduces the second subject of the movement).
Act III Re-action
Immediately after Voice asks for a repeat the camera cuts to a close-up of Figure. The music is audible. It moves in closer. The music gets slightly louder and then stops. She does not speak for the rest of the play. “Act III is embedded in Act II … this time as a mimeMime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
, without narration but with the camera adopting Figure’s point of view
Point of view shot
A point of view shot is a short film scene that shows what a character is looking at . It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction...
on occasion.”
Again, the man thinks he hears someone and goes to the door. This time we get to see down the corridor; predictably it is empty, grey and ends in darkness. When he goes to the window we get to see outside this time; it is night, rain is falling in the dim light. The camera returns to the pallet and to the mirror which is a small grey rectangle, the same dimensions as the cassette. There is nothing reflected in the mirror at first. When the camera returns we see the man in it. He closes his eyes, opens them and then bows his head. Each of the inspections is interspersed with a God-like view from above.
He returns to his opening position. The music stops and we the sound of approaching footsteps is heard. They stop and there is a faint knock on the door. After a pause, another, this time louder. When he opens to door there is a small boy dressed in a black oilskin
Oilskin
Oilskin can mean:*A type of fabric: canvas with a skin of oil applied to it as waterproofing, often linseed oil. Old types of oilskin included:-**Heavy cotton cloth waterproofed with linseed oil.**Sailcloth waterproofed with a thin layer of tar....
. The boy shakes his head faintly, pauses, shakes his head again, turns and leaves. Interestingly, in Beckett’s production of the play for German television, the boy does not wear oilskins, nor does he turn to go, but backs slowly away down the corridor. Beckett made the same change to his 1976 Schiller Theatre production of Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
, having the messenger leave the stage backwards.
Figure stands there cradling the cassette in his arms. The camera backs off and the scene fades out. A significant addition Beckett made to the films was to have “Figure raise his head, stare into the camera and offer a slight, enigmatic smile”, changing the tone completely from the printed texts, which, like Film
Film (film)
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter...
, have never been updated. It recalls an earlier play, That Time
That Time
For the song "That Time" by Regina Spektor see Begin to HopeThat Time is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett, written in English between 8 June 1974 and August 1975...
, where Listener's final smile results from his release from the three narrating voices, endlessly recounting his past. It certainly suggests that the child's negative message held some positive implication for him.
There are three further instances of music here: at the opening, when Figure sits just before the boy’s footsteps are heard and after the boys has left and the man is standing there alone.
The music
There are seven excerpts from Beethoven’s Piano Trio heard in the play. Beckett indicates precisely where they come in according to the camera movements:- I.13; beginning barBar (music)In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...
47: faint music, for five seconds, the recapitulation of the second motifMotif (music)In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
of the opening subject, the ghostly haunting theme. Music linked to the camera’s focus upon the door. - I.23; beginning bar 49: “a more dissonantConsonance and dissonanceIn music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
and highly charged version of the motif, with the main rising interval or the melodic line being greater, thus producing greater tension.” Again the music is linked to the door.
- I.31; beginning bar 19: as at I.13, but with piano accompaniment, with crescendo, increasing harmonic tension, rising pitch, and a strettoStrettoThe term stretto comes from the Italian past participle of stringere, and means "narrow", "tight", or "close".In music the Italian term stretto has two distinct meanings:...
effect as motifs overlap.
- II.26-29; beginning bar 64: a parallel passage, a recapitulation of that used in I.31-34, but with the stretto effect beginning earlier, and so greater tension
- II.35,36; beginning bar 71: like the previous passage, but with the “ghostly” theme overlapping itself, with more movement on the piano part.
- III.1,2,4,5; beginning bar 26: again a recapitulation, the equivalent passage to bar 71; marginally more restful since the rising intervals are all octaves.
- III.29; beginning bar 64: the same music as II.26, but this time the footsteps are heard and the boy appears.
- III.36; beginning bar 82: the music grows as the camera moves in; this is the codaCoda (music)Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence...
, the end of the movement.
Interpretation
In a letter dating from January 1976, Beckett wrote of a first draft of a television play in which all of the motifs from his œuvre had returned: “All the old ghosts. GodotWaiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
and Eh Joe
Eh Joe
Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author’s fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May...
over infinity”, a rendezvous of old ghosts. Things are made clearer when you discover that, “on the typescript of Tryst (the first draft), Beckett penned ‘Macbeth’, Asked why he said that in his version of the trio, by Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....
, Beethoven’s music was linked to a planned opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
on Shakespeare’s
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
.” “‘The Ghost’ retained for Beckett something of Macbeth’s doom laden atmosphere and involvement in the spirit world”
“Krapp’s Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...
and Ghost Trio are not customarily thought of together; at first sight, the two plays do indeed appear to be quite different. Yet, on closer look, it is perhaps more puzzling why the two are not considered more alike. Both focus upon a man alone in his room thinking about a long lost other. Both men are prompted into deeper meditation by audio-recordings. Both are occasionally distracted away from their respective tapes, which stop and start several times. But each man eventually returns to his intent pose, crouching protectively, even lovingly, over the indispensable instrument of his reverie.”
There are many other motifs within the play that recall other works, none less than the appearance of the boy who may be saying, similar to the boys in Godot, “‘She’ will not come today, but surely tomorrow.”
On the surface the boy could simply be a go-between but, with the changes Beckett made – removing the oilskin and having the boy back away – it would appear that Beckett is looking to add significance to his small role. “It is almost as though the boy were F’s youth, coming to tell him he has not yet reached the end of his course and backing away into his past.” This interpretation is given weight by James Knowlson who suggests that “the man [is] perhaps about to die;” it may be that all he has been waiting on is the news that his beloved is not coming so he can let go. Perhaps this is what is intimated by the added smile. It has been noted too that, in the BBC version, the corridor surrounding the boy “resembles a coffin
Coffin
A coffin is a funerary box used in the display and containment of dead people – either for burial or cremation.Contemporary North American English makes a distinction between "coffin", which is generally understood to denote a funerary box having six sides in plan view, and "casket", which...
.”
Is the awaited one a departed lover, reluctant muse or death herself? Does the voice we hear belong to her? Presumably she is deceased. It has even been suggested that the boy is “the ghost of the perhaps-unborn child” of the man’s relationship with the woman. The specifics are unclear but the mood is.
As with the radio play Words and Music
Words and Music (play)
Samuel Beckett wrote the radio play, Words and Music between November and December 1961. It was recorded and broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 13 November 1962. Patrick Magee played Words and Felix Felton, Croak. Music was composed especially by John Beckett. The play first appeared in print...
, the role of Beethoven’s music in this piece is to reflect the emotions of Figure and “his yearning for ‘her’. His thoughts persistently return to the Largo and the intensity of his feeling is expressed by the music’s increases in volume. In a sense ‘she’ is the music. It expresses her presence in Figure’s consciousness in much the same way as Croak urged both Words and Music to express his memory of ‘the face on the stairs.’”
Opinions differs greatly over the work and most critics tend to concentrate on descriptions rather than meanings, in fact, Beckett’s biographer and long-time friend, James Knowlson, goes as far as to admit that “no significant meaning can be abstracted” from the piece. At the same time it has also been called, “one of Beckett’s miniature masterpieces.”
On the Marionette Theatre
Puppets have been a source of interest to Beckett going back as far as the story, Love and LetheLethe
In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...
, however, the most famous quote is from Murphy
Murphy (novel)
Murphy, first published in 1938, is a novel as well as the third work of prose fiction by the Irish author and dramatist Samuel Beckett. The book was Beckett's second published prose work after the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks and his unpublished first novel Dream of Fair to...
: "all the puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
s in this book whinge sooner or later, except Murphy, who is not a puppet."
Beckett had been very impressed by Heinrich von Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him.- Life :...
's 1810 essay, Über das Marionettentheatre (On the Marionette Theatre) and his admiration was evidenced when he was rehearsing with Ronald Pickup for the BBC recording of Ghost Trio. Kleist envisioned the marionette as sublime, transcending not only the limits and flaws of the human body, but of the weight of self-consciousness. Self-awareness, he maintained, bred affectation, which destroys natural grace and charm in man. “Man is, therefore, a creature permanently off balance. He lacks the unity, harmony, symmetry and grace that characterizes the puppet.”
“In Ghost Trio … the male figure (F) acts as if he were virtually a puppet, turning his head sharply whenever he thinks ‘he hears her’ and moving around the room, as if he were being controlled by the woman’s voice, which issues what are, ambiguously, either commands or, more likely, anticipations of actions. The movements of his hand, as he pushes open the door or the window, and the movements of his head, as he bows it in front of the mirror, are all slow, deliberate, highly economical, and extremely graceful.” Beckett’s aim “was to achieve a musicality of gesture as striking as that of voice.” His argument was “that precision and economy would produce the maximum of grace.” and it was this aspect of Kleist's argument Beckett was using as the basis of his drama.
The figure in the room is somewhere betwixt marionette and man however, “one sustained, economical and flowing, the other abrupt and jerky … poised midway between two worlds … in spite of everything, a creature bound to a world of matter, not quite the still-life figure that at moments he appears to be. Nor is he totally free of self-consciousness, as his look in the mirror indicates, or wholly indifferent to the world of the non-self.”