Rough for Theatre II
Encyclopedia
Rough for Theatre II is a short play
by Samuel Beckett
. “Although this discarded piece of theatre is dated ‘circa 1960’ in End and Odds, a manuscript from two years earlier exists in Trinity College, Dublin
, Library. This situates a first version, written in French [as Fragment de théâtre II] and different from that eventually published in 1976 as between the English plays Krapp's Last Tape
and Embers
.”
s, first Bertrand (A) and then Morven (B) enter a sixth floor apartment where they find Croker (C) standing centre stage in front of an open window with his back to the audience, clearly on the point of throwing himself out of it. A pair of identical tables, lamps and chairs are there waiting for them, stage left and stage right. The set is therefore symmetrical. The name Croker is an obvious pun
on the euphemism
, ‘to croak’ i.e. to die, and a name to which Beckett has shown some attachment.
Morven brings a briefcase with him containing depositions
from witnesses who have known Croker as well as “confidences” from the subject himself all neatly filed by subject matter: “Work, family … finances, art and nature, heart and conscience...” – in short what used to be referred to as ‘the human condition
’. Prodded by Bertrand, he reads from these dossiers. The two speaking characters are there to carry out a pro bono
investigation into “the temperament, character and past life of this potential suicide
, who never [moves or] speaks … in an apparent attempt to help him decide whether he should or should not take his own life.” This is something they do. A previous subject named “Smith” who had been injured in a shooting accident and ends up trying to gas himself is discussed as is their up and coming visit to someone “at Bury St. Edmunds
.”
“A (Bertrand) is more practical, better organised and more knowledgeable; B is more nervous, hot-tempered and prone to use oaths and four-letter words and, although less sensitive than A, he is capable of graphic turns of phrase … A and B are bound together by mutual needs but … this symbiotic relationship is as subject to irritability and impatience as that of Estragon
and Vladimir
had been.”
Unusually Beckett sets the action in a specific year, 1924 however Bertrand appears vague at first as to what year it actually is. “A refers to “Our Lady of [Perpetual] Succour
whose feast is June 27th, the next full moon and the anticipated date of the suicide of C, for whom that succour would be appropriate.” He also makes an interesting off-the-cuff remark towards the end of the play: “Ah Morven, you’d be the death of me if I were sufficiently alive!” We can infer from this, and from the fact that they have advance knowledge of a suicide attempt, that these auditors are really some form of cosmic being.
In the 1940s there were a spate of film dealing with various aspects of heavenly administration: Here Comes Mr. Jordan
(1941), Heaven Can Wait
(1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Beckett may or may not have seen any of these; at the very least he would have likely read about them. Significantly the opening camera shot of It’s a Wonderful Life dissolves slowly upward into the star-filled, dark night sky where two pulsating galaxies of light come into view. Two heavenly angels are conversing together in the film's otherworldly opening. In Rough for Theatre II, Bertrand and Morven take time out to specifically discuss the starry night sky.
We learn that the apartment they are in is not Croker’s home. He normally lives on a barge
and was only there ostensibly to feed the cat. Two things may have pushed him to the edge: his “literary aspirations [have been] incompletely stifled” and he has been unable to send a letter to an “anonymous admiratrix.” He also has suffered from a number of physical and psychological complaints: “… sick headaches … eye trouble … irrational fear of vipers … ear trouble … pathological horror of songbirds … throat trouble … need for affection … inner void … congenital timidity … nose trouble … morbid sensitivity to the opinion of others …” His continual attempts to run away from home – indicative of an unhappy childhood – are totally ignored by his auditors.
A and B continue, in an almost comic fashion, with the desk lamps flickering on and off, and with a didactic
analysis from B ("Shit! Where's the verb?") of the recounts he carries in his folder. In the silent film
s and early ‘talkies
’ that inspired Beckett, objects frequently adhere to Flagle's Law displaying an intention and mobility that either saps or shapes human actions. (For example, in The Gold Rush
, the way that a rifle barrel swings round wildly in a struggle unerringly follows Chaplin
in his frantic attempts to escape it.)
“The lineage of Morvan and Bertrand is very much like the vaudeville
background of Vladimir and Estragon … [T]hey indulge in sharp, lively repartee like members of a music hall
or cinema screen comic duo
… The surface lightness of tone derives partly from the lively banter of this administrative duo. But it also owes a lot to word play
and stylistic parody
. Witnesses who provide comic depositions concerning the subject C’s unhappy life have names carefully chosen for their associations: Mr Peaberry, the market-gardener … Mr Swell, the organist … The depositions themselves parody several styles: legalistic syntax and phraseology, applied incongruously to the withholding of sex; ‘literary’ English contributed by ‘Mrs Darcy-Croker, woman of letters’ [and] advertising jargon
.”
There is a more serious subtext
however. In this fragment, the reports of the victim’s friends are so reductive that Gerry Dukes, in his programme notes, alleges that the play “also indicts written language as inadequate to the task of codifying human experience in meaningful terms.” “Among the flurry of papers and testimony, memories and discussion, no real sense of the man emerges. Instead, there is an irritable reaching for premature conclusion … The inventory of reasons advanced for the suicide remains just that, a stark list devoid of imaginative life … What Morvan and Bertrand fail to perceive is the victim’s particular perspective that would transform the commonplace into the unendurable.”
The comments of each of the witnesses cited highlight the fact that are self-absorbed and have no real understanding of what Croker was going through: the organist can think of nothing constructive to say and so offers up some twaddle in an attempt to impress; Croker’s estranged wife is oblivious to the effect her “five or six miscarriage
s” and subsequent embargo on sexual relations might have had on him; Peaberry recalls that Croker remembered only calamity; Moore, the light comedian
, used Croker’s misery to advance his career, working up his drunken confidences into “a skit
”, Feckman, who counted himself as a “friend for better or worse,” relinquished Croker to Fate’s
care by slipping a lottery
ticket in his pocket thus giving him another go at life, albeit a long shot and his mother, who claims that her son had “an inexhaustible reservoir of sorrow” which “irrevocably dissolved” his joys “as by a corrosive
”, says, with some satisfaction: “[H]e took after me.”
His auditors’ discussions, which demonstrate neither insight nor pity, reflect the indifference of these witnesses. Even Bertrand, who at the start was at least willing to review the evidence, loses patience and, bored stiff, starts to adopt the same dismissive tone as Morvan had from the very start.
The play does however still contain “several rather moving allusion
s to suffering, waste and death that possess a characteristically Beckettian note of ambiguity. The bird which A and B hear singing so beautifully is singing with its mate dead in the same cage. Concerning the beauty of the bird’s plumage
, A comments, ‘And to think all that is organic waste! All that splendour.’”
In the end, Bertrand and Morvan come to the conclusion: "Let him jump."
Before they leave, however, Bertrand goes to the window, shines a match to his face. It appears that Croker has already died, rendering at least some of the bureaucrats' time there meaningless. Twice, to no avail, Bertrand calls for Morvan's attention. Finally Bertrand “takes out his handkerchief and raises it timidly towards C[roker]’s face” to feel for air. We can guess from his desolate, surprised reaction that there is none.
and Endgame
rather than forward to the later plays.
Had Beckett actually written the play later it would have borne a greater resemblance to That Time
, Eh Joe
or Ghost Trio
, Morvan and Bertrand’s characters being reduced to disembodied voices. In these three plays too the central characters all smile inexplicably as does Croker something Morvan notes but glosses over.
The indifference to the plight of another is however the focus of a late play Catastrophe
, where a director and his assistant are rehearsing the final preparation of an icon
of suffering, the icon in question being a man standing silently on a plinth
before them.
Krapp
and Croker share some similarities: both have failed literary aspirations, failed love lives and suffer ill health. Both are alone and approaching death.
, as part of the Beckett on Film
project. Katie Mitchell directed and the film featured performances from Jim Norton
as Bertrand, Timothy Spall
as Morvan and Hugh B. O'Brien as Croker.
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
by Samuel Beckett
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...
. “Although this discarded piece of theatre is dated ‘circa 1960’ in End and Odds, a manuscript from two years earlier exists in Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
, Library. This situates a first version, written in French [as Fragment de théâtre II] and different from that eventually published in 1976 as between the English plays 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 Embers
Embers
Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957 and first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was specially written – as “Henry”, Kathleen Michael as “Ada” and Patrick Magee as “Riding Master”...
.”
Synopsis
Two bureaucratBureaucrat
A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can comprise the administration of any organization of any size, though the term usually connotes someone within an institution of a government or corporation...
s, first Bertrand (A) and then Morven (B) enter a sixth floor apartment where they find Croker (C) standing centre stage in front of an open window with his back to the audience, clearly on the point of throwing himself out of it. A pair of identical tables, lamps and chairs are there waiting for them, stage left and stage right. The set is therefore symmetrical. The name Croker is an obvious pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
on the euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
, ‘to croak’ i.e. to die, and a name to which Beckett has shown some attachment.
Morven brings a briefcase with him containing depositions
Deposition (law)
In the law of the United States, a deposition is the out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery purposes. It is commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada and is almost always conducted outside of court by the...
from witnesses who have known Croker as well as “confidences” from the subject himself all neatly filed by subject matter: “Work, family … finances, art and nature, heart and conscience...” – in short what used to be referred to as ‘the human condition
Human condition
The human condition encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc. — a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of...
’. Prodded by Bertrand, he reads from these dossiers. The two speaking characters are there to carry out a pro bono
Pro bono
Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...
investigation into “the temperament, character and past life of this potential suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, who never [moves or] speaks … in an apparent attempt to help him decide whether he should or should not take his own life.” This is something they do. A previous subject named “Smith” who had been injured in a shooting accident and ends up trying to gas himself is discussed as is their up and coming visit to someone “at Bury St. Edmunds
Bury St. Edmunds
Bury St Edmunds is a market town in the county of Suffolk, England, and formerly the county town of West Suffolk. It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and known for the ruined abbey near the town centre...
.”
“A (Bertrand) is more practical, better organised and more knowledgeable; B is more nervous, hot-tempered and prone to use oaths and four-letter words and, although less sensitive than A, he is capable of graphic turns of phrase … A and B are bound together by mutual needs but … this symbiotic relationship is as subject to irritability and impatience as that of Estragon
Estragon
Estragon is one of the two main characters from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. His name is the French word for tarragon.- The impulsive misanthrope :...
and Vladimir
Vladimir (Waiting for Godot)
Vladimir is one of the two main characters from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.- Personality :...
had been.”
Unusually Beckett sets the action in a specific year, 1924 however Bertrand appears vague at first as to what year it actually is. “A refers to “Our Lady of [Perpetual] Succour
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Catholic Primary School is a Roman Catholic primary school located in West Pymble, a leafy residential area on the North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.- School history :...
whose feast is June 27th, the next full moon and the anticipated date of the suicide of C, for whom that succour would be appropriate.” He also makes an interesting off-the-cuff remark towards the end of the play: “Ah Morven, you’d be the death of me if I were sufficiently alive!” We can infer from this, and from the fact that they have advance knowledge of a suicide attempt, that these auditors are really some form of cosmic being.
In the 1940s there were a spate of film dealing with various aspects of heavenly administration: Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a comedy film in which a boxer, mistakenly taken to Heaven before his time, is given a second chance back on Earth. It stars Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains and Evelyn Keyes. The movie was adapted by Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller from the play Heaven Can Wait by Harry...
(1941), Heaven Can Wait
Heaven Can Wait (1943 film)
Heaven Can Wait is a 1943 American comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The screenplay was by Samson Raphaelson based on the play Birthday by Leslie Bush-Fekete. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Edward Cronjager.The film tells the story of a man who has...
(1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Beckett may or may not have seen any of these; at the very least he would have likely read about them. Significantly the opening camera shot of It’s a Wonderful Life dissolves slowly upward into the star-filled, dark night sky where two pulsating galaxies of light come into view. Two heavenly angels are conversing together in the film's otherworldly opening. In Rough for Theatre II, Bertrand and Morven take time out to specifically discuss the starry night sky.
We learn that the apartment they are in is not Croker’s home. He normally lives on a barge
Barge
A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats...
and was only there ostensibly to feed the cat. Two things may have pushed him to the edge: his “literary aspirations [have been] incompletely stifled” and he has been unable to send a letter to an “anonymous admiratrix.” He also has suffered from a number of physical and psychological complaints: “… sick headaches … eye trouble … irrational fear of vipers … ear trouble … pathological horror of songbirds … throat trouble … need for affection … inner void … congenital timidity … nose trouble … morbid sensitivity to the opinion of others …” His continual attempts to run away from home – indicative of an unhappy childhood – are totally ignored by his auditors.
A and B continue, in an almost comic fashion, with the desk lamps flickering on and off, and with a didactic
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
analysis from B ("Shit! Where's the verb?") of the recounts he carries in his folder. In the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
s and early ‘talkies
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
’ that inspired Beckett, objects frequently adhere to Flagle's Law displaying an intention and mobility that either saps or shapes human actions. (For example, in The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush is a 1925 silent film comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. The film also stars Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite....
, the way that a rifle barrel swings round wildly in a struggle unerringly follows Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
in his frantic attempts to escape it.)
“The lineage of Morvan and Bertrand is very much like the vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
background of Vladimir and Estragon … [T]hey indulge in sharp, lively repartee like members of a music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
or cinema screen comic duo
Double act
A double act, also known as a comedy duo, is a comic pairing in which humor is derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin and profession, but drastically different personalities or behavior...
… The surface lightness of tone derives partly from the lively banter of this administrative duo. But it also owes a lot to word play
Word play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
and stylistic parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
. Witnesses who provide comic depositions concerning the subject C’s unhappy life have names carefully chosen for their associations: Mr Peaberry, the market-gardener … Mr Swell, the organist … The depositions themselves parody several styles: legalistic syntax and phraseology, applied incongruously to the withholding of sex; ‘literary’ English contributed by ‘Mrs Darcy-Croker, woman of letters’ [and] advertising jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
.”
There is a more serious subtext
Subtext
Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...
however. In this fragment, the reports of the victim’s friends are so reductive that Gerry Dukes, in his programme notes, alleges that the play “also indicts written language as inadequate to the task of codifying human experience in meaningful terms.” “Among the flurry of papers and testimony, memories and discussion, no real sense of the man emerges. Instead, there is an irritable reaching for premature conclusion … The inventory of reasons advanced for the suicide remains just that, a stark list devoid of imaginative life … What Morvan and Bertrand fail to perceive is the victim’s particular perspective that would transform the commonplace into the unendurable.”
The comments of each of the witnesses cited highlight the fact that are self-absorbed and have no real understanding of what Croker was going through: the organist can think of nothing constructive to say and so offers up some twaddle in an attempt to impress; Croker’s estranged wife is oblivious to the effect her “five or six miscarriage
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
s” and subsequent embargo on sexual relations might have had on him; Peaberry recalls that Croker remembered only calamity; Moore, the light comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
, used Croker’s misery to advance his career, working up his drunken confidences into “a skit
Sketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...
”, Feckman, who counted himself as a “friend for better or worse,” relinquished Croker to Fate’s
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
care by slipping a lottery
Lottery
A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments...
ticket in his pocket thus giving him another go at life, albeit a long shot and his mother, who claims that her son had “an inexhaustible reservoir of sorrow” which “irrevocably dissolved” his joys “as by a corrosive
Corrosion
Corrosion is the disintegration of an engineered material into its constituent atoms due to chemical reactions with its surroundings. In the most common use of the word, this means electrochemical oxidation of metals in reaction with an oxidant such as oxygen...
”, says, with some satisfaction: “[H]e took after me.”
His auditors’ discussions, which demonstrate neither insight nor pity, reflect the indifference of these witnesses. Even Bertrand, who at the start was at least willing to review the evidence, loses patience and, bored stiff, starts to adopt the same dismissive tone as Morvan had from the very start.
The play does however still contain “several rather moving allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
s to suffering, waste and death that possess a characteristically Beckettian note of ambiguity. The bird which A and B hear singing so beautifully is singing with its mate dead in the same cage. Concerning the beauty of the bird’s plumage
Plumage
Plumage refers both to the layer of feathers that cover a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage vary between species and subspecies and can also vary between different age classes, sexes, and season. Within species there can also be a...
, A comments, ‘And to think all that is organic waste! All that splendour.’”
In the end, Bertrand and Morvan come to the conclusion: "Let him jump."
Before they leave, however, Bertrand goes to the window, shines a match to his face. It appears that Croker has already died, rendering at least some of the bureaucrats' time there meaningless. Twice, to no avail, Bertrand calls for Morvan's attention. Finally Bertrand “takes out his handkerchief and raises it timidly towards C[roker]’s face” to feel for air. We can guess from his desolate, surprised reaction that there is none.
Related Texts
Despite working up the text for publication in the seventies, Rough for Theatre II clearly looks back to Waiting for 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 Endgame
Endgame (play)
Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...
rather than forward to the later plays.
Had Beckett actually written the play later it would have borne a greater resemblance to 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...
, 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...
or Ghost Trio
Ghost Trio (play)
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 with Ronald Pickup and Billie...
, Morvan and Bertrand’s characters being reduced to disembodied voices. In these three plays too the central characters all smile inexplicably as does Croker something Morvan notes but glosses over.
The indifference to the plight of another is however the focus of a late play Catastrophe
Catastrophe (play)
Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most...
, where a director and his assistant are rehearsing the final preparation of an icon
Secular icon
A secular icon is an image or pictograph of a person or thing used for other than religious purpose. -Icons versus symbols:...
of suffering, the icon in question being a man standing silently on a plinth
Plinth
In architecture, a plinth is the base or platform upon which a column, pedestal, statue, monument or structure rests. Gottfried Semper's The Four Elements of Architecture posited that the plinth, the hearth, the roof, and the wall make up all of architectural theory. The plinth usually rests...
before them.
Krapp
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 Croker share some similarities: both have failed literary aspirations, failed love lives and suffer ill health. Both are alone and approaching death.
Beckett on Film
In June 2000 Rough for Theatre II was filmed at Ardmore StudiosArdmore Studios
Ardmore Studios is a film studio in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland which was founded by Emmet Dalton and opened by the Minister for Industry and Commerce Seán Lemass on May 12, 1958....
, as part of the Beckett on Film
Beckett on Film
Beckett on Film was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed Eleutheria. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films being shown in 2001.The project was conceived by Michael Colgan,...
project. Katie Mitchell directed and the film featured performances from Jim Norton
Jim Norton (actor)
Jim Norton is an Irish character actor.-Performances:Jim Norton has been acting for over forty years in theatre, television, and movies, and frequently plays clergymen, most notably Bishop Brennan in the sitcom Father Ted, as well as in The Sweeney , Peak Practice , Sunset Heights , A Love Divided...
as Bertrand, Timothy Spall
Timothy Spall
Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE is an English character actor and occasional presenter.-Early life:Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, London. His mother, Sylvia R. , was a hairdresser, and his father, Joseph L. Spall, was a postal worker...
as Morvan and Hugh B. O'Brien as Croker.