Samuel Beckett’s teleplays : a series of better failures

Abstract

In his study of Samuel Beckett's television work, Beckett on Screen, Jonathon Bignell argues that Beckett’s "reputation as a theatrical and literary auteur", established prior to his venture into the medium of television, "implicitly devalues his television work as secondary to his literary or theatrical output" as the television works "seem to rest on his status in other media" (7). This essay however seeks to show that Beckett's body of work for television is far from aesthetically inferior to his earlier literary output. On the contrary, this essay postulates that Beckett's teleplays come closer to realizing some of the author's aesthetic ideas than his earlier dramatic works for stage and the cinema.