Three Times Godot: Beckett, Brecht, Bulatovic

Authors

Clas Zilliacus, Columbia University

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

The very title of Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 is a genuflexion before antique myth and its power still to claw. Giraudoux wrote his play in 1929, and the motif has been reworked many times since .. On the whole, the romantic cult of individuality has prevented more recent drama from being used in similar ways. Restrictions of this kind have never obtained in music, where great masters have sanctioned the right to vary good themes well, but literary vessels have commonly been thought nonrefundable. Just how relentlessly this taboo has been looked after came to the fore in the. Brecht-Alfred Kerr controversy over the Villon translations sewn into Die Dreigroschenoper (an adaptation which was, ironically, debated in the year of the 38th Amphitryon) . Brecht pleaded not guilty, referring to his "grundsätzliche Laxheit in Fragen geistigen Eigentums."¹ He was to show similar irreverence many times, right up to Die Tage der Commune, a counterplay to Nordahl Grieg's Nederlaget, and Brecht's last play to be published under his supervision, in Versuche 15. Here Brecht improved an excellent play. Only a few months before his death he was busy with plans of a "Gegenentwurf"-his own term-to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The term used aptly describes Brecht's method of work: he made a rough draft on the text to be countered, making changes, adding, and deleting.

Recommended Citation

Zilliacus, Clas (1970) "Three Times Godot: Beckett, Brecht, Bulatovic," Comparative Drama: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol4/iss1/1