游戏结束 (1957)

Endgame is an absurdist, tragicomic one-act play by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. First performed in London in 1957, it is about a blind, paralysed, domineering elderly man, his geriatric parents, and his servile companion in an abandoned house in a fictional post-apocalyptic wasteland, all of whom await an unspecified "end". Much of the play's content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions. The plot is also supplanted by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story that the character Hamm is relating. The play's title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate.

Originally written in French (titled Fin de partie), the play was translated into English by Beckett himself and first performed on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a French-language production. It is usually considered among Beckett's most notable works. The literary critic Harold Bloom called it the most original work of literature of the 20th century, saying that "[Other dramatists of the time] have no Endgame; to find a drama of its reverberatory power, you have to return to Ibsen." Beckett considered it his masterpiece and saw it as the most aesthetically perfect, compact representation of his artistic views on human existence.

Endgame is one of the most significant plays in Beckett's body of work and in the broader context of 20th-century drama, particularly in the Theatre of the Absurd genre. Its importance lies in its exploration of various existential themes, its minimalist and bleak portrayal of human existence, and its influence on subsequent playwrights.

Characters

Hamm: throughout the play remains seated in an armchair fitted with casters, unable to stand, and blind. Hamm is dominating, acrimonious, banterous and comfortable in his misery. He claims to suffer, but his pessimism seems self-elected. He chooses to be isolated and self-absorbed. His relationships appear parched of human empathy; he refers to his father as a "fornicator", refused to help his neighbour with oil for her lamp when she badly needed it, and has a fake pet dog which is a stuffed animal.

Clov: Hamm's servant who is unable to sit. Taken in by Hamm as a child, Clov is wistful. He longs for something else, but has nothing to pursue. More mundane than Hamm, he reflects on his opportunities but takes little charge. Clov is benevolent, but weary.

Nagg: Hamm's father who has no legs and lives in a dustbin. Nagg is gentle and fatherly, yet sorrowful and aggrieved in the face of his son's ingratitude.

Nell: Hamm's mother who has no legs and lives in a dustbin next to Nagg. Reflective, she delivers a monologue about a beautiful day on Lake Como, and apparently dies during the course of the play.

Samuel Beckett said that in his choice of character's names, he had in mind the word "hammer" and the word "nail" (clou in French, Nagel in German).

Beckett was an avid chess player, and the term endgame refers to the final phase of a chess game. The play can be vaguely seen as a kind of metaphorical chess game, albeit with limited symbolic meaning. Hamm says at one point, "My kingdom for a knight-man!" Limited in his movement, Hamm resembles the king on a chessboard, and Clov, who moves for him, a knight.

Synopsis

In a dreary, dim and nondescript room, Clov draws the curtains from the windows and prepares his master Hamm for his day. He says, "It's nearly finished", though it is not clear what he is referring to. He awakes Hamm by pulling a sheet from over him. After Hamm removes a bloodstained handkerchief from over his head and face, he says "It's time it ended." He summons Clov by means of a whistle, and they banter briefly.

Eventually, Hamm's parents, Nell and Nagg, appear from inside two dustbins at the back of the stage. Hamm is as equally threatening, condescending and acrimonious with his parents as with his servant, though they still share a degree of mutual humour. Nell eventually sinks back into her bin, and Clov, examining her, says, "She has no pulse." Hamm tells his father he is telling a story and recites it partially to him, a fragment which treats on a derelict man who comes crawling on his belly to the narrator, who is putting up Christmas decorations, begging him for food for his starving boy sheltering in the wilderness.

Clov returns, and they continue to banter in a way that is both quick-witted and comical, yet with dark undertones. Clov often threatens to leave Hamm, but it is made clear that he has nowhere to go as the world outside seems to be destroyed. Much of the stage action is intentionally banal and monotonous, including sequences where Clov moves Hamm's chair in various directions so that he feels himself to be in the right position, as well as moving him nearer to the window.

By the end of the play, Clov finally seems intent on pursuing his commitment to leaving his cruel master Hamm. Clov tells him there is no more of the painkiller left, of which Hamm has been insisting on getting his dose throughout the play. Hamm finishes his dark, chilling story by having the narrator berate the collapsed man for the futility of trying to feed his son for a few more days when evidently their luck has run out (it becomes plain that the character of the narrator is Hamm himself, relating the events which brought Clov [the man's son] to him). Hamm, blind, believes Clov has left, but Clov re-enters and stands in the room silently with his coat on and carrying luggage, going nowhere. Hamm calls for his father, but receives no answer; he discards some of his belongings and says that, though he has made his exit, his bloodstained handkerchief, which he replaces over his face and head, will "remain".