Beckett and the Spirit of the Commedia dell'Arte

BECKETT AND THE SPIRIT OF THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE By ITS VERY OBSTINACY TO LET ITSELF BE CLASSIFIED with regard to its content, Beckett's theater provokes ever new labels and classifications. With regard to its theatricality, classification seems equally tempting and equally prone to encounter obstacles. Thus one is inclined to see this theater as part of the Commedia dell'Arte tradition, although it utilizes none of the Commedia's most obvious features: its improvisation or its stock characters in their traditional orchestration. What seems to justify this classification are the traces of the very spirit of the Commedia dell'Arte that are to be observed in Beckett's plays: its lazzi, that is, its stage business; something of its attitude towards language; and above all, its preference for grotesque stylization at the total expense of verisimilitude and probability. If the Commedia has been designated at times as "realistic," the term was obviously meant to refer to the popular vulgarity of some of its comic scenes. Actually nothing could be further removed from its spirit than any kind of realism. What sets it most strongly apart, even from neo-classical and naturalistic theater, is the fact that it never strove for any Aristotelian "imitation of life." It has always presented itself as art and theater-with an almost self-conscious theatricality. Because of this it could challenge its actors to the limits of their ability to improvise, to embroider, and to give free reign to their imagination-at least within the limits of their masks. Unlike the neo-classic theater of France-imbued with Aristotelian concepts of catharsis which required empathy and identification between protagonist and audience-it never strove for a magic one-ness. It therefore could dispense with, or rather never felt the need for, verisimilitude , probability of plot, or even psychological motivation of its characters beyond that indicated by the type. The animal-like masks with their beak-like noses which some of the players wore, created instead both the distance and the attraction that the grotesque holds for us. It was not emotion that breached this gap between audience and actors-one would imagine-but rather that familiarity with the mask that would correspond to the familiarity of today's reader with equally grotesque comic-strip characters-equally circumscribed in their attitude towards the world and equally joined with their co-actors in varying plot constellations. An equally self-conscious and often grotesque theatricality pervades 260 1966: SPIRIT OF THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE 261 Beckett's work. The title Play which he chose for one of his recent dramatic efforts clearly illustrates his attitude. In Endgame, Hamm displays himself as playwright and actor, almost in the manner of Moliere's Scapin, that magnificent specimen of a Commedia dell'Arte protagonist of Les Fourberies. Like a true ham, Hamm always wants to be sure that he is "right in the center" of the stage. When Clov implores him "Let's stop playing!" he retorts "Never!" He grumblingly explains to Clov that his mutterings about the end of the world are "An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before?" and immediately afterwards announces, "I am warming up for my last soliloquy." When Clov reports what he can see from the window, Hamm exclaims "More complications! Not an underplot, I trust!" As he develops the story that he fitfully tells throughout the play, he muses, "I'll soon have finished with this story. Unless I bring in other characters." Theatrical necessity rather than any intrinsic requirements of the plot are made to account for the presence of Hamm's partner, Clov. "What's there to keep me here?" Clov argues, after having announced many times that his departure is imminent. And Hamm replies, "The dialogue." No impression of reality is thus created for the spectator. The play's own reality is rather destroyed by such intrusions. Theater is fully presented as a play of the imagination. In Waiting for Codot it is Pozzo who in similarly self-conscious fashion invents and performs a play within the play: first by means of his own astonishing behavior, then by setting the stage for his grand soliloquy, and finally...