Endgame

1957  (만50세 출판)

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.