Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. After studying at Trinity College in Dublin he left for Paris when he was twenty-two where he became friends with a group of avant-garde artists, including James Joyce, who was to become a life-long friend. Although he continued to write in both English and French throughout his life, most of his major works were written in French between 1946 and 1950. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. He died in Paris in 1989.
Beckett's bizarre world is explored in novels, short stories, poetry, and scripts for radio, television, and film, but he is best known for his work in the theatre. Waiting For Godot is his most famous play. Waiting For Godot was first performed in a very small theatre in Paris on 5 January 1953 and went on to become one of the most important dramatic works of the Twentieth Century. Its first British production, directed by Peter Hall, was produced in 1956. Waiting For Godot features two tramps waiting on what appears to be a desolate road for a man who never arrives. The strange atmosphere that this play created helped to prepare audiences so that they could understand his later plays such as Endgame (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1961). Beckett wrote in both French and English and he usually translated his plays himself.
In his work he employs a minimalistic approach which means that all unnecessary spectacle and characters are left off the stage. Beckett's drama is most closely associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. Beckett’s plays see a collision between comic and tragic forms and thematically they are primarily concerned with illustrating the human condition and emphasising the absurdity of existence. In fact, his plays can be read as metaphors for human existence. Beckett claimed that he was not connected with the post World War II French existentialists. However, his plays tend to cover some of the same philosophical questions as the existentialists. Some of the major concerns that are expressed in his work include the idea that life is fleeting and is almost totally insignificant in the grand scheme of the world; that time and eternity are meaningless concepts; that individuals will feel lonely and alienated in the world because they are unable to communicate with others; and that human beings are a mystery. One of the major features of modern writing like Beckett’s is this emphasis on the futility of human existence.