2025/12/28 by Gontarski, Stanley E.
paper · doi:10.13136/yfmscd18
The fact that Samuel Beckett’s work was subject to any number of rewrites early in his dramatic career may shock those readers and audience members familiar with his fastidious attitude toward his texts. Those alterations were extensive enough that some of his early theatrical collaborators might accurately be deemed co-authors, especially those whose textual alterations found their way into print – under Beckett’s name. In Beckett’s case we might well ask, finally, who wrote the Waiting for Godot we are reading, or who ‘authored’ the performances we are watching? The answer may depend on what one means by such a question, which edition the reader is holding, for instance, or how much attention producers and directors paid to the original script before other theatrical collaborators – producers, directors, actors, and investors – entered the process. Even those texts overtly re-written, however, are seldom recalled as defective products but remain for sale and so in circulation for study and production. One of the intriguing aspects of this play, then, is the question of authorship, particularly in relation to its various versions and adaptations. This essay explores the complexities surrounding the authorship of Godot and examines textual anomalies of “bad quartos” in the context of Beckett’s work. KEYWORDS: Barney Rosset; Michael Myerberg; theatrical adaptation; textual corruption; theatre economics