Translating unintelligibility in Samuel Beckett's 'Play'

Of modern writers, Samuel Beckett stands out as the writer most committed to fidelity in his creative practice. Beckett's oeuvre is characterised by rigorous consistency of vision and the various biographies of the 1969 Nobel Prize winner pay testament to the torturous process his writing required. In this chapter I will examine Play (1963) and consider how this piece for theatre signifies the struggles the playwright goes through in translating an aesthetic and theatrical vision to the script and then from script to performance.