SAMUEL BECKETT LOOKS AT THE STARS.

SAMUEL BECKETT LOOKS AT THE STARS.

Samuel Beckett and his friend Tommy are sitting in a pub talking.

Sam: What I’d like to write. What I’d like to write is how meaningless our lives are. I’d like to write plays about how meaningless our lives are. The world is so big and we are so small.

Tommy: We’ve been sitting here talking about cricket for hours. If you had talked like this for five minutes, I’d have been home in my warm bed hours ago.

Sam: Nobody writes about how miserably we will end our days, about how frustrating and boring our lives are. I want to write plays about how miserably we will end our days, about how frustrating and boring our lives are.

Tommy: That’s all very well and good, all very well and good for five minutes of a play, but what I want to know is what you will write for the second five minutes.

Sam: What we do all day is so trivial, so empty. The universe is so big. There are so many stars and they are so far away. In millions of years, nobody will take note of what we do and say.

Tommy: I’m here now, for this moment, and I’m a man. I’m not a god. I’m just a man. I look around here and I see a lot of things that interest me as a man. If I were an ant, I’m sure I’d be interested in things from an ant’s point of view. PAUSE. However ants look at things. PAUSE. I wonder how ants do look at things.

Sam: We have such hopes. And then we get old. And sick. And then we die.

Tommy: We all know that. Tell me something new. Let’s go back to cricket.

Sam: All our motions, all the things we do, just conceal that we are what we are. We are stuck in one place, unable to do anything meaningful. Unable to do anything at all.

Tommy: All this is well and good, well and good, but I think I’ll be taking myself home now. It’s been a grand evening, especially the cricket part. I don’t mean to be discouraging you with your plays, Sam. I just think everybody already knows all that. Good night.

Sam: Maybe I’ll write it in French.