Waiting for Godot
1953
Absurdist Play
A two-act play in which two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait beside a leafless tree for a man named Godot who never arrives. They pass the time bickering, considering suicide, and contemplating leaving — but never doing so. They are joined briefly each act by Pozzo and his roped, silent servant Lucky. Nothing of consequence happens, twice. Originally written in French as *En Attendant Godot*, the play became the canonical work of the Theatre of the Absurd and made Beckett famous in his late forties. Its deliberate vagueness has invited every kind of interpretation — religious, Freudian, Marxist, existentialist — which Beckett himself refused to adjudicate.