Images of Beckett - Index of

ecause they are few in number, are repeated as
echoes of one another and are formally and
meticulously organised. Come and Go is built, for
example, upon the same patterns of repeated,
rhythmic movements, as each of the three women
goes off stage in turn while the others speak of her
illness or imminent death; during her absence, a
finger is raised to the lips of one of the remaining
pair in an unspoken ‘sshh’. This emphasis on the
hands then culminates in the crossed hands of the
three women, seated on the bench together. In
Ohio Impromptu attention is focused on the ‘bowed
head propped on right hand’ of both the Reader
and the Listener, then on the left hand of the
Listener knocking sharply on the table. In
Catastrophe the Director’s female assistant essays
several different positions for the joined hands of
the statuesque Protagonist, before finally raising
them breast-high in a posture that echoed Dürer’s
picture of praying hands. 64 In Nacht und Träume the
consoling hand, as we have seen, echoes visually
the supernatural hand of comfort that appears in
many religious paintings, with or without the
chalice.
When he was directing his own plays, Beckett
lavished immense care on the placing of the hands
of his protagonist. Billie Whitelaw wrote of her
work with him on Footfalls: ‘Sometimes I felt as if
he were a sculptor and I a piece of clay. At other
times I might be a piece of marble that he needed
to chip away at. He would endlessly move my arms
Patrick Magee in That Time, 1976