Beckett’s Endgame structures drama through parodic categories and musical form.

Evidence

Endgame, written in the mid-1950s, is a more bitter version of Waiting for Godot: circling the abyss, but still a game. The categories of drama, treated parodically, and the principles of musical form give a minimum of structure to the contents. There is still a soliloquy in Endgame, for example; but it is nothing more than a series of halting, empty-sounding allusions. Instead of the curtain rising, Hamm takes a handkerchief off his face. This produces a play which is merciless towards everything that is no longer possible after the `end’, and which nevertheless takes what is no longer possible and presents it on stage. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2240

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s 1961 analysis of Endgame, and to the broader Frankfurt School theme of art after the ‘end’ of meaning — resonates with Wiggershaus’s chapter on Adorno’s aesthetics. — connects to: Beckett’s crystalline dramatic structure concealed sharp insertions like Berg’s tonality; Beckett’s later work substituted phonetic and gestural structure for discursive meaning. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2239; Adorno heard Endgame’s dialogues as governed by musical listening, not logic — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2241 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Illustrates how Beckett deployed musical form — repetition, leitmotif, rhythmic structure — as the organizing principle of a play, a key concept in Adorno’s aesthetic theory.

Broader Connections

• Adorno heard Endgame’s dialogues as governed by musical listening, not logic #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2241