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Endgame was Samuel Beckett's very first full-length play following his renowned Waiting for Godot. When it first came out in 1958 it received somewhat mixed reviews (as had Godot a couple of years before), with a few critics charging that Beckett was just doing the exact same thing repeatedly. Renowned literary critic Harold Bloom composed that Endgame "stays a bigger play than any other dramatist has given us in this century.

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For one thing, Endgame is a good example of theatrical "minimalism" that could become hugely influential after in the 20th century. Minimalism is a design based on the easy assumption that the less you place on point, the more important what will be on point becomes. Beckett was clearly fully aware of this increased importance because, not only did he revise the play repeatedly, but he also composed Endgame in French (not his native speech) and then translated it into English (which he did with all of his work following his 1945 novel, Watt). Beckett used French, which he was less comfortable than with English, to ensure that he fought with each phrase -- to ensure that nothing came too easily.

A last point: for those not well acquainted with black comedy, Endgame is an odd and cruel playwith. In the time it was composed, not too long after World War II, apocalyptic visions were much in fashion, and readers had been obsessed with the issue of finding meaning in a world filled with anguish. Beckett can squeeze humor from these visions of individual pain; nonetheless, he never ceases to plead with his characters. Over and above, in all of his work, he portrayed individuals who had endured so much that they had been long past expectation. And yet, even in the absence of expectation, his characters still continue on for reasons that they can't understand.

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