A Piece of Monologue by Samuel Beckett
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What is the significance of Samuel Beckett's 120th anniversary?
rte.ie forward slash drama on one.
Drama on One is offered as a podcast at rte.ie forward slash drama on one and of course here on RTE Radio 1 on Sunday nights. This year, we celebrate the 120th anniversary of Samuel Beckett's birth. Our Beckett season is available online, featuring radio versions of What, The Old Tune, All That Fall, and tonight's featured work, A Piece of Monologue. The work is introduced by Gerry Dukes, whose stage adaptation with Barry McGovern of Beckett's post-war trilogy of novels, I'll Go On, has played around the world.
How does Gerry Dukes introduce A Piece of Monologue?
So, before we hear the play itself, Gerry introduces a piece of monologue by Samuel Beckett, first performed in 1979.
A piece of monologue begins, the first line is very simple, birth was the death of him. Now that is a cliché, of course it is, but it is more than just a cliché. It resonates in all kinds of directions in the context because this is a stage play. Not just the radio, it's a stage play. The actor doesn't move during the play. He just stands there and speaks. There's a low level of lighting. The actor is downstage left. There's a lamp with a globe. centre stage dimly lit and there is a suggestion of a bed end on stage right which is white to catch the light just like the actor is dressed in bed socks and a bed gown and has white hair so everything is well let's put it like this everything is grey on stage and it's a slow fade up and it's a slow fade down at the end
And the piece is short. It takes a long time to speak. It is, birth was the death of him. And then there are a number of moments in the play which echo other moments in Beckett's work. One of the things that comes into the play is there's a recollection in the speech of a wall upon which was affixed many years ago loads and loads of photographs of loved ones, of family members, of the speaker himself. But over the years, these have been ripped from the wall, torn into shreds. Some of them have left their thumbtacks in the wall still. But there is the suggestion that as one ages, the gradual stripping away of memory, of connections with loved ones, all of these things happen. So this is a play that encapsulates all of that.
all of those deplorable developments in our endings into a kind of trinity, a lament in prose. And it is an extraordinarily powerful thing. And it doesn't go very far. There's a bed, a window, a wall, a lamp. There is three accounts of lighting the lamp. The third one is of a memory of somebody else lighting the lamp. with a spill. The first two are done with matches, which of course would be normal enough in the 20th century, but the spill suggests a pre-electric time and the spill would come from another source of light or heat somewhere else. We use matches to light our candles now, not spills. Beckett remembers and he stitches this into the memory of the speaker. So it is, as I say, it's a trinity, a lament for something that is coming to a close.
We will never be conscious of our ending. This is something that exploited before in the play, Play. One of the notions that informs the play is that the last moment of human consciousness might in fact be infinite. that it doesn't end, despite being boxed and put away. That's a cheery note on which to end.
Gerry Duke's there and Gerry will be back later in the programme to remember his meetings with Samuel Beckett. Gerry was speaking to Kevin Brew and Tommy O'Sullivan was on sound. Next, the play itself. This is a piece of monologue by Samuel Beckett, performed by Barry McGovern and directed by Daniel Reardon.
Birth was the death of him.
What themes are explored in A Piece of Monologue?
Words are few, dying too. Birth was the death of him, ghastly grinning ever since, up at the lid to come, in cradle and crib. At suck, first fiasco, with the first totters, from mammy to nanny and back, all the way, Bandied back and forth. So ghastly grinning on from funeral to funeral to now. This night. Two and a half billion seconds. Again. Two and a half billion seconds. Hard to believe so few.
How does the setting influence the performance of A Piece of Monologue?
From funeral to funeral. Funerals of, he all but said, of loved ones.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the significance of Samuel Beckett's 120th anniversary?
0:00–0:46
2
How does Gerry Dukes introduce A Piece of Monologue?
0:46–5:15
3
What themes are explored in A Piece of Monologue?
5:15–6:14
4
How does the setting influence the performance of A Piece of Monologue?
6:14–11:34
5
What memories are evoked in the monologue?
11:34–15:34
6
How does the play reflect on aging and memory?
15:34–18:12
7
What is the significance of lighting and objects in the play?
18:12–27:21
8
How does the play conclude with themes of existence and loss?
27:21–28:56