Jonathan Bate

Mad about the Bard

issue 08 April 2006

At school there was a group of us who thought that Samuel Beckett was the coolest person on the planet. What could be more thrilling than the apocalyptic minimalism of a play featuring two people who lived in dustbins? We found validation for our passion when a teacher drew our attention to the Polish critic Jan Kott’s essay comparing Beckett’s Endgame with King Lear in his Shakespeare Our Contemporary.

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