{"id":438,"date":"2018-07-18T18:16:26","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T17:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/staging-beckett\/?page_id=438"},"modified":"2019-05-14T11:17:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T10:17:46","slug":"happy-days","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/staging-beckett\/happy-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Happy Days Learning Materials Page<\/h2>\n

On this page you will find lots of useful teaching and learning resources including an introduction to the genesis of the play, scholarship on the play and its production history, links to our blog, recent publications on Happy Days<\/em>, a case study, discussion questions for students and teachers, and so on.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w0e-ulwCL5U<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiona Shaw as Winnie in Deborah Warner’s 2007 production of\u00a0Happy Days\u00a0<\/em>at the Lyttelton Theatre.<\/p>\n

You may also be interested in Robert Wilson’s\u00a0Happy Days<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>premiered on 24 September 2008 at the Grand Theatre of Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

Beckett\u2019s Happy Days<\/em>: A Critical Introduction<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Click on the subheadings below to explore\u00a0Happy Days\u00a0<\/em>in more detail.<\/p>\n

Genesis<\/a>:<\/span> Beckett’s process when writing the play<\/span><\/h4>\n

Overview<\/a>:<\/span> Beckett’s comments to Brenda Bruce and an outline of the play<\/span><\/h4>\n

An actor’s point of view<\/a>:<\/span> Billie Whitelaw talks to Linda Ben-Zvi<\/span><\/h4>\n

Scholarship<\/a>:<\/span> Concepts explored by scholars in Beckett Studies<\/span><\/h4>\n

Case study<\/a>:<\/span> Katie Mitchell’s\u00a0Gl\u00fcckliche Tage<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

Significant performances and reviews<\/a>:<\/span> List of noteworthy performances\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Manuscripts<\/a>:<\/span> Introductory list of MS references to notebooks and typescripts<\/span><\/h4>\n

Recent articles<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n

Recommended reading<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n

Key questions<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n

Additional material<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n

Quiz<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Genesis\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beckett completed Happy Days <\/em>on 14 May 1961, five years after Endgame<\/em>, twelve years after Waiting for Godot<\/em>. It took him a year and a half to complete (he began writing the play on 8 October 1960). This lengthy and difficult process is indicated in the many titles Beckett considered for the play: \u2018Female Solo\u2019, \u2018A Low Comedy\u2019, \u2018Tender Mercies\u2019, \u2018Many Mercies\u2019, and \u2018Great Mercies\u2019.<\/p>\n

The first draft of HD\u00a0<\/em>was begun in the \u2018\u00c9t\u00e9 56\u2019 notebook under the heading \u2018Female Solo\u2019 but breaks off after three pages (UoR MS 1227\/7\/7\/1). A second holograph was begun on the same day. At this stage, the play was in one act only. An undated typescript of the one act version marks the next stage in the development of the play. This is followed by a further holograph version, in which the play now appears in two acts. Then comes the first typescript of Act 2 and after this a typescript of the full play. None of these typescripts are dated. The final holograph, which Beckett begun on 29 March 1961, is followed by two additional undated typescripts.<\/p>\n

Through genetic studies of HD<\/em>, we can gain an understanding of Beckett\u2019s creative process and see when and where he makes both minor and major alterations. This contributes to our perception of Beckett the playwright and Beckett the director. Perhaps the most striking difference between the first and second holograph is that Tom, a male figure wearing pyjamas and sleeping, is present onstage and then removed. In the second holograph, Tom becomes \u2018Bee\u2019 (or B) and later \u2018Edward\u2019. Additionally, an alarm clock is replaced by an \u2018invisible bell\u2019, which means that Winnie no longer controls \u2018the hour for waking\u2019 but is controlled by an unseen force (much like the light in Play\u00a0<\/em>and the goad in Act Without Words<\/em> II<\/em>).<\/p>\n

For a genetic study of Happy Days<\/em>, see Rosemary Pountney, Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett\u2019s Drama, 1956-1976; From <\/em>All That fall to <\/em>Footfalls\u00a0with commentaries on the latest plays <\/em>(Gerard\u2019s Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988). Pountney discusses how ‘vague’ – from a manuscript note from the ‘first typescript of both acts’ of HD\u00a0<\/em>– describes Beckett’s wider compositional process (Pountney, 1988, 149).\u00a0Also see S. E. Gontarski, Beckett\u2019s Happy Days. A Manuscript Study\u00a0<\/em>(Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State university Libraries, 1977) In this study, Gontarski considers the role of Winnie\u2019s quotations, her song and her stories. Gontarski writes:<\/p>\n

In Beckett\u2019s selection of quotation and oblique references, virtually every historical epoch is represented: pre-Christian Greek philosophies, the blind religiosity and Christian idealism of the Middle Ages, renaissance Humanism, eighteenth-century Rationalism and nineteenth-century romanticism. The philosophers, literature and religions of Western man comprise the fragmented mythology against which Winnie fails and suffers and like a jeweller\u2019s foil, mythology highlights the suffering. (Gontarski, 1977, 73)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From his observations of the various stages involved in Beckett\u2019s conception for HD<\/em>, Gontarski suggests that in the drafts Beckett moves \u2018not toward a naturalistic, precisely-defined physical world, but toward an abstract clarity, an image free of cluttering detail.\u2019 (Ibid., 43)<\/p>\n

The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett <\/em>ed. James Knowlson (London: Grove Press, 1985) is essential reading for a thorough examination of Beckett\u2019s notes on the design and manuscript of HD<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project for genetic editions of Beckett\u2019s work: http:\/\/www.beckettarchive.org<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

On 7 April 1994, Beckett spoke to Brenda Bruce, who performed Winnie in the first London production of HD <\/em>at the Royal Court in 1962 (dir. George Devine), about his thoughts when devising the play:<\/p>\n

Well I thought that the most dreadful thing that could happen to anybody, would be not to be allowed to sleep so that just as you\u2019re dropping off there\u2019d be a \u201cDong\u201d and you\u2019d have to keep awake; you\u2019re sinking into the ground alive and it\u2019s full of ants; and the sun is shining endlessly day and night and there is not a tree \u2026 there\u2019s no shade, nothing, and that bell wakes you up all the time and all you\u2019ve got is a little parcel of things to see you through life [\u2026] And I thought who would cope with that and go down singing, only a woman. (Beckett in Knowlson, 1996, 501)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The following extract by Katherine Worth’s study Waiting for Godot and Happy Days<\/em>,\u00a0provides a succinct outline of HD<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The situation is one of the strangest in the whole history of theatre. In the first act a middle-aged woman, immured to her waist in a mound of earth, addresses a more-or-less continuous monologue to her husband whose head is just visible above the slope at the back of her mound. Willie seldom speaks. When he does, Winnie responds with joy: \u201cOh you are going to talk to me today, this is going to be a happy day!\u201d Other resources for seeing her through her day are a capacious bag with a motley assortment of possessions, including a musical-box and a revolver and a parasol which catches fire when she puts it up. Her sleeping and waling are controlled by a bell but she creates a time world of her own, made up of memories, quotations, stories and dreams, interspersed with rare dialogue. She sets the musical-box playing the \u201cMerry Widow\u201d waltz and Willie joins in with the tune but she finds herself unable to sing. In the second act Winnie has sunk further into the earth which is now up to her neck: she cannot turn her head and can indicate feeling only through her voice and her eyes and facial movements. Willie is not heard or seen until the end of the act but she continues to talk as if he were there, reminding him of their romance, their wedding, the feelings they once had. Finally Willie emerges from behind the mound, an aged figure in wedding clothes, and crawls toward her to be received with a mixture of delight and other, more doubtful feelings. Now at last she is able to sing \u201cher\u201d song, the \u201cMerry Widow\u201d waltz. The play ends in a long-held pause with Winnie looking down at Willie, still on his hands and knees at the foot of the mound. (Worth, 1990, 34)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>An actor’s point of view<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Billie Whitelaw, known unanimously as Beckett\u2019s favourite actor, each role she embodied struck a personal chord. Whitelaw spoke to Linda Ben-Zvi about taking on the role of Winnie:<\/p>\n

Whenever I\u2019ve read anything of Beckett\u2019s that I\u2019ve been asked to do, the first thing that I\u2019ve always wondered is how it is that everything he writes seems to be about my life. When I read Happy Days<\/em>, I thought, what the hell was this man doing writing about me? He didn\u2019t even know me. Now having said that, Beckett\u2019s women are me, and therefore I don\u2019t know how I can discuss these women because they are all about me. (Whitelaw in Ben-Zvi, 1992, 3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole interview can be found in Ben-Zvi, Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives\u00a0<\/em>(Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992).\u00a0Whitelaw also spoke to Ben-Zvi about the arduous process of getting the rhythm of the language right for Winnie:<\/p>\n

[I]t is so important to get the music right in Beckett, and I do think of the parts in terms of music. Beckett sometimes conducts me, something like a metronome. For example, I remember when we started working on Happy Days<\/em>, I thought Winnie would say \u201cAnother happy day.\u201d Sprightly. And Sam said \u2013 let me see if I can get it right \u2013 [flat monotone<\/em>] \u201cA-no-ther hap-py day.\u201d And in brackets I put in, \u201cOh, Christ, here we go. Another sodding twelve hours to get through. Right. Off we go. Christ, okay, sun is up, we\u2019ve got till sundown to get through.\u201d (Ibid., 6)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In her autobiography \u2026Who He? An<\/em> Autobiography<\/em>,\u00a0Whitelaw writes: \u2018Sam said the play was a sonata for voice and movement. By that he meant that everything was precisely tuned \u2013 like notes of music.\u2019 (Whitelaw, 1995, 151)<\/p>\n

See Tricia Kelly\u2019s interview with Mark Taylor-Batty on the Staging Beckett website for interesting insights into performing the role of Winnie in Happy Days<\/em>: https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/staging-beckett\/interviews-talks\/tricia-kelly-interview\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Scholarship<\/strong><\/p>\n

Women in Beckett: Winnie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Linda Ben-Zvi:<\/p>\n

While the fiction is for the most part reserved for the male point of view [\u2026] the stage dramas, particularly the works after Happy Days<\/em>, become the place where women emerge as full-drawn, independent figures in their own right. They are usually not aberrations of male desire and fear, not stereotypic images of myth and tradition, but real women living in the same world as Beckett\u2019s men, prey to the same metaphysical conditions but reacting in ways that are comments on their position as women in a given situation and a given society that has shaped them.<\/p>\n

In fact, by count women dominate the Beckett stage. In the stage plays from Happy Days <\/em>on, there are ten women, eight men, and in What Where <\/em>five of indeterminate sex, designated \u201che\u201d but bearing no other visual marks of gender. More significant than their numbers, however, is the power of their depiction. With the sensitive eye of a painter, Beckett creates portraits of women that go beyond simple gender identification. His women are among the most arresting and powerful that a dramatist \u2013 particularly a male dramatist \u2013 has ever sketched. Immediately the following images come to mind: Winnie sinking into her mound and her routines in Happy Days<\/em>; the trio of women in Come and Go<\/em>stepping in and out of the unlit darkness, marking with their movements the steps from youth to age; the solitary walker in Footfalls <\/em>pacing herself to oblivion; the aged rocker in Rockaby <\/em>saying less but demanding \u201cmore\u201d of her fading life; and \u2013 the most searing gender image of all \u2013 Mouth in Not I<\/em>, a gushing orifice spewing the words of her fragmented life, attempting to talk herself into being.<\/p>\n

Beckett\u2019s portraits of women, however, offer more than the human form or a part thereof; they offer a visual concomitant to what it is to be <\/em>female. Men may also be stuck: in routines that deaden their perceptions, in time that holds them fast, in the earth that will eventually cover them. They too need company, someone to hear them in the wilderness. But it is hard to imagine a male Winnie reacting as she does. Conditioned to \u201cmake the best of things,\u201d to \u201csay one\u2019s prayers,\u201d recite one\u2019s \u201cclassics,\u201d take care of one\u2019s bodily functions, and repair one\u2019s physical appearance, Winnie goes through the rituals that society ascribes to, and allows, the female. Parasol, hat, and capacious bag are all the accoutrements she has inherited. Even her anger and her fear must be expressed indirectly in her fictionalized account of Millie, the surrogate figure who is allowed to scream as the proper Winnie is not.<\/p>\n

Winnie could well be described as a caricature of the middle-aged woman from Borough Green, but Beckett prevents this interpretation by allowing her an awareness of her own predicament and her own limited means to ward off the despair she experiences. Her \u201con Winnie\u201d indicates her determination to do whatever she can, with whatever she has, to survive. Beckett\u2019s Winnie is thus not only a woman; she is the physical embodiment of the condition <\/em>of being a woman in her society. Not a stereotype, she is the result of stereotypic views of women. Beckett suggests what culture offers as ballast for a woman like Winnie. Not much. And certainly not much more for her husband, Willie, also heir to gender-delineated roles. He can only muse over want ads that, as a male, he is expected to answer, and dress to play the part of the romantic gentleman come a-courting or, perhaps, a-killing. Happy Days <\/em>illustrates the mythic, gendered tale of male mobility and female fixity, of the desire to leave and the desire to stay. The experiences of both are inscribed by their gender and circumscribed by a society as encasing as the earth in which she is buried and in which he burrows.<\/p>\n

Beckett\u2019s sensitivity to the loss of freedom associated with typical gender roles is evident in Happy Days<\/em>. But what is even more remarkable about Beckett is his ability to see this dilemma from the position of his female figure. It is she who is the protagonist, she who occupies stage front, her particular angle of vision the shaping vision of the play. (Ben-Zvi, 1992, xii-xiii)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Further reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rina Kim, Women and Ireland as Beckett\u2019s Lost Others <\/em>(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)<\/p>\n

Mary Bryden, Women in Samuel Beckett\u2019s Prose and Drama <\/em>(Basingstoke: MacMillan Press, 1993)<\/p>\n

HD <\/em>and Psychoanalysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Katherine Weiss, The Plays of Samuel Beckett\u00a0<\/em>(London: Methuen Drama, 2013):<\/p>\n

As is evident in this play, Beckett was keenly interested in the ways in which individuals struggle between the desire to disown their past with the need to speak of it. The inability to resolve this tension result in a recalling or replaying of the past [\u2026] In Winnie\u2019s need to fill in the silence with constant talk of the past, trying to remember her classics perhaps in an attempt to forget memories of an unhappy childhood, she displays signs of trauma. (Weiss, 2013, 40)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is clear that Winnie\u2019s happiness is both generated and endangered by her recollections of temps perdu<\/em>. From the outset, Beckett associates time with threat in the form of the piercing bell; a sound that is repeated and therefore reinforced as the play\/Winnie\u2019s struggle goes on. Weiss adds:<\/p>\n

By incorporating the image of the musical-box, the revolver and the sound of the alarm clock in Happy Days<\/em>, Beckett depicts Winnie as struggling between remembering and forgetting her past, a struggle which ultimately results in the return of wounds of unhappier days. (Ibid., 47)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Further reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Moorjani, \u2018Beckett and Psychoanalysis\u2019 in Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies<\/em>, ed. Lois Oppenheim (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 172-193.<\/p>\n

Landscape and the political context<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phyllis Gaffney,\u00a0Healing Amid the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-L\u00f4\u00a0<\/em>(Dublin: A&A Farmar, 1999)<\/p>\n

Phyllis Gaffney suggests these \u2018unhappier days\u2019 refer to Beckett\u2019s experience at Saint-L\u00f4 during the Second World War (see Beckett\u2019s text intended for broadcast entitled \u2018The Capital of Ruins\u2019). Gaffney claims that the image of Winnie in HD\u00a0<\/em>\u2018echoes the real experience of a Saint-L\u00f4 citizen who was found by rescue-workers standing upright, unable to move, stuck in the ruins of his house\u2019 and \u2018Winnie\u2019s care to look her best recalls the women of the town, who would emerge into the sunlight from their dusty cellars, beautifully turned out in starched white blouses\u2019. (Gaffney, 1999, 76) As Winnie occupies a ruinous space of \u2018scorched grass<\/em>\u2019 and finds that her toothpaste and lipstick are both running out, subtextual hits of a war-torn world surface. Moreover, Winnie\u2019s desperate optimism echoes Beckett\u2019s conscious affirmation of the positive attitudes of the people of Saint L\u00f4 in \u2018The Capital of the Ruins\u2019.<\/p>\n

Further reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carl Lavey, \u2018Ecology in Beckett\u2019s Theatre Garden: Or How to Cultivate the Oikos\u2019, Contemporary Theatre Review<\/em>, 28.1 (2018), 10-26.<\/p>\n

Scenography and Beckett\u2019s collaborative process<\/strong><\/p>\n

British theatre designer Jocelyn Herbert (1917-2003) had considerable impact on what we think of the visual aesthetic of Beckett\u2019s theatre. Herbert\u2019s first involvement with Beckett\u2019s theatre was in 1957\/8 when she designed the double bill of the English language premiere of Endgame <\/em>at the Royal Court, directed by George Devine, and the world premiere of Krapp\u2019s Last Tape <\/em>directed by Donald McWhinnie. The importance of Jocelyn Herbert to Beckett\u2019s theatre productions is clearly outlined by Anna McMullan in her essay \u2018Samuel Beckett\u2019s scenographic collaboration with Jocelyn Herbert\u2019 (2012). McMullan looks closely at Herbert\u2019s scenographic contribution to the sensory and affective impact of Beckett\u2019s plays, arguing that the iconic stage images we associate with Beckett\u2019s theatre and conception of aspects of the mise en sc\u00e8ne <\/em>of his plays are due, in part, to this collaboration. By carefully plotting the evolution of Beckett\u2019s performances in different productions, McMullan\u2019s essay suggests that \u2018there remains plenty of scope for scenographic reinterpretation in the changing conditions of each production.\u2019 (McMullan, 2012, 17) McMullan writes of Beckett\u2019s collaboration with Herbert:<\/p>\n

As frequently happened with the diverse premieres of [Beckett\u2019s] plays in the United States, France, Germany and London, what Beckett learned from one production would inform subsequent productions. Since many of Beckett\u2019s plays had their British premiere at the Royal Court Herbert was responsible for some design decisions that both reflected and in some cases influenced shifts in Beckett\u2019s envisioning of particular plays. For example, Herbert designed two productions of Happy Days <\/em>at the Royal Court some fifteen years apart, and when she returned to the play for the second time she made some significant changes. The actress Brenda Bruce had been brought in at a late stage for the first stage for the first production in 1962, directed by [George] Devine, while for the second in 1979, Beckett directed Billie Whitelaw with whom he had already built up a close working relationship. (Ibid., 10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>Case Study: <\/strong>Katie Mitchell\u2019s Gl\u00fcckliche Tage <\/em>(Happy Days<\/em>).<\/p>\n