false 104627 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg 104627 8 805893 1958 Krapp's Last Tape total:714|5:266|4:260|3:137|2:46|1:5| 714 2878 853 33 1433597 3.94 19997 1171 50827784 2172814 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.05 694 1958 3 0 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 29 13:18:56 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 13:24:11 -0700 2009 more...]]> 37093352 974210 1086995 039417223X 9780394172231 2 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1086995.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 3.50 16 In early productions he'd a white face & purple nose, details excised later. "Beckett has been extremely wary of over stressing the clownish elements in Krapp’s physique, dress & behavior. Even in the 1st production at the Royal Court Theatre, the purple nose of the tippler, which is referred to in the printed text, was much toned down & has since been abandoned". The "surprising pair of dirty white boots, size 10 at least, very narrow & pointed," suggesting an "ex-dandy rather than the former cricketer," survived longer. Like Henry in Embers, another failed writer, he's a man of independent means.
"When the plays that follow All That Fall begin, the 'action' in traditional terms has already taken place. From Krapp’s Last Tape onwards all that's left in most of the plays is recapitulation, a struggle with voices in the head & a masochism that both demands & dreads the assault of memory."
Krapp sits at a desk in his den. There's a white light above. The stage's extremities are in darkness. Black & white imagery continues throughout; in fact, Beckett’s Berlin "notebook lists no less than 27 points in the play at which the alternation of light & dark is stressed." Twice he turns, peering into darkness. Beckett explained to Martin Held at rehearsal: "Old Nick’s there. Death is standing behind him & unconsciously he's looking for it."
He checks his pocket watch periodically as if waiting for the exact moment when he was born before he begins. He's time for a banana, a fruit he's fond of. He retrieves a large one from a locked drawer, sensuously strokes it, peels it & nearly slips on a dropped skin. Finishing, he locates another. He throws the skin into the pit but ends up not eating the banana which gets stuck into a pocket of his waistcoat, its end rudely hanging out. He decides on a drink instead & shuffles into the darkness to get one. Finished, he returns with an old ledger.
On his desk are a reel-to-reel recorder & some tins (originally cardboard boxes) holding recordings. In some productions the desk is empty at 1st & he brings out the tapes & recorder after the ledger. He consults the ledger. The tape he's to review is 5th in Box 3. He reads aloud from the ledger. It's obvious that words alone aren't jogging his memory. He takes childish pleasure saying ‘spool’.
The tape we get to listen to along with Krapp was recorded when he turned 39. The voice on the tape is strong, self-important, clearly him. As he settles himself in his seat he knocks a tin on the floor. He curses, switches off the playback, sweeps the remaining tins onto the floor, rewinds the tape to begin again.
The voice on the tape mentions the fact that he’s just celebrated his birthday alone "at the wine house" jotting down notes in preparation for the recording session later. In earlier drafts the place was peopled but Beckett progressively emptied the play of all but essential characters. The voice confesses to having consumed three bananas & only just resisting urges for another. His bowels are still a problem, one obviously exacerbated by eating too many bananas. "The new light above my table is a great improvement," reports Krapp, before describing how much he enjoys leaving it, wandering off into the darkness, so he can return to the zone of light identified with his essential self. He notes how quiet the night is. Even his neighbor, elderly Mrs. McGlome, who habitually sings in the evenings, is silent.
The voice reports he's just reviewed a tape from his late 20s. It amuses him to comment on his impressions of what he was like in his 20s. The 69-year-old Krapp joins in the derisory laughter. The young man he was back then is described as idealistic, even unrealistic in his expectations. The 39-year-old looks back on the 20ish Krapp with the same level of contempt as the 20ish Krapp appears to have displayed for the young man he saw himself for in his late teens. Each can see clearly the fool he was but only time will reveal what kind of fool he's become.
The taped voice continues with a review of his last year, the year his mother died. He talks about sitting on a bench outside the nursing home waiting for news she'd passed away. When the moment comes he's in the process of throwing a ball to a dog. He ends up simply leaving the ball with the creature even tho a part of him regrets not hanging onto it as a memento. Krapp at 69 is more interested in his younger self’s use of the rather archaic word "viduity" ("widowhood" in early drafts) than in the reaction of the voice on the tape to their mother’s passing. He stops listening to look it up in a large dictionary.
Done, he returns to the tape. The voice starts to describe the revelation he experienced at the end of a pier. "The dark that Krapp has always struggled to keep under is, one may guess, in reality his most valuable subject-matter &, in particular, his greatest source of enlightenment." He grows impatient, getting worked up when his younger self starts enthusing about this. He fast-forwards almost to the end of the tape to escape the onslaught of words. Suddenly the mood has changed. He finds himself in the middle of a description of a romantic liaison between him & a woman in a punt. He lets it play out, then rewinds the tape to hear the complete episode. Throughout he remains transfixed & visibly relives the moment.
Afterwards, Krapp carefully removes this tape, locates a fresh one, loads it, checks the back of an envelope where he's made notes earlier, discards them & starts. He's scathing when it comes to his assessment of his 39-year-old self & is glad to see the back of him. He finds he's nothing he wants to record for posterity, save the fact he "Revelled in the word spool." But he does mention a trip to the park & attending Vespers where he dozed off & fell off a pew. His sex life has been reduced to periodic visits by an old prostitute recalling the jibes made in Eh Joe: "That slut that comes on Saturday, you pay her, don't you?...Penny a hoist tuppence as long as you like."
Unlike his younger selves, Krapp has nothing good to say about the man he's become. Even the idea of making one "last effort" when it comes to his writing upsets him. He retreats into memories from his distant past, gathering holly & walking the dog of a Sunday morning. He then remembers the girl on the punt, wrenches off the tape he's been recording, throws it away & replays the entire section again from the previous tape. It is a scene of masochism reminiscent of Croak in Words & Music, tormenting himself with an image of a woman’s face. This time he allows the tape to play out. It ends with the 39-year-old determinately not regretting the choices he has made, certain that what he'd produce in the years to come would more than compensate him for any potential loss of happiness.
Krapp makes no response to this but allows the tape to play on until the final curtain. "Krapp’s spool of life is almost wound, & the silent tape is both the time it has left to run & the silence into which he must pass." Whereas the younger Krapp talks about the "fire in me", the tired old man who sits listening is simply "burning to be gone." The title of the play seems obvious, that what we've witnessed is the recording of Krapp’s final tape, "yet there is an ambiguity: 'last' can mean 'most recent' as well as 'ultimate'. The speaker in Browning’s My Last Duchess is already planning to marry his next duchess…Still, one hopes for Krapp’s sake that he will be gone before another year is over."]]> 1958 4 0 false Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 1971 Thu Nov 06 23:43:32 -0800 2008 Sun Apr 05 21:48:30 -0700 2009 1
Two ...more...]]> 55188197 1575249 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 2 0 false Tue May 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed May 06 16:03:40 -0700 2009 Wed May 06 17:45:33 -0700 2009 more...]]> 70588058 2541784 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 4 0 false Thu Sep 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 07:46:45 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 13:41:43 -0700 2009 15 Minute The Idea Amazing about Our looking To Our Memories That Put On Tape, It's Make Me Ask:If our Memories Can die In our Hearts Or life In Our Tapes Or spools ??
SO, I'll take The answer From Krapp And Say Like His Said "SPOOL"
I Lovi...more...]]> 17160688 968847 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Thu Mar 06 09:30:53 -0800 2008 Thu Mar 06 09:31:06 -0800 2008 more...]]> 66732550 2269105 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 4 0 false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 09 07:17:34 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 09 07:17:57 -0700 2009 48809484 2113020 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 3 0 false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Tue Mar 10 10:12:18 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 10 10:13:19 -0700 2009 52870524 698826 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1978 Thu Apr 16 01:03:47 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 16 01:05:57 -0700 2009 76693118 811567 1086995 039417223X 9780394172231 2 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1086995.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 In early productions he'd a white face & purple nose, details excised later. "Beckett has been extremely wary of over stressing the clownish elements in Krapp’s physique, dress & behavior. Even in the 1st production at the Royal Court Theatre, the purple nose of the tippler, which is referred to in the printed text, was much toned down & has since been abandoned". The "surprising pair of dirty white boots, size 10 at least, very narrow & pointed," suggesting an "ex-dandy rather than the former cricketer," survived longer. Like Henry in Embers, another failed writer, he's a man of independent means.
"When the plays that follow All That Fall begin, the 'action' in traditional terms has already taken place. From Krapp’s Last Tape onwards all that's left in most of the plays is recapitulation, a struggle with voices in the head & a masochism that both demands & dreads the assault of memory."
Krapp sits at a desk in his den. There's a white light above. The stage's extremities are in darkness. Black & white imagery continues throughout; in fact, Beckett’s Berlin "notebook lists no less than 27 points in the play at which the alternation of light & dark is stressed." Twice he turns, peering into darkness. Beckett explained to Martin Held at rehearsal: "Old Nick’s there. Death is standing behind him & unconsciously he's looking for it."
He checks his pocket watch periodically as if waiting for the exact moment when he was born before he begins. He's time for a banana, a fruit he's fond of. He retrieves a large one from a locked drawer, sensuously strokes it, peels it & nearly slips on a dropped skin. Finishing, he locates another. He throws the skin into the pit but ends up not eating the banana which gets stuck into a pocket of his waistcoat, its end rudely hanging out. He decides on a drink instead & shuffles into the darkness to get one. Finished, he returns with an old ledger.
On his desk are a reel-to-reel recorder & some tins (originally cardboard boxes) holding recordings. In some productions the desk is empty at 1st & he brings out the tapes & recorder after the ledger. He consults the ledger. The tape he's to review is 5th in Box 3. He reads aloud from the ledger. It's obvious that words alone aren't jogging his memory. He takes childish pleasure saying ‘spool’.
The tape we get to listen to along with Krapp was recorded when he turned 39. The voice on the tape is strong, self-important, clearly him. As he settles himself in his seat he knocks a tin on the floor. He curses, switches off the playback, sweeps the remaining tins onto the floor, rewinds the tape to begin again.
The voice on the tape mentions the fact that he’s just celebrated his birthday alone "at the wine house" jotting down notes in preparation for the recording session later. In earlier drafts the place was peopled but Beckett progressively emptied the play of all but essential characters. The voice confesses to having consumed three bananas & only just resisting urges for another. His bowels are still a problem, one obviously exacerbated by eating too many bananas. "The new light above my table is a great improvement," reports Krapp, before describing how much he enjoys leaving it, wandering off into the darkness, so he can return to the zone of light identified with his essential self. He notes how quiet the night is. Even his neighbor, elderly Mrs. McGlome, who habitually sings in the evenings, is silent.
The voice reports he's just reviewed a tape from his late 20s. It amuses him to comment on his impressions of what he was like in his 20s. The 69-year-old Krapp joins in the derisory laughter. The young man he was back then is described as idealistic, even unrealistic in his expectations. The 39-year-old looks back on the 20ish Krapp with the same level of contempt as the 20ish Krapp appears to have displayed for the young man he saw himself for in his late teens. Each can see clearly the fool he was but only time will reveal what kind of fool he's become.
The taped voice continues with a review of his last year, the year his mother died. He talks about sitting on a bench outside the nursing home waiting for news she'd passed away. When the moment comes he's in the process of throwing a ball to a dog. He ends up simply leaving the ball with the creature even tho a part of him regrets not hanging onto it as a memento. Krapp at 69 is more interested in his younger self’s use of the rather archaic word "viduity" ("widowhood" in early drafts) than in the reaction of the voice on the tape to their mother’s passing. He stops listening to look it up in a large dictionary.
Done, he returns to the tape. The voice starts to describe the revelation he experienced at the end of a pier. "The dark that Krapp has always struggled to keep under is, one may guess, in reality his most valuable subject-matter &, in particular, his greatest source of enlightenment." He grows impatient, getting worked up when his younger self starts enthusing about this. He fast-forwards almost to the end of the tape to escape the onslaught of words. Suddenly the mood has changed. He finds himself in the middle of a description of a romantic liaison between him & a woman in a punt. He lets it play out, then rewinds the tape to hear the complete episode. Throughout he remains transfixed & visibly relives the moment.
Afterwards, Krapp carefully removes this tape, locates a fresh one, loads it, checks the back of an envelope where he's made notes earlier, discards them & starts. He's scathing when it comes to his assessment of his 39-year-old self & is glad to see the back of him. He finds he's nothing he wants to record for posterity, save the fact he "Revelled in the word spool." But he does mention a trip to the park & attending Vespers where he dozed off & fell off a pew. His sex life has been reduced to periodic visits by an old prostitute recalling the jibes made in Eh Joe: "That slut that comes on Saturday, you pay her, don't you?...Penny a hoist tuppence as long as you like."
Unlike his younger selves, Krapp has nothing good to say about the man he's become. Even the idea of making one "last effort" when it comes to his writing upsets him. He retreats into memories from his distant past, gathering holly & walking the dog of a Sunday morning. He then remembers the girl on the punt, wrenches off the tape he's been recording, throws it away & replays the entire section again from the previous tape. It is a scene of masochism reminiscent of Croak in Words & Music, tormenting himself with an image of a woman’s face. This time he allows the tape to play out. It ends with the 39-year-old determinately not regretting the choices he has made, certain that what he'd produce in the years to come would more than compensate him for any potential loss of happiness.
Krapp makes no response to this but allows the tape to play on until the final curtain. "Krapp’s spool of life is almost wound, & the silent tape is both the time it has left to run & the silence into which he must pass." Whereas the younger Krapp talks about the "fire in me", the tired old man who sits listening is simply "burning to be gone." The title of the play seems obvious, that what we've witnessed is the recording of Krapp’s final tape, "yet there is an ambiguity: 'last' can mean 'most recent' as well as 'ultimate'. The speaker in Browning’s My Last Duchess is already planning to marry his next duchess…Still, one hopes for Krapp’s sake that he will be gone before another year is over."]]> 1958 5 0 false Wed Nov 04 08:41:42 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 04 08:42:41 -0800 2009 60993449 2415818 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Wed Jun 24 18:05:36 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 24 18:06:06 -0700 2009 2260782 4693 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 3 0 false Fri Jun 22 12:28:00 -0700 2007 Wed Dec 16 22:22:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 81857772 3066727 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Dec 23 09:12:06 -0800 2009 Wed Dec 23 09:12:34 -0800 2009 80550307 3026314 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Thu Dec 10 10:47:18 -0800 2009 Thu Dec 10 16:09:22 -0800 2009 51422399 2048528 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 4 0 false Wed Apr 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 03 16:39:27 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 13:45:21 -0700 2009 9729040 132800 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 4 0 false Thu Nov 29 15:28:38 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 21 20:18:31 -0800 2007 more...]]> 9456475 636744 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 4 0 false Fri Nov 23 11:34:17 -0800 2007 Sat Nov 24 17:08:43 -0800 2007 more...]]> 14164807 851003 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1992 Thu Jan 31 09:45:58 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 31 09:47:15 -0800 2008
if i had my way, i would direct and star in this play, off-broadway or someplace...maybe my house? ]]> 8685719 579523 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 3 0 false Sat May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Mon Nov 05 03:16:24 -0800 2007 Mon Nov 05 03:26:47 -0800 2007 23717597 1055726 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Wed Jun 04 16:18:08 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 04 17:09:01 -0700 2008 ]]> 6868103 410801 104627 0571062091 9780571062096 31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829m/104627.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171520829s/104627.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104627.Krapp_s_Last_Tape 4.03 714 1958 5 0 false Wed Sep 26 21:23:34 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 26 22:36:29 -0700 2007 8 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=104627