Beckett’s Happy Days is an Absurdist play about Winnie, half buried in earth, talking to herself and taciturn Willie, whilst doing mundane tasks, avoiding thinking of her situation or death.

Happy Days, named by, The Independent as one of the 40 best plays of all time, is by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and first performed in 1961.

It tells the story of Winnie, a woman who is buried up to her waist in a mound of earth, performing routine mundane tasks and spending the entirety of the play talking to herself and her husband, Willie, who is largely hidden and taciturn. What Beckett wants to represent is the endless repetition of dying moments rather than death itself. His characters wish to finish life but the end never comes because the clock becomes slower and slower. There is still time, always.

It explores themes of Loneliness and need for companionship and the failure and emptiness of language as death approaches. Perhaps it also reveals the enduring nature of marriage and love in sickness and with ageing. It is in the absurdist tradition and includes streams of consciousness influenced by Beckett’s respect for James Joyce.

Content Warnings: Themes of hopelessness and death.