The Beckettian Problem Play:An Absurdist's Concerns In The Modernist Era

Samuel Beckett is widely recognized as one of the key figures who founded and cultivated “Theatre of the Absurd,” a style of theatre evolved from works by avant-garde European playwrights in the late 1950 s. However, extant studies on Beckett's contributions to the modernist drama, particularly his covert concerns for social problems remain superficial and inadequate.The present author argues that Beckettian plays, while embodying distinguished modernistic features in dramatic content and form, probe into roots of ominous evils that further degrade the pathetic human condition.Conducive to the flourishing of modern drama, some Beckettian plays Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days, and so on, placidly and apprehensively scrutinize ontological issues of human existence. In fact, they are logical extensions of the Ibsenite problem plays in the age of modernism.