Beckett's Legal Scuffles and the Interpretation of the Plays

There has been no systematic study of Samuel Beckett's and his estate's use of copyright powers over his stage plays. Yet their copyright interventions are more than just historical or biographical details; they, and theater-makers' responses to them, constitute an integral part of the plays themselves as they exist in the public sphere. If we attend to the copyright scuffles in the right way, we will enrich our understanding of the texts. Keywords: Samuel Beckett / copyright / law / public sphere / theater
'The pace of scripted language is slow,' one reviewer wrote about a Melbourne production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame in 2015 (Badham). '[The] stage world is distant, and stage actions repetitive [...]