'Pattern is as crucial to Beckett's eye as to his ear', writes Gontarski, 'and that patterning dominates his theatrical notes: motion is repeated to echo other motion, posture to echo other posture, gestures to echo other gestures, sounds to echo other sounds. The principle of analogy is fundamental.'

Samuel Beckett directed two separate productions of Endgame, once with the Schiller Theater Company in Berlin in 1967, and again with the San Quentin Drama Workshop in 1980. For both productions he prepared detailed notes that are reproduced here in facsimile for the first time.

Beckett's revisions for both his productions maintain a consistency - with minor variations to allow for strengths or weaknesses of particular actors - that make a 'corrected' (Beckett's word) text not only possible but desirable, a reflection of the substantial amount of thinking and theatrical testing the work has undergone since its publication. No previous edition - English, French or German - includes the complete production-generated changes. This text was approved by Samuel Beckett.

This volume completes the publication of this series of notebooks, the plays in question being Play, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Footfalls, That Time and What Where. Professor Gontarski brings his own experience as a director to editing this book, which provides a continuing revelation of the playwright's approach to the staging of his work. To these 'shorter plays' Samuel Beckett devoted the same care and attention to the details of textual revision and stagecraft as he did to the full-length works, and this book contains revised texts prepared on the same editorial basis as before.