Reading Order
Happy Days Reading Order
Happy Days (1961) by Samuel Beckett is one of the most disturbing plays in the repertoire — Winnie, buried to her waist in a mound of scorched earth (and in Act Two, buried to her neck), talking compulsively through a long, blazing day while her husband Willie grunts from behind the mound. The play is about the habit of happiness: Winnie's determination to find something to be glad about in a situation that is, by any reasonable measure, horrific. She has her bag (a revolver, a musical box, a parasol, a toothbrush, a mirror, an emery board, a magnifying glass), her formulas ('another happy day,' 'great mercies'), and her memories — and she uses all of them to sustain the performance of normality in the face of an existence that has become, literally and figuratively, stuck. Beckett wrote the play for his wife Suzanne, and it was created in collaboration with the director Alan Schneider; it remains one of the most demanding roles in the canon, requiring the actress to be continuously interesting while almost completely immobile.
Where to start
Happy Days (1961) — the complete text. Best Beckett reading order: Waiting for Godot → Endgame → Krapp's Last Tape → Happy Days → Molloy → Not I
Complete Happy Days Book List
- 1Buy
Happy Days
Samuel Beckett·1961·The complete play — Winnie buried to her waist in a mound of scorched earth, talking through a long blazing day. The play's central image is one of the most memorable in twentieth-century drama; the first production starred Ruth White at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York - 2Buy
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett·1953·The companion organized around two figures (Didi and Gogo) who are waiting. Beckett's most famous play is the companion to Happy Days as an investigation of two people who have nowhere to go and who pass the time with talk; where Godot is organized around two who are together, Happy Days is organized around one who is alone but cannot stop talking - 3Buy
Endgame
Samuel Beckett·1957·The companion organized around characters who are stuck. Hamm and Clov and the couple in the ashcans at the end of the world. The companion Beckett play to Happy Days as an investigation of characters who cannot escape their situation and who fill the time with habits that are both necessary and meaningless - 4Buy
Krapp's Last Tape
Samuel Beckett·1958·The companion organized around a single figure (the old Krapp listening to the young Krapp on tape). One of Beckett's most moving plays, organized around a man who has recorded his life on tape and returns to listen to a recording of thirty years ago, and finds himself unable to recognize the person he used to be - 5Buy
Not I
Samuel Beckett·1972·The companion organized around a single voice — a lit mouth speaking at enormous speed in a darkened theatre. Beckett's most extreme theatrical reduction: a mouth speaking the story of a woman who cannot say 'I' about herself, whose voice is the only presence on the stage - 6Buy
Rockaby
Samuel Beckett·1981·The late companion organized around a woman in a rocking chair listening to a voice — her own — speaking the story of an old woman looking for another like herself. One of Beckett's most beautiful and economical plays; the first production starred Billie Whitelaw, for whom Beckett wrote many of his later plays - 7Buy
Ohio Impromptu
Samuel Beckett·1981·The companion late Beckett play organized around a reader and a listener. A figure reads aloud to another figure who is identical to the reader; both figures sit in identical bowler hats; the reader reads a story of a man who has lost someone he loved. One of Beckett's most touching late plays, organized around the companionship of shared loss - 8Buy
Footfalls
Samuel Beckett·1976·The companion late Beckett play organized around a woman (May) who paces endlessly back and forth while speaking with her aged mother, who is never seen. The pacing is the play's entire action; the play is about the habit of existence — the way that we continue to move through the motions of being alive even when the life behind the motions has been extinguished
Happy Days — Frequently Asked Questions
What order should I read Samuel Beckett in?
Best Beckett reading order: Waiting for Godot (1953, his most accessible play) → Endgame (1957, the enclosed companion) → Krapp's Last Tape (1958, his most moving short play) → Happy Days (1961, Winnie in the mound) → the prose trilogy Molloy (1951) → Malone Dies (1951) → The Unnamable (1953) → the late plays Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby. Beckett wrote simultaneously in French and English, translating his own work; reading him in either language works.
What is Winnie doing in Happy Days?
Winnie is buried to her waist in a mound of scorched earth (in Act One) and to her neck (in Act Two) under a blazing light that never dims. She talks almost continuously — she tells stories, applies cosmetics, reads labels on her toothbrush and parasol, recalls fragments of poetry and prose, and addresses her husband Willie, who is mostly invisible behind the mound and responds only occasionally. What she is doing is maintaining the habit of happiness: she finds things to be grateful for, she follows her routines, she performs normality — and Beckett's subject is both the extraordinary resilience of this performance and its complete inadequacy as a response to the situation she is in.
What is Happy Days about?
Happy Days is about the compulsion to find happiness — or at least to perform happiness — in a situation that makes happiness impossible. Winnie cannot move, cannot sleep (the light never goes out), cannot communicate meaningfully with her husband, and will presumably continue to sink into her mound. But she keeps talking, keeps finding her 'happy day,' keeps applying her cosmetics and following her formulas. Beckett's subject is what he called 'the mess': the mess of existence, the gap between the life we are given and the formulas we use to organize it, and the human determination to maintain the performance of normality in the face of the mess.
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