Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, the play won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year.Prix Italia "PAST EDITIONS — WINNERS 1949 – 2007" Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was specially writtenBair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 588 – as "Henry", Kathleen Michael as "Ada" and Patrick Magee as "Riding Master" and "Music Master". The play was translated into French by Beckett himself and Robert Pinget as Cendres and was published in 1959 by . The first stage production was by the French Graduate Circle of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, 1977."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 169
The most recent version of Embers was broadcast in 2006 on BBC Radio 3 and directed by Stephen Rea. The cast included Michael Gambon as Henry, Sinéad Cusack as Ada, Rupert Graves, Alvaro Lucchesi and Carly Baker.BBC – Drama on 3 – Embers This production was rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 16 May 2010 as part of a double bill with a 2006 production of Krapp's Last Tape.
Opinions vary as to whether the work succeeds. Hugh Kenner calls it "Beckett’s most difficult work" and yet maintains that the piece "coheres to perfection,"Kenner, H., Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study (London: John Calder, 1962), p 174 John Pilling disagrees, remarking that Embers "is the first of Beckett’s dramatic works that seems to lack a real centre,"Pilling, J., Samuel Beckett (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p 98 whereas Richard N. Coe considers the play "not only minor, but one of [Beckett’s] very few failures."Coe, R. N., Beckett (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1964), p 102 Anthony Cronin records in his biography of Beckett that "Embers met with a mixed reception [but tempers this comment by noting that] the general tone of English criticism was somewhat hostile to Beckett"Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 490 at the time.
The author's own view was that it was a "rather ragged" text.Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 446 He said that it was "not very satisfactory, but I think just worth doing … I think it just gets by for radio."Zilliacus, C., Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for Television and Radio (Åbo, Åbo Akademi, 1976), p 76
For all his personal reservations the play won the RAI prize in the 1959 Prix Italia contest, not, as has been often reported, "the actual Prix Italia … which went to John Reeve’s play, Beach of Strangers."Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 790 n 4
Synopsis The play opens with the sea in the distance and the sound of footsteps on the shingle. Henry has been walking along the strand close to where he has lived his whole life, at one time or other on either side of "a bay or estuary".Lyons, C. R., Samuel Beckett, MacMillan Modern Dramatists (London: MacMillan Education, 1983), p 114
Henry starts to talk, a single word, "on," followed by the sea again, followed by the voice – louder and more insistent this time, repeating the same word, as it will say, then repeat as a command, the words "stop" and "down." Each time, Henry obediently yet reluctantly does what his voice first says, then tells him to do, he stops and sits down on the shingle. Throughout the play, the sea acts like a character in its own right (much as the light in Play does).
The first monologue The sea, it has always been assumed, was the cause of his father's death: "the evening bathe you took once too often",Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 93 however, the next sentence tells us: "We never found your body, you know, that held up probate an unconscionable time".Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), pp 93,94 Nothing in the text explicitly says that Henry's father was suicidal – though this has been inferred from the story of Bolton and Holloway discussed later.
He imagines his father, whom he describes as "old … blind and foolish",Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 94 sitting beside him on the beach and addresses the whole opening monologue to him, apart from a single aside to the audience, but the father never once responds. His father could never stay away from the sea and it seems neither can his son. "The sea presents an antithetical image to Henry. He must stay near it, and yet he attempts to distance himself from its sound."Lyons, C. R., Samuel Beckett, MacMillan Modern Dramatists (London: MacMillan Education, 1983), p 113 Even when he finally received his inheritance he only relocated to the other side of the bay; it has been a great many years since he actually swam in it. He tried once going to landlocked Switzerland but still could not get the sound of the sea out of his head.
To drown out the sound, rather than seek out company, he began making up stories but could never finish any of them. He remembers " a great one" and starts to tell it: He describes a scene before a fire that is about to go out. A man, Bolton, is standing there in his dressing gown awaiting the arrival of his doctor, Holloway, who we learn later may be the name of Henry’s own doctor. It is late, past midnight. He hears the doorbell and goes to the window to check; it is winter and the ground is covered with snow. The doctor has arrived, a "fine old chap, six-foot, burly"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 95 standing there in his macfarlane, a heavy caped overcoat.
Bolton lets him in. Holloway wants to know why he was called for but he is cut short. Bolton pleads with him, "Please! PLEASE!" and then they stand there in silence, the doctor trying to warm himself by the fire, what is left of it, and his patient staring out the window. Only all is not silent, not entirely, there is the sound of a drip (evocative of the remark Hamm makes in Endgame: "There is something dripping in my head");Beckett, S., Endgame: A Play in One Act (New York: Grove, 1958), pp 13,50 this agitates Henry greatly, and he breaks off his story there for a second.
Henry tells his father that, after a time, his stories were not company enough and he began feeling the need for someone from his past to be with him. He then continues: Holloway is annoyed. Presumably, he understands what he’s being asked for but avoids showing that he does. Instead, he complains about the fact that, despite his being dragged out on a night like this, his old friend has not had the common decency to heat and light the room suitably let alone provide a proper welcome and some kind of refreshment. He says he is going to leave, regretting having come in the first place, but does not make any move to go.
Henry suddenly stops his story and jumps to the last time he saw his father alive. His father's eventual disappearance followed an angry interchange between the two of them. He wanted Henry to go swimming with him but Henry refuses and so the last words his father ends up saying to him are: "A washout,James Knowlson, in Damned to Fame (pp 142, 730 n 104) conjectures that Beckett's decision to abandon his teaching post at Trinity College, which, at the time, his father would have viewed as "running away from his responsibilities and giving up a worthwhile career for nothing", finds expression in Embers. that’s what you are, a washout!" Whether his father was accidentally washed out to sea and drowned or deliberately killed himself is something no one knows for sure. Understandably Henry has punished himself for years over his decision not to go with him.
His relationship with his daughter had not been good either, a clingy child and, as we discover later, not particularly proficient or interested in anything she was required to do; Henry blames the "horrid little creature"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 96 for the break-up of his marriage. He re-enacts going for a walk with her and how he ended up reducing the girl to tears when she refuses to let go of his hand.
Henry treats Addie in much the same way his father appears to have treated him. He remembers: "That was always the way, walk all over the mountains with you talking and talking and then suddenly mum and home in misery and not a word to a soul for a week." "The consequent judgement that Henry was a 'sulky little bastard, better off dead' is consistent with his father's final verdict of his son as a 'washout'."Brown, V., Yesterday’s Deformities: A Discussion of the Role of Memory and Discourse in the Plays of Samuel Beckett , (doctoral thesis)
Out of the blue Henry calls out to his estranged, possibly ex, probably dead wife, Ada.
The dialogue The central sequence involves a dialogue between Henry and Ada, which provokes three specific memories presented in the form of short "evocation[s]"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 100 involving other characters (each lasts only a few seconds). Each occasion ends in a character crying or crying out and is artificially cut short at that instant.
Before this, the two engage in quasi-domestic small talk. Ada wants to know where their daughter, Addie, is. Henry says she is with her music master. She chides him for sitting on the cold stones and offers to put her shawl under him, which he allows. She asks if he's wearing his long johns but Henry is difficult about answering her. The sound of hooves distracts him. Ada makes a joke about horses and tries to get him to laugh. He then returns to his old preoccupation, the sound of the sea. He wants to go but Ada says they cannot because they're waiting on Addie. This triggers the first evocation.
In his first flashback Henry imagines the couple's daughter, with her overbearing music master.James Knowlson, in Damned to Fame (p715 n 37) suggests that this character was based on ‘Commendatore’ Michele Esposito in Ranelagh, a Dublin-based Italian music teacher whose teaching methods were notorious in the city’s music circles. Addie first plays some scales and then begins a Chopin waltz, number 5 in A-flat major. "In the first chord of bass, bar 5, she plays E instead of F."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 98 The teacher strikes the piano with his cylindrical ruler"Samuel Beckett's father was a quantity surveyor, and such a ruler, 'a solid ebony cylindrical rod', Phil Baker discovered, was kept in the offices of Beckett & Medcalf – Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 116 and Addie stops playing. "Eff!It has been suggested that this may be Beckett alluding to 'fuck' bearing in mind that, on its initial transmission even the word 'arse' was excised, but there is no clear evidence to support this other than the fact that a favourite joke expression of Beckett’s was 'eff the ineffable' (Quoted in Lawley, P., Embers: An Interpretation ). (See Fuck) Eff!”Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 99 he insists and eventually has to show her the note. She starts again, makes the same mistake and has to endure his ranting again only this time he reduces his pupil to tears.
The second involves Addie again, this time with her riding instructor: "Now Miss! Elbows in Miss! Hands down Miss! (Hooves trotting.) Now Miss! Back straight Miss! Knees in Miss! (Hooves cantering.) Now Miss! Tummy in Miss! Chin up Miss! (Hooves galloping.) Now Miss! Eyes front Miss! (ADDIE begins to wail.) Now Miss! Now Miss!"