''Rockaby'' is a short
one-woman play by
Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1980, at the request of Daniel Labeille, who produced it on behalf of ''Programs in the Arts'',
State University of New York, for a festival and symposium in commemoration of Beckett's 75th birthday. The play premiered on April 8, 1981, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, starring
Billie Whitelaw and directed by
Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider (December 12, 1917 – May 3, 1984) was an American theatre director responsible for more than 100 theatre productions. In 1984 he was honored with a Drama Desk Special Award for serving a wide range of playwrights. He directed th ...
. A documentary film, ''Rockaby'', by
D. A. Pennebaker
Donn Alan Pennebaker (; July 15, 1925 – August 1, 2019) was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci ...
and Chris Hegedus records the rehearsal process and the first performance. This production went on to be performed at the Annex at
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and, in December 1982, at the Cottesloe,
Royal National Theatre, London.
Synopsis
A woman dressed in an evening gown is sitting in a wooden rocking chair; no other props or scenery are called for. She sits totally still until the very end of the play. The chair apparently starts and stops "rocking of its own accord, since her feet are visible on its footrest. The motion creates a ghostly atmosphere." The woman (W) is described in the notes as "Prematurely old. Unkempt grey hair. Huge eyes in white expressionless face."
[Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 273] Beckett is equally specific when it comes to the gown: "Black lacy high-necked … Long sleeves. Jet
sequin
A sequin () is a small, typically shiny, generally disk-shaped ornament.
Sequins are also referred to as paillettes, spangles, or ''diamanté'' (also spelled ''diamante''). Although the words sequins, paillettes, lentejuelas, and spangles can ...
s … Incongruous headdress set with extravagant trimming to catch the light."
As she rocks she hears a "dull, expressionless" pre-recorded voice (V) – her own – recount details from her own life, and that of her dead mother's, in what Enoch Brater describes as "a performance poem in the shape of a play."
"The French title, ''Berceuse'', means both ‘rocking chair’ and ‘
lullaby
A lullaby (), or cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowledg ...
’, while the English ''Rockaby'' refers to a
traditional lullaby in which a baby's
cradle falls from a treetop, thus bring together in one song the images of birth and death which are so often juxtaposed in Beckett." Both a traditional cradle and a rocking chair have
rockers. "
e
synchrony of the rocking motion and the
dimeter
In poetry, a dimeter is a metrical line of verse with two feet. The particular foot
The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In m ...
verse line – one back-and-forth per line – plays against the recorded narrative." To achieve this effect Billie Whitelaw was encouraged by Beckett to "‘think of it as a lullaby’ which she interpreted as ‘soft, monotonous, no colour, soothing, rhythmic …
drive toward death."
The play can be broken down into four sections. All begin with the childlike demand, "More" (consider
Oliver Twist’s request for more gruel). Billie Whitelaw pronounced it more like ‘
maw’ – a
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
– "to suggest a need for nourishment." or even "Ma".
[Doll, M. A., ‘The Demeter Myth in Beckett’ in '' Journal of Beckett Studies'' Nos 11 and 12]
Intermittently, she joins in three of the lines: ‘time she stopped’, ‘living soul’ and ‘rock her off’"
[Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 662] at which point the rocking stops and only starts again when she demands "More," each time a little softer than the time before. The fact that time play begins with this word indicates that this scene has been being played out for some time before this. At the end of the final section the woman fails to join in with the voice, the rocking ceases and the woman's head slowly inclines; "she has apparently died."
Section 1
"The first section details W’s decision to stop going ‘to and fro’ in the outside world in search of ‘another like herself’" evocative of Molloy’s quest to find his mother. The voice’s speech is fragmented and simple "creating an affinity between the language of the child and that of
senescence and dying." This could also be a reason for the "huge eyes".
As with ''
Not I
''Not I'' is a short dramatic monologue written in 1972 (20 March to 1 April) by Samuel Beckett which was premiered at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York (22 November 1972).
Synopsis
''Not I'' tak ...
'', the voice speaks in the
third person
Third person, or third-person, may refer to:
* Third person (grammar), a point of view (in English, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', and ''they'')
** Illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the third person
* Third-person narrative, a perspective in p ...
.
Section 2
The second section reprises and therefore emphasizes the decision taken in Section 1. It also marks the "beginning of her next phase of activity – sitting at her upstairs window, searching the windows opposite to see another ‘one living soul … like herself.’"
[Lyons, C. R., ''Samuel Beckett'', MacMillan Modern Dramatists (London: MacMillan Education, 1983), p 178]
"Life is nothing more nor less than the act of perception or the state of being perceived, or, in the words of
Bishop Berkeley
George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immateri ...
which find echoes throughout Beckett’s work, ‘''esse est percipi''’ (‘to be is to be perceived’). She sees no one however and is seen by no one. "Voice has become the woman’s own Berkeleyan observer, without whose surveillance any claim to existence would be invalidated."
Section 3
In the third section the woman has lowered her standards again. She would be content now to simply see a raised blind as evidence of life. At the end of this section she realises it is "time she stopped"
[Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 280] even this activity.
"A drawn blind
sand old custom signifying death" and the last thing she does herself before sitting down in the old rocker is "let down the blind"
[Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 281] before closing her own eyelids. This decision
sfirst announced in part three by the lines ‘till the day came/in the end came/close of a long day’ reiterated at the opening of part four.
"The objects surrounding
he‘window’ endow it with layers of feeling. ‘Pane’ and ‘blind’ imply more than the ''things'' of windows, and ironically comment on the classical
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
of ‘window’ as ‘eyes of the soul.’"
Section 4
In the final "section V describes W’s relocation downstairs to sit in her mother’s rocking chair where she will wait for death"
in exactly the same manner as her mother before her.
The action on stage becomes concurrent with the narration which becomes a "little softer each time" until the rocking stops completely. She has stopped actively searching for another and given up watching for proof of the existence of another, but through all of this she has always had the voice for company; now she is "done with that"
[Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 282] too and has concluded that it is time she herself "was her own other … living soul."
The fact that "the word ‘down’ is repeated six times in the first seven lines of this final section, while it is used only once in the preceding sections (‘all blinds down’) ... coupled with the play's first mention of the ‘steep stair’, gives verbal shape to the internal descent that is about to be recounted. The woman is descending into the depths of her self." Billie Whitelaw has said: "
he voice of the woman in ''Rockaby''gets softer because she's getting weaker, and the rock of the chair should be lessening, and the light is lessening. ... In fact, the woman in ''Rockaby'' is actually going further and further down that steep stair. So with the last ‘More’ she knows she's on the way out, and as long as that rocker keeps rocking she's all right. Once it stops she's gone... I do find it very frightening to do. And I find it desperately lonely to do. I feel very, very lonely in that chair."
"In French, ‘''chair''’ means flesh, especially naked flesh, so that the combined image of ‘rocking chair,’ ‘mother rocker,’ and ‘rocking flesh’ bring together inside a single word two realities of subject and object, the object being endowed with subjective
realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
."
The woman selects what initially appears like an unusual outfit for this final scene, an elaborate evening gown. Whether this was the one her mother used when she went through the same steps is unclear; it does however "marks both the uniqueness of the occasion of her retreat to the rocking chair and, as well, her re-enactment of her mother’s action. Whatever her motive in wearing this dress, it constitutes a remnant of an earlier life."
It has been suggested that the "other" that the woman has been searching for all this time is actually her mother. There is clearly an underlying text here of a little lost girl looking for her ‘mammy’. Having abandoned the search she opts for the rocker's "embrace"
("those arms at last"
) dolled up as her mother so that she can fulfil both roles, she can become her "own other". "Other" and "mother" sound very similar. As
Molloy
Molloy or O'Molloy is an Irish surname, anglicised from Ó Maolmhuaidh, maolmhuadh meaning 'Proud Chieftain'. (See also Malloy.) They were part of the southern Uí Néill, the southern branch of the large tribal grouping claiming descent from N ...
puts it: "I have her room. I sleep in her bed … I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more.
Background
Although Billie Whitelaw has very much made the role on W her own it is not strictly true that the part was written specifically for her, even though in a letter to The
Actors' Equity Association
The Actors' Equity Association (AEA), commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing those who work in live theatrical performance. Performers appearing in live stage productions without a boo ...
in 1982 Beckett intimated that it had been. "In his original letter asking Beckett for the play, Labeille had directly associated the name of
Irene Worth
Irene Worth, CBE (June 23, 1916March 10, 2002) was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the British and American theatre. She pronounced her given name with three syllables: "I-REE-nee".
Worth made her Br ...
… with the project."
Whitelaw only came to play the part because Worth was offered a film role and the opening of the play could not be postponed to accommodate her. Beckett declared himself "very pleased with switch to Billie" and her performance benefited from a high degree of support from him as always.
As with all Beckett's later plays it is clear he has drawn again on personal memories. "There was the frail figure of his maternal grandmother, ‘little Granny’, Annie Roe, dressed in ‘her best black’,
sitting in a rocking chair at the window of Cooldrinagh, where she lived out the final years of her life. The woman in the play gazes out at other windows for ‘another living soul’, as Beckett himself sat, often for hours on end, staring at the rows of cell windows on the grey
Santé prison Sante is both a masculine Italian given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include:
Given name:
* Sante Bentivoglio (1426–1462), Italian nobleman
*Sante Geronimo Caserio (1873–1894), Italian anarchist and assassin
*Sante Cattaneo ...
"
which backed his apartment in the Boulevard Saint-Jacques.
Needless to say, knowing Beckett to be the art lover he was, one can catch glimpses of a number of paintings he was familiar with: ''
Whistler's Mother
''Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1'', best known under its colloquial name ''Whistler's Mother'' or ''Portrait of Artist's Mother'', is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1871. ...
'',
van Gogh’s ''La Berceuse'
or
Rembrandt’s ''Margaretha Trip (de Geer)'
A favourite of his, Beckett owned a copy of
Jack Butler Yeats, Jack B Yeats’s exhibition catalogue, which included one entitled ''Sleep'', a painting of an old woman a sitting by the window, with her head drooped low onto her chest.
Related Texts
''Krapp’s Last Tape''
As
Krapp sits on the "bench by the weir" he realises his mother has passed on when "the blind went down, one of those dirty brown roller affairs." In 1950 Beckett himself sat beside his dying mother's bed "until he could stand it no more
ndwent for a walk along the
Grand Canal.
hen
Hen commonly refers to a female animal: a female chicken, other gallinaceous bird, any type of bird in general, or a lobster. It is also a slang term for a woman.
Hen or Hens may also refer to:
Places Norway
*Hen, Buskerud, a village in Ringer ...
he returned to the nursing home
esat outside for a while on a bench, shivering in the evening wind. When he looked up at her window, he saw the shade go down, the signal she had died.
[Bair, D., ''Samuel Beckett: A Biography'' (London: Vintage, 1990), p 429]
''Murphy''
Murphy’s rocking chair is the one possession to which he is attached. It gives his body pleasure and sets free his mind. "The chair asserts the pun ‘off his rocker’"
[Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 485] which could similarly refer to the dead mother in ''Rockaby'' who people maintained had "gone off her head".
''Film''
"The room in ''
Film'' contains a rocking chair with a carved headrest, which when ‘O’ sits back, frames his head. His rocking matches his emotions as he gazes at various images of himself and when ‘E’ finally violates the angle of immunity.
References
External links
Beckett Bibliography
{{Beckett
1980 plays
Plays by Samuel Beckett
Theatre of the Absurd