ABSTRACT - BECKETT, SAMUEL – WAITING FOR GODOT 1948 Methuen Press. Famous as the play in which nothing happens, twice, this is the powerful, moving, tragic and comedic story of two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting in a park for their friend and saviour, Godot, who never turns up. This is the story in a nutshell for Act One. The Second and final act repeats the situation with some variations. The tramps are bored, depressed, and even contemplate suicide, but they are too lethargic to actually take their own lives. They pass their time with trivial conversation, slapstick humour and banter. It fails to amuse them for long, before despair kicks in again. Traditionally comedians play the roles of the clown tramps. Their lethargy is interrupted once in each act by the fleeting appearance of two other tramps, Pozzo and Lucky, one of who, Lucky, is the blind ill-treated servant of the other, but they have no more direction in heir lives than Vladimir or Estragon. The tramps pull the belts from their trousers, and contemplate making a noose from the belts with which to hang them from the tree on the set, and their pants fall down. It is an image that captures the sad humour behind existence perfectly. At the close of act two a child appears with a cryptic message, supposedly from Godot himself, and the tramps decide to live another day waiting for a man who seems destined never to materialise. Godot becomes a God, a mysterious entity who exists only in belief and blind faith. The tramps have nothing but hopes pinned on him, and he himself is clearly nothing. Waiting For Godot is essentially a study in existential despair. Few writers make misery as entertaining as Beckett manages. He captures the absurdity of life as much as its sheer awful drudgery and never better than in Waiting For Godot.