Samuel Beckett’s
Krapp’s Last Tape(1958) is a one-act play about the operations of remembering, forgetting, and desire. It dramatises – with an extraordinary mixture of comedy and lyrical poignancy – the failed artist who, having run the risk of the wasted life, ends up trapped as a shadow of his former selves. The premise of the play is simple: Krapp has renounced love to complete his magnum opus – or, as Krapp puts it, “the opus . . . magnum” (Beckett, 2006, 218); and the late evening on which the play is set is Krapp’s sixty-ninth birthday when, as every year, he eats bananas, drinks wine and whiskey, listens to recordings of his past selves, and records part of a new tape. The temporal disjunction between the play’s title (this is Krapp’s “last” tape, a final…
3893 words
Citation: Weir, Calum. "Krapp's Last Tape". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 June 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4203, accessed 23 June 2025.]
