The Broken Window: Beckett's Dramatic Perspective

The author defines and analyzes the new type of theatrical perspective invented by Samuel Beckett. She begins with an overview of the changes of the definition of twentieth century-knowledge (e.g, art, science, philosophy, and psychology) then discusses the concepts of time, space, and movement which underlie Beckett's notion and use of perspective in the theater. The Broken Window shows how Beckett translates a number of twentieth-century esthetic and philosophical concerns - the impossibility of separating subject and object, the indeterminacy of time and space, the inevitability of movement and change - into specific dramatic techniques and traces their evolution through close textual analyses of six plays. Hale is the first critic to define Beckett's theatrical techniques in terms of the notion of perspective and to link them to similar innovations in the plastic arts. In addition, no critic has so exhaustively elaborated Beckett's premises of indeterminacy, the inevitability of perception, and the breakdown of the subject/object relationship.

"Hale derives a metaphor from the history of painting. The Renaissance invention of perspective, as she says, was applauded as scientific but took hold because it corresponded to deep assumptions about where the viewer was in relation to the viewed . . . . [The author] argues that Beckett's conception of theater has responded to a similar change; we're no longer sure of knowing where we stand with respect to everything . . . .

"[Hale] works her way through the canon with the aid of this guiding metaphor . . . . To have found a way to talk about those [late, very stark, very short pieces, like A Piece of Monologue and Rockaby] is to have accomplished something impressive."

--Hugh Kenner

"This is a valuable study for its concentration on an important theme in Beckett's work and for its lucid though relatively brief discussion of the philosophical background to Beckett's treatment of that theme."

--Choice