Klarinet Archive - Posting 000296.txt from 1996/04

From: Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns%cl.cam.ac.uk@-----.BITNET>
Subj: Re: Beckett interpreters
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 04:59:56 -0400

Steven A. Haaser wrote:
> Marie McDonough wrote:
> >[...] Samuel Beckett threaten[ed] lawsuits against directors who
> >deviated too far from what he perceived to be the *right* way to stage his
> >plays.
>
> [...] I remember being told that Beckett
> chose to write several of his plays in French even though he was Irish
> because he felt he was less likely to write something in French which would
> be very subtle and fully understandable only to a native speaker as he could
> do, perhaps inadvertently, in English. [...]

Whereas _I_ was told of Beckett as a shining example of bilingual
artistic creativity, who was equally happy writing in either language
(his mother tongue was English, I believe, not Gaelic).