{"id":843,"date":"2026-05-18T18:50:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/?p=843"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:25:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:25:04","slug":"becketts-dramaturgy-of-fragmentation-and-the-translation-of-fragmentary-greek-tragedies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/becketts-dramaturgy-of-fragmentation-and-the-translation-of-fragmentary-greek-tragedies\/","title":{"rendered":"Beckett\u2019s Dramaturgy of Fragmentation and the Translation of Fragmentary Greek Tragedies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Emma Cole<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The performance reception of fragmentary Greek tragedy has largely involved a strategy of supplementation or a process of reconstruction. This article argues for an alternate approach and suggests that by drawing upon modernist dramaturgies we can create stageable translations of tragic fragments which retain a dramaturgy of fragmentation. It suggests that the plays of Samuel Beckett, and particularly his dramaticules, fragment prose, bodies, and characterisation in a way that might be productively echoed in translations of tragic fragments intended for performance. Such an approach puts future readers and audience members in what Anne Carson terms the \u201cthird place,\u201d allowing us to be alive to the multiplicity of meanings that may have filled the gaps.

Keywords<\/strong>: Samuel Beckett, Greek tragedy, translation, adaptation, dramaturgy, fragments<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has Beckett got to do with the translation of fragmentary Greek tragedies? In terms of content, very little. However, when it comes to form, Beckett\u2019s body of work and the pool of Greek tragedies that survive in fragments share commonalities, in that both are defined by a dramaturgy of fragmentation. I define a dramaturgy of fragmentation as existing when the form or feeling of fragmentation becomes a defining quality within the internal fictive universe of a play. Fragmentary Greek tragedies, when staged, have a dramaturgy of fragmentation because they are formed out of textual fragments, either of actual broken papyrus or of isolated quotations. Meanwhile, Beckett\u2019s plays contain a dramaturgy of fragmentation because of how they fragment characters\u2019 bodies, psyches, and prose. Despite their differences in form and content, in this article I suggest that the dramaturgical strategies Beckett employs in his plays can be valuable for translators (and potentially even adaptors) looking to work with the corpus of lost Greek tragedies. I write this mid-way through my own translations of Euripides\u2019 final trilogy, made up of Bacchae<\/em>, Iphigenia at Aulis<\/em>, and Alcmaeon at Corinth<\/em>, a series of plays that progressively become increasingly fragmentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than outline how Beckett is influencing my own practice-as-research, however, I explore here how Beckett\u2019s dramaturgy of fragmentation might offer structures for translation more broadly. I begin with an overview of the dominant approaches to translating and adapting ancient dramatic fragments, before outlining the dramaturgical strategies that Beckett employs to fragment his dramatic works, concentrating particularly upon his short, later plays, known as his dramaticules. I suggest that these strategies provide approaches to deal with the spaces and gaps in the translation of other fragmentary dramas. By translating tragic fragments in a way that recalls Beckett\u2019s dramaturgy and preserves the form of the fragment, we can democratise fragments and allow not just scholars but also artists and audiences to hypothesise about what might have filled the gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dominant Approaches to Staging Tragic Fragments<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Far more Greek tragedies survive as fragments than as fully extant scripts. Beyond our thirty-two surviving Greek tragedies lies a corpus of many hundreds and possibly even thousands of dramas which premiered at Athens\u2019 City Dionysia. Some of the playwrights behind these works were as or even more prolific than our surviving three dramatists; Astydamus the Younger, for example, wrote 240 plays and won fifteen first prizes, making him the most prolific playwright in ancient Greece and one of the most decorated tragedians (Wright xv). Euripides, by contrast, wrote under one hundred plays and won only five times.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Tony Harrison\u2019s The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus<\/em> at Delphi. Photo: Web\/European Cultural Center of Delphi\/<\/a>Creative Commons 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Engaging with fragments has the potential to transform our understanding of Greek tragedy. Yet before the turn of the century, very few English translations of ancient dramatic fragments existed, and even now, the only translations readily accessible are literal translations authored by classicists which are not written for performance.[1]<\/sup><\/a> Nevertheless, some lost plays did appear on stage in adaptation prior to the publication of accessible translations. If the so-called watershed moment for Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre is The Performance Group\u2019s 1968 Dionysus in 69<\/em>, then the equivalent for dramatic fragments would land us in 1988, with Tony Harrison\u2019s The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus<\/em> (2004), from Sophocles\u2019 Ichneutai<\/em>, and Timberlake Wertenbaker\u2019s The Love of the Nightingale <\/em>(1996), in response to Sophocles\u2019 Tereus<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Sophocles\u2019 Ichneutai <\/em>is a satyr play, rather than a tragedy, the success of Harrison\u2019s project paved the way for subsequent engagements with fragmentary tragedies. Harrison\u2019s Trackers <\/em>is structured via an approach of supplementation, whereby the surviving fragments are supplemented with an original frame narrative to create a new play, uniformly whole. In the case of Trackers <\/em>this involved encasing the fragments of Sophocles\u2019 Ichneutai<\/em>, which were found in Oxyrhynchus in 1907, inside a frame narrative about their discovery, beginning with Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt\u2019s excavations in Egypt, before following the papyrus with Grenfell and Hunt back to Oxford. Once at Oxford, the Sophoclean satyr chorus emerge from the transport crates containing the papyrus, while Grenfell and Hunt metamorphize into Sophocles\u2019 protagonists. The play allows the alterity and untimeliness of the Sophoclean fragments to show through, whilst still supplementing this with original dramatic material that historicises the fragments and creates a totalising fictive universe for the play.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts<\/a> discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists<\/a> Bernard Pyne Grenfell<\/a> and Arthur Surridge Hunt<\/a> at an ancient rubbish dump<\/a> near Oxyrhynchus<\/a> in Egypt<\/a> (28\u00b032\u2032N 30\u00b040\u2032E<\/a>, modern el-Bahnasa<\/em>). Photo: Web\/Public domain<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In contrast to Harrison\u2019s strategy of supplementation, Timberlake Wertenbaker followed an approach of reconstruction in The Love of the Nightingale<\/em>, whereby she supplemented the fragments of Sophocles\u2019 Tereus <\/em>with other material, primarily from Ovid\u2019s Metamorphoses<\/em>,regarding Tereus\u2019 rape and mutilation of his sister-in-law Philomela, his wife Procne\u2019s revenge, and the ultimate transformation of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela into birds. Wertenbaker\u2019s reconstruction-cum-adaptation has become the dominant way that tragic fragments are staged in contemporary theatre. Aeschylus\u2019 apparently connected trilogy about Danaus\u2019 fifty daughters is currently a particular focus for this approach, with David Greig, Charles Mee, and Silviu Purc\u01ce<\/font>rete all trying their hand at recreating this trilogy by adapting the fragmentary The Daughters of Danaus<\/em>, the extant Suppliant Women<\/em>, and Egyptians<\/em>, of which only one word survives. In contrast, approaches that recall Harrison\u2019s sense of alterity and untimeliness remain in the vast minority; Laura Swift and Potential Difference\u2019s Fragments<\/em>, which used Euripides\u2019 Cresphontes<\/em> as its source material, is a noteworthy exception.<\/p>\n\n\n

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P.Oxy. IX 1174 col. iv-v: Sophocles, Ichneutae<\/em> (2nd c. CE). Photo: Web\/Wikimedia commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Fragments <\/em>sought to allow the audience to experience fragmentation within the performance through a combination of analogue technologies (such as puppetry) and experimental soundscapes, involving neuroscience-backed techniques such as phantom words and phonemic restoration which allow the human brain to piece together fragmentary information (Swift 120). The overall narrative of Fragments<\/em>, however, was similar to Trackers<\/em>; Fragments <\/em>involved a frame narrative of modern scholars researching ancient drama before the tragic figures came to life and the scholars metamorphized into classical characters. Thus, although the form of the fragment was still somewhat visible, the overall production supplemented the fragments to ensure that the audience experienced a fully-fledged narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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This edition collects all the major fragments of lost Aeschylean plays. Photo: Web\/Loeb Classical Library<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Whether one takes an approach of supplementation or reconstruction, the dominant approaches to staging tragic fragments share a common denominator, which is the avoidance of treating fragments as fragments, replaced by a desire to make the fragments fit the dramaturgical structure we expect from either an ancient Greek tragedy, or a recognisable form of contemporary theatre. In my own work on Punchdrunk\u2019s Kabeiroi <\/em>(Cole), for example, which drew upon a tragedy by Aeschylus that survives in only three fragments, I discussed with director Felix Barrett the various hypotheses regarding the potential plot of both the play itself, and the hypothetical trilogy it may have been a part of, which included a consideration of Aristotelian notions such as the location of a sense of catharsis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A strategy of reconstruction or supplementation may create a good piece of theatre. However, there is opportunity for greater scope in how we approach these texts, and a middle way between literal, specialist translations and the freer adaptations which fill in the gaps and turn fragments into new works. Ensuring greater diversity in the reception of tragic fragments enables us to stay alive to the possibility that the lost Greek tragedies may defy our expectations regarding how the plays were structured and classical myths were represented onstage in ancient Greece. Treating fragments as fragments also facilitates the possibility of tragic fragments finding a home within experimental and postdramatic forms of contemporary theatre.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beckettian Fragmentation<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Beckett offers an alternate approach to the dominant ways in which tragic fragments have been staged until now. Although Beckett never adapted tragedy or even let specific characters or tragic story arcs haunt his dramas, there is nevertheless some synergy between Greek tragedy and Beckettian dramaturgy. Beckett\u2019s corpus contains what Laura Jansen would call an “oblique classicism” rather than a direct form of reception. As Katharine Worth argues, an abstract form of classical imagery ghosts Beckett\u2019s dramaturgy, including of Aeschylean fire and waiting, and of Sophoclean anguish. Worth also, more specifically, sees a “natural, deep affinity with certain kinds of ancient Greek theatrical stylizations” in Beckett\u2019s plays, namely the number of speaking parts (no more than three conversationally in any one scene), severe, Promethean physical restraints on actors, and his use of messengers, mask-like effects, a chorus, music and dance (269).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Samuel Beckett offers an alternate approach to the dominant ways in which tragic fragments have been staged until now. Photo: Wikipedia\/Public domain<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The other side of Beckett\u2019s biography that obliquely relates to the reception of tragedy is the ever-incomplete nature of his texts. Beckett as playwright was a notorious revisioner, as a bilingual author who translated his works between English and French and back again, and as a playwright who increasingly directed his own work for the stage and then amended his scripts based upon insights from performance. Indeed, Sin\u00e9ad Mooney argues that even without the changes between versions, the meanings of Beckett\u2019s texts are \u201cintimately bound up with their exceptional meta-linguistic position astride two languages, and his recognition of translation\u2019s systematic and inevitable infidelity\u201d (4-5). So too are Greek tragedies always evolving. The lay person may think of our extant tragedies as fixed, finished scripts, but even these texts are subject to continued editorial debates involving philologists choosing one manuscript version over the other and rewriting lines where they deduce a later interpolation or a scribe\u2019s error. The source texts, in small but significant ways, are always changing. However, although Beckett\u2019s oblique classicism might help persuade one of the benefits to be found by putting Beckett and tragedy in dialogue, these are not my grounds for borrowing from Beckett when devising a methodology for the translation of fragmentary drama. The reason I turn to Beckett is rather due to how his plays embody a fragmentary modernism, which can help translators to treat fragments as fragments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although a drive towards fragmentation arguably exists across Beckett\u2019s whole corpus, from the lacunae between Act One and Two of Happy Days<\/em> and the bodies in tin cans in End Game<\/em>, it is pushed to an extreme in his later plays, the so-called \u201cdramaticules,\u201d or playlets. Beckett explicitly labelled seven of his plays as \u201cdramaticules,\u201d giving his 1965 play Come and Go <\/em>\u201cdramaticule\u201d as a subtitle, and then publishing Catastrophe<\/em>, That Time<\/em>, A Piece of Monologue<\/em>, Rockaby<\/em>, Ohio Impromptu<\/em>, and What Where <\/em>in French under the title Catastrophe et autres dramaticules<\/em>. Although Beckett only gave the name to these seven plays, it is fair to label all his plays from 1965 onwards as dramaticules. These plays share the fact that none are more than eight pages long, nor take more than thirty minutes in performance time (Elam 146). This leaves a corpus of ten texts: Come and Go<\/em>, Catastrophe<\/em>, That Time<\/em>, A Piece of Monologue<\/em>, Rockaby<\/em>, Ohio Impromptu<\/em>, What Where<\/em>, Breath<\/em>, Not I<\/em>, and Footfalls. <\/em>Even within this concentrated grouping, it is still challenging to speak of a unified Beckettian dramaturgy. Nevertheless, almost all the dramaticules share a focus on fragmentation; indeed, Keir Elam describes A Piece of Monologue<\/em>, as \u201cmore a textual fragment than a drama in any canonical form\u201d and the dramaticules overall as \u201cthe most intense and disquieting body of texts conceived for the twentieth-century stage\u201d (146). Across the dramaticules there are three recurring features of fragmentation: a fragmented prose style; a psychological fragmentation of character identity; and a physical fragmentation of the body. In the remainder of this article, I tease out examples of what these three components look like in Beckett\u2019s dramaticules and consider how they might be borrowed from in the translation of fragmentary Greek tragedies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragmented Prose<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Across the dramaticules, Beckett often experiments with modes of reduction and omission. Kier Elam, for example, describes the dialogue in Come and Go <\/em>as \u201clexically sparing monosyllabic semantically elliptical, not to say reticent\u201d (147) and the dramaturgical strategies of the piece as \u201ctruncation, darkness, repetition, concealment, evasion, circularity\u201d (150). These are then, for Elam, taken to their outer limit in Not I<\/em>, where Mouth speaks “refrain-like discourse fragments” in speech that is almost totally incomprehensible due to its rapid and disjointed nature, which signals “the intention to make the spectators’ Herculean perceptual and cognitive labours the primary ingredient of their experience of the play.” (150)<\/p>\n\n\n

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Not I,<\/em> with Melissa Nolan. Photo: Futoshi Sakauchi\/Wikimedia commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Within this broader style, there are two core ways that Beckett repeatedly fragments his characters\u2019 dialogue: through punctuation and through repetition. On the former, Beckett\u2019s work is littered with distinctive patterns of punctuation. The logorrhoea of Mouth in Not I<\/em> is the most infamous example of this, containing hundreds of ellipses which clutter the dialogue with what Steven Connor terms hiatuses but which we might also think of as, to use the language of fragmentology, micro-lacunae (270). To this, we can add Beckett\u2019s distinctive uses of the comma in other plays, which, Connor argues, create open chains where clauses are separated by commas to extend a series of alternatives that end \u201cnot when the sense has been completed, but simply when it seems spent\u201d (273) and \u201coften involves a simultaneous piling up and whittling away of possibilities\u201d (274).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to the plethora of punctuation in Not I<\/em>, other plays, such as That Time<\/em>, feature an absence of punctuation. That Time <\/em>features three offstage voices, with an onstage suspended head listening throughout. The dialogue\u2019s phrasing is very similar to Not I <\/em>but instead of ellipses there is continuously running, stream-of-consciousness like speech which is only made possible to perform due to the changes in speaker and the fact that the three voices are pre-recorded. The fragmentation of prose across Beckett\u2019s dramaticules transitions from dialogue fragmented through the hiatus of the ellipsis through to dialogue fragmented through technological mediation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repetitions, meanwhile, are found consistently across the ten dramaticules and are a defining way that any sense of a unified dramatic arc across each play is fragmented. Come and Go<\/em> and What Where<\/em>, for example, both feature a short dialogic exchange repeated almost identically multiple times between different character duos, namely different combinations of Vi, Ru, and Flo in Come and Go<\/em>, and Bam with a series of three interlocutors (Bem, Bim, Bom) in What Where<\/em>. Both plays seemingly circle back in on themselves in a labyrinthine manner, presenting narrative as a puzzle to be cracked. When such overt repetitions are absent, smaller repetitions lie in their place; in Ohio Impromptu<\/em>, for example, the Listener knocks on the table when they want Reader to go back and repeat part of the story, while in almost all plays images and phrases crop up repeatedly, including the \u2018tiny little thing\u2026 out before its time\u2019 in Not I<\/em>, and the towpath and public library in That Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experimenting with punctuation and repetition in the translation of fragmentary Greek tragedies does not necessarily make the texts more performable, but it does offer the possibility of allowing the texts to be made more accessible in their transmitted form. Maintaining repetitions as a stylistic device that preserves a sense of fragmentation is anathema to the way that fragments have been translated to date. Philologists, when editing manuscripts and practising textual criticism, follow a process which results in a judgement call whereby they choose to prioritise the version of a text which they deem to be the most authentic. Only those able to parse discipline-specific editions of the play in ancient Greek, complete with an apparatus criticus, can access debates regarding disputed line allocations or transmitted dialogue. Allowing for repetitions in a translation of a Greek drama and being open to such multiplicity defies this history and makes the reality of the manuscript tradition far more accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A translator might echo Beckett\u2019s fragmented prose simply by rendering the fragments as fragments, translating them word-for-word and preserving the lacunae as Not I<\/em>-style hiatuses. One could argue that the available literal translations do this, but their purpose is not to translate the plays as dialogue for performance, and no consideration is given to speakability and performability. There are also other ways that translation might mimic the unusual punctuation and patterns of repetition contained in Beckett\u2019s scripts. Ancient Greek, for example, is full of tiny words, known as particles, which connect utterances, qualify words or phrases and add emphasis in a way that we might usually do through tone. These words are not usually translated when drama is rendered into English, as a literal translation would fill the dialogue with phrases such as “on the one hand” and “on the other.” Beckett\u2019s dramaturgy of fragmentation might, however, provide inspiration for a way to incorporate these particles, or to respond to the intonations indicated by the accents that dress Greek words. These strategies invite a form of creative translation which might be less faithful to the content of lost plots but more telling about the dialogue\u2019s form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragmented Bodies<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Beckett\u2019s fragmented bodies are perhaps the hardest form of fragmentation to mimic as a translation strategy. However, it is still worthwhile spending a moment on the technique, since it is part of Beckett\u2019s overall dramaturgy of fragmentation. Katharine Weiss argues that Beckett\u2019s late plays \u201cstage fragmentation in the visual representation of the body\u201d which \u201cexposes the audience\u2019s automatic process of filing in holes to inscribe meaning and make sense of the scene\u201d (187). The body in Beckett\u2019s dramaticules is often absent, obscured, or disembodied: Come and Go <\/em>showcases three dimly lit bodies and faces, with their expressions obscured by hats; Footfalls <\/em>features an unseen Voice hidden in the dark, upstage; in Breath <\/em>the body is entirely absent from the stage, represented purely through two vagitus cries and a single inhale and exhale; Not I<\/em>\u2019s mouth is a disembodied mouth, suspended eight feet high; and That Time <\/em>features a trio of offstage voices listened to by a bodiless, suspended head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Borrowing Beckett\u2019s strategy of bodily fragmentation would involve interpolating stage directions into the material or superimposing specific content upon the form that survives. Although a literal transposition of this form of fragmentation might not be useful, the subtler ways in which Beckett fragments the body may offer more mileage. Even when the physical body is not fragmented in Beckett\u2019s dramaticules it is almost always either static, or trapped in repetitive motion, such as the steps in Footfalls<\/em> or the mechanical rock of the rocking chair in Rockaby<\/em>. The musicality and temporal precision surrounding these representations of the body may serve as useful inspiration for translating fragments written in metre, allowing for paralinguistic ways to capture scansion which would otherwise be lost in translation. Nevertheless, this part of Beckett\u2019s dramaturgy of fragmentation stands at the limit of what can be adopted as a translation methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragmented Characterisation<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Although Beckett\u2019s treatment of the physical body might be a difficult component to borrow from, it is comparably easy to take inspiration from his treatment of his characters\u2019 metaphysical sense of self. The characters lying behind each speaking individual in Beckett\u2019s dramaticules are puzzles; to paraphrase W. B. Worthen, Beckett rejects the Stanislavskian \u201cI am\u201d and replaces it with the Beckettian \u201cNot I\u201d (406). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is always hard to know who Beckett\u2019s characters are, where they are speaking to us from, and why. Sometimes, this is because of how they speak to us, for example due to the low audibility in Come and Go<\/em>, or the incomprehensible speed at which Mouth recites her monologue in Not I<\/em>. At other times, it is because of the invisible, ambiguous forces controlling the action, such as the silent Auditor who flaps their arms four times in Not I <\/em>when the first-person singular pronoun threatens to entreat upon the third person “she.” Plays like That Time<\/em>, Rockaby<\/em>,and What Where <\/em>seem to bifurcate a single identity into multiple parts. The three offstage voices in That Time <\/em>all belong, for example, to the Listener, the suspended head watching the action, meaning the audience has access to four parts of a whole. The piece becomes a study in fragmented identity, grappling with fragile memories and trying to reconstruct the past. Rockaby <\/em>also specifies that the duologue is between the seen woman in her rocking chair and her pre-recorded voice; the actual woman on stage speaks only the word \u201cmore\u201d four times, while the voiceover concludes by seemingly describing what we are seeing on stage: \u201cinto the old rocker \/ mother rocker \/ where mother rocked \/ all the years \/ all in black\u201d (440). In What Where<\/em> Beckett instructs that the four characters Bam, Bem, Bim, and Bom are “as alike as possible” (469); James Acheson proposes the four are really just Bam, \u201crecalling the activities of his own mind either during a single year of his lifetime, or during its four “seasons” \u2013 childhood, young manhood, middle age, and old age\u201d (206).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Footfalls <\/em>makes questions about personhood versus ghostliness and haunting part of its content, as well as its form, inviting the audience to question whether the two characters we see and then hear, May and Voice, are the same as the Old Mrs Winter and Amy from their story; just as Mrs Winter seems to hear Amy\u2019s voice at evensong even though she was not there, so too do the traces of May vanish before the audience\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, I am not suggesting here that translators should borrow from the specifics, such as splitting dialogue between a pre-recorded voiceover and an onstage, largely mute character. Rather, I point to the broad inspiration of how Beckett\u2019s dramaticules fragment a unified sense of character identity and push away from the sense of a knowable, psychologically realistic entity. Our oldest manuscripts of Greek tragedy do not attribute lines to characters but simply mark the change of speaker with a paragraphos,<\/em> a mark under the first letters of a line. This means that when it comes to fragments that survive through scraps of papyrus or parchment, we are often in the dark as to who is delivering the lines. Although it is tempting to allocate scraps of dialogue to hypothetical characters based upon what we know of a play from plot hypotheses or from other mythological sources, Beckett provides an alternate model. If we don\u2019t know who a character is, where they are speaking to us from, and why, then might we not leave it this way, rather than present a hypothesis? Might those unknowns be rendered as voiceovers, or could a translator ambiguate identity in other ways?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to the work of Beckett and pouring over the dramaturgy of his dramaticules does not give a translator specific strategies that they can pick up wholesale and adopt when translating tragic fragments into a new language for performance. However, the dramaticules provide evidence for the stageability of fragmentation, and point us towards three mechanisms for achieving this fragmentation, namely through the fragmentation of dialogue, and specifically through punctuation strategies and patterns of repetition, through the fragmentation of bodies, which are hidden, obscured, or trapped in stasis or repetitive motion, and the fragmentation of identity, which is almost always presented as unknowable or a puzzle. A next step in the translation process might be to combine these initial strategies with the processes of verbal and syllabic undoing that Beckett followed when editing, redrafting and revising his plays, to ensure that one\u2019s translation was as pared back as possible. These techniques left “textual scars” and heightened the dramaturgy of fragmentation, as James Little has illuminated through his study of the manuscripts for Not I<\/em>, That Time<\/em>, and Footfalls <\/em>(483). However, I leave unpacking this step of the process for future publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Translations of tragedy are usually understood as resulting in a target text that reflects the source. However, when it comes to the reception of tragic fragments the target text no longer reflects the source but instead an idea of a lost originary text. Matthew Wright\u2019s translations, for example, intend to \u201cprovide a clear English version\u201d that gives \u201ca reasonably accurate sense of what I think the authors meant\u201d (207), while approaches that adapt fragments to reconstruct a linear reimagining of the original might not capture what the author meant, but nevertheless purport to follow the dramaturgy of the original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under my proposal, a middle way arises between scholarly translations and new versions inspired by the original, involving a translation of the fragments\u2019 form and content with a view to performance. By taking inspiration from Beckett\u2019s dramaturgy of fragmentation, preserving the fragmentary form and refusing to fill in the blanks, the translator foregrounds the gaps as untranslatable and puts any future reader or audience member in what Anne Carson\u2019s calls a \u201cthird place,\u201d an \u201carea in between, if you will, where certain hidden meanings can be located and disclosed\u201d (Jansen 42).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as in Carson\u2019s Sappho translations, where the brackets are intended to \u201cimply a free space of imaginal adventure\u201d (Carson xi), so too would preserving the form and content of tragic fragments allow for imagination and innovation, a space of possibility encompassing all the potentials of what might have been. A by-product of the approach is that it also opens up the possibility of fusing the translation of tragic fragments and a dramaturgy of fragmentation with the wider practice of postdramatic theatre. As Hans-Thies Lehmann writes, postdramatic theatre involves \u201ca non-hierarchical use of signs that aims at a synaesthetic perception\u201d (86), which contradicts the established hierarchy of traditional, text-based theatre. Preserving a dramaturgy of fragmentation undercuts the traditional hierarchy of character, narrative, and any idea of unity, and supports Joseph Danan\u2019s understanding of postdramatic dramaturgies as avoiding both dramatic structures that are too robust and characters with too much characterization (13). Translating tragic fragments for performance in a way that preserves a dramaturgy of fragmentation inevitably facilitates a postdramatic dramaturgy and positions the output within a wider mode of practice.[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When speaking about Beckett\u2019s own bilingualism and how his characters increasingly struggle with language, S. E. Gontarski writes that Beckett\u2019s theatre is a \u201ctheatre of body parts and ghosts,\u201d \u201calert to the ways in which language exerts a torsion on its speakers, to whom it is always a foreign language and with whom it exists in an anomalous and difficult relationship\u201d (qtd in Mooney 174). We, too, exist in an anomalous and difficult relationship with the lost Greek tragedies, but by translating their fragments with recourse to Beckett\u2019s fragmentary modernisms, we might face this difficulty head-on, to open up what it means to engage with Greek tragedy today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Endnotes<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> Very few translations of ancient dramatic fragments existed in English until the literal translations of Aeschylean (Sommerstein), Sophoclean (Lloyd-Jones), and Euripidean (Collard and Cropp) fragments appeared via the Loeb Classical Library. More recently, in Matthew Wright\u2019s The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy <\/em>Volume 1, English translations of the tragic fragments from the over eighty other playwrights that survive appeared. Wright\u2019s translations fall into the sense-for-sense school of translation; his aim is to “provide a clear English version” that gives \u201ca reasonably accurate sense of what I think the authors meant.\u201d (207)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> For an outline of the history of Greek tragedy in postdramatic theatre see Cole 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Aeschylus. Fragments<\/em>. Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, Loeb Classical Library 505, Harvard UP, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acherson, James. Samuel Beckett\u2019s Artistic Theory and Practice<\/em>. Macmillan, 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beckett, Samuel. Catastrophe et autres dramaticules<\/em>. Minuit, 1986.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Complete Dramatic Works<\/em>. Faber and Faber, 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carson, Anne. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho<\/em>. Vintage, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole, Emma. Postdramatic Tragedies<\/em>. Oxford UP, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cFragments, Immersivity, and Reception: Punchdrunk on Aeschylus\u2019 Kabeiroi<\/em><\/a>.\u201d International Journal of the Classical Tradition<\/em>, vol. 28, no. 4, 2021, pp. 510\u201326. JSTOR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connor, Steven. \u201c\u2018Was That a Point?\u2019: Beckett\u2019s Punctuation.\u201d The Edinburgh Companion to Samuel Beckett and the Arts<\/em>, edited by S. E. Gontarski, Edinburgh UP, 2014, pp. 269\u201381.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coo, Lyndsay. \u201cA Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles\u2019 Tereus<\/em>.\u201d Transactions of the American Philological Association<\/em>, vol. 143, 2013, pp. 349\u201384.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danan, Joseph. \u201cDramaturgy in \u2018Postdramatic\u2019 Times.\u201d New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice<\/em>, edited by Katalin Trencs\u00e9nyi and Bernadette Cochrane, Bloomsbury, 2014, pp. 3\u201317.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elam, Keir. \u201cDead Heads: Damnation-Narration in the \u2018Dramaticules\u2019.\u201d The Cambridge Companion to Beckett<\/em>, edited by John Pilling, Cambridge UP, 1994, pp. 145\u201366.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Euripides. Fragments: Aegeus-Meleager<\/em>. Edited and translated by Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp, Loeb Classical Library 504, Harvard UP, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Euripides. Fragments: Oedipus-Chrysippus. Other Fragments<\/em>. Edited and translated by Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp, Loeb Classical Library 506, Harvard UP, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finglass, P. J. \u201cA New Fragment of Sophocles\u2019 Tereus<\/em><\/a>.\u201d Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Papyrologie und Epigraphik<\/em>, bd. 200, 2016, pp. 61\u201385. JSTOR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harrison, Tony. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus<\/em>. Tony Harrison Plays 5<\/em>, Faber and Faber, 2004, pp. 3\u2013148.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jansen, Laura. \u201cIntroduction: On Anne Carson\/Antiquity.\u201d Anne Carson\/Antiquity<\/em>, edited by Laura Jansen, Bloomsbury, 2021, pp. 1\u201312.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre<\/em>. Translated by Karen J\u00fcrs-Munby, Routledge, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little, James. The Making of Samuel Beckett\u2019s Not I \/ Pas moi, That Time \/ Cette fois and Footfalls \/ Pas<\/em>. Bloomsbury, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sophocles. Fragments<\/em>. Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Classical Library 483, Harvard UP, 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swift, Laura. \u201cMaking Theatre Out of Fragments.\u201d Greek Tragedy, Education, and Theatre Practices in the UK Classics Ecology<\/em>, edited by David Bullen and Christine Plastow, Routledge, 2024, pp. 113\u201325.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weiss, Katherine. \u201cBits and Pieces: The Fragmented Body in Samuel Beckett\u2019s Not I<\/em> and That Time<\/em><\/a>.\u201d Journal of Beckett Studies<\/em>, vol. 10, nos. 1\u20132, 2000, pp. 187\u201395. JSTOR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wertenbaker, Timberlake. The Love of the Nightingale<\/em>. Timberlake Wertenbaker Plays 1<\/em>, Faber and Faber, 1996, pp. 160\u2013354.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worth, Katharine. \u201cGreek Notes in Samuel Beckett\u2019s Theatre Art.\u201d Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium<\/em>, edited by Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh, and Amanda Wrigley, Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 265\u201383.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worthen, W. B. \u201cPlaying \u2018Play\u2019<\/a>.\u201d Theatre Journal<\/em>, vol. 37, no. 4, 1985, pp. 405\u201314. JSTOR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wright, Matthew. The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy, Volume 1: Neglected Authors<\/em>. Bloomsbury, 2016. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Emma Cole<\/strong> is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Queensland, and ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow. She is a classicist and a theatre historian and is an expert on Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre. Her books include Experiencing Immersion in Antiquity and Modernity <\/em>(Bloomsbury, 2025), Punchdrunk on the Classics <\/em>(Palgrave, 2024), Postdramatic Tragedies<\/em> (OUP 2019), and Adapting Translation for the Stage <\/em>(Routledge, 2017, co-edited with Geraldine Brodie). She is currently translating Euripides\u2019 final trilogy and writing a book about the history of Greek tragedy in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2026 Emma Cole
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, #33, June 2026
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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