Collection of American Theater Director Alan Schneider (1917-1984)

SAMUEL BECKETT

Waiting for Godot. Tragicomedy in 2 acts. New York: Grove Press, [1954]. First edition in English, inscribed by Beckett to the director Alan Schneider, "For Alan / with very sincere friendship / from Sam / London Dec. 1955" and noted on the front endpaper as Schneider's "Working Copy" and with much annotation within. Original black cloth with dust jacket, 5 x 8½ inches. Dust jacket toned and with loss to head, tail, and to the upper panel costing some title lettering. The cloth with a few small stains, bumped, the hinges cracked and a trifle over-opened, the textblock with thumbsoiling and a few small stains, all wear from use by the director.

Provenance: Collection of Alan Schneider (1917-1984); Following the death of Alan Schneider in 1984, these materials were retained by Schneider’s widow, Eugenie Schneider, who died in the summer of 2025 at 101 years old.

Director Alan Schneider's annotated working copy of one of the most important plays of the 20th century. Before the American premiere of Waiting for Godot, Schneider traveled by ship to meet with Beckett in Paris. He found that Thornton Wilder was a fellow passenger, and together the two read and reread the French and English texts of Godot. Wilder was enthusiastic about Beckett's writing and overenthusiastic in interpreting it. Together, the two men filled a memo pad with notes and a long list of questions for Schneider to ask Beckett in Paris. Schneider relates in his autobiography Entrances that upon meeting with Beckett and asking his first question, "'who or what is Godot?' [...] Beckett stared off into space for a while and then answered, 'if I knew, I would have said so in the play.' [Schneider] almost threw away the memo pad; certainly, [he] didn't open it again in [Beckett's] presence." Although Schneider was slated for a 30-minute meeting with Beckett, the two men wandered Paris, drank a bottle of champagne, and had a fruitful discussion about the play. Before the week was out, Beckett invited Schneider to join him in London to attend and discuss several performances of the first English staging of Waiting for Godot.

The American premiere of Godot in Miami was a disaster. The cast was under-rehearsed, and the audience unsophisticated. Schneider directed the initial two-week run, but he, along with three-fourths of the original cast, was replaced at its conclusion. Still, Beckett was impressed by Schneider's understanding of his work and by his tendency towards fidelity to the text at the expense of commercial appeal. This working copy of Godot, dated in Paris and London, December 1955, represents a pivotal moment in the intertwined lives of Schneider and Beckett as Schneider began making sense of the playwright whose work would define his career.