How do you say Godot?

An important offering with Stage & Screen is the collection of Samuel Beckett materials belonging to Alan Schneider, Beckett's great friend and the director of his American premieres starting with Waiting for Godot in 1956. While Schneider died in 1984, this special group of inscribed scripts, awards, and rare first production posters were long retained by his widow, Eugenie, who died recently at 101. And, as only Beckettian timing would have it, a current revival of Waiting for Godot on Broadway has stirred up the never-ending debate. How do you pronounce Godot?

Beckett would famously tell people that it didn't matter. You'll also hear that in productions he directed himself it was GOD-ot. But that wasn’t immediate. Written in French as En Attendant Godot, the absurdist play was first performed in Paris in 1953 and in Beckett's own English translation in London in 1955. Back in the U.S., Alan Schneider directed the first American production to a confused group of Miami vacationers expecting to see the "Laugh Sensation of Two Continents." Bert Lahr, once the Cowardly Lion but here the first American Estragon, described it as "the biggest flop in the history of the theater.'' This was a tough beginning for this work in the United States (see the likely the sole surviving sun-faded copy of the play's first American poster).

So how was the name said in these salad days? In French, there is no stress on any particular syllable, so you frequently hear Go-do. In Britain and Ireland, it is pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable, just picture an Englishman saying, "We're waiting for GOD-dough." But in the United States, was it Alan Schneider who introduced the Americanization of waiting for GUH-dot?

In a recorded interview in 1970, Schneider eloquently describes sailing to Paris to meet Beckett, and the champagne fueled night that launched their notable relationship. Schneider asked Beckett, "Who is GUH-dot? What is GUH-dot?" [to which Beckett responded:] "If I knew I would have put it in the script." From Paris they travelled together to London to see the first English production of which Beckett complained "They're doing it all wrong!" Were they saying it wrong too? If Schneider said it the same way he did in 1955 that he did in 1970, long before the play was ever attempted on these American shores, it was already being pronounced GUH-dot and Samuel Beckett himself did not stop him.

GUH-dot as the pronunciation was cemented by the excellent 1961 U.S. television adaptation of the play starring the struggling post-Blacklist actors Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel. The play is introduced by its Chicago-born American publisher Barney Rosset as definitively GUH-dot. After this well received telecast, the Times wrote that the play that once "left critics bewildered is now a classic.” This wide TV audience is likely how GUH-dot found its way into the American lexicon.

So, it's GUH-dot. I'm sticking with that. Any other opinions?

Well, according to Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, '80s stars of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, now Estragon and Vladimir in the current revival, told Playbill Video "We are using GOD-ot." And Reeves reminds us that "He makes a joke about it in the play" referring to Pozzo's line about his expected appointment with "GOdin GOdet GODot GUH-dot."

Hmm. They seem to be taking a stance, something that seems important when staging this complicated work. They've also replaced the usual setting of a sad tree on the side of a barren, post-apocalyptic country road with a massive stone tunnel adding to the existential crisis of the play. Some say when pronouncing the name as GOD-dot it is suggestive of the presence or lack thereof of God and other religious dilemmas long investigated by Beckett scholars. Perhaps Thornton Wilder was right when he put it to Alan Schneider that Waiting for Godot "is an existentialist work about the nullity of experience in relation to the search for an absolute.” Maybe searching for an absolute answer on how to say Godot is as confusing an activity as trying to figure out the play. I feel the master at work.

Stage & Screen

Auction Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 10am
Exhibition November 1-3

Property from the Collection of American Theater Director Alan Schneider (1917-1984) including a fascinating collection of early Waiting for Godot material.
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