Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope
Thomas Hudson, National Portrait Gallery, London, Alexander Pope

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Samuel Beckett's idea for a play about Samuel Johnson

254: [Beckett] had an idea for a play about Samuel Johnson and had begun to work on it, making voluminous notes and writing at least part of the first act. Surprise has been expressed that Beckett should be more interested in Johnson than in Jonathan Swift,...he should have fixed on a fellow Irishman and a fellow graduate of Trinity College, Dublin,


Perhaps, though, one of the reasons for his interest lies precisely in the difference in outlook between the two, a difference important to Beckett and implied very clearly throughout Johnson's Life of Swift.

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