Guide Note

Act One

Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days begins with the main character Winnie covered waist deep in a mound of earth. Winnie is eternally surrounded by light and is an eternal optimist. She lives according to a strict routine based on a bell rung by an outside force. All her basic belongings are in a bag which she adores. Her husband Willie,who lives in a cave behind her mound of earth listens, but rarely answers with more than a monosyllable. She focuses on the classics in contrast to his interest in the popular press. She continues to talk to him because she is terrified of being alone.

Act Two

Act two is significantly sadder than Act one with Winnie being even further covered in the mound making her unable to move or get things out of her bag. She says she is in pain. Near the end of the play Willie crawls towards her, either for her or the gun. In contrast to the early conversations in the play she speaks bitterly to Willie, but the play ends with her breaking into song one last time.

Fast Facts

1. Written by Samuel Beckett
2. Two act play
3. Play completed on May 14, 1961
4. French title Oh les beaux jours not an exact translation
5. First production at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City
6. Beckett heavily involved in several productions
7. Published by Grove Press in 1961
8. Influenced by his wife's request to that write a happy play

Happy Days Quotes

1. "Wait for the happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees and the night of the moon has so many hundred hours."
2. "Something of this is being heard, I am not merely talking to myself, that is in the wilderness, a thing I could never bear to do – for any length of time. That is what enables me to go on, go on talking that is. Whereas if you were to die to speak in the old style or go away and leave me, then what would I do, what could I do, all day long, I mean between the bell for waking and the bell for sleep? Simply gaze before me with compressed lips."