If Waiting for Godot shows its two heroes whiling away the time in a succession of desultory, and never-ending, games, Beckett's second play deals with an "endgame," the final game in the hour of death.

Waiting for Godot takes place on a terrifyingly empty open road, Endgame in a claustrophobic interior. Waiting for Godot consists of two symmetrical movements that balance each other; Endgame has only one act that shows the running down of a mechanism until it comes to a stop. Yet Endgame, like Waiting for Godot, groups its characters in symmetrical pairs.

In a bare room with two small windows, a blind old man, Hamm, sits in a wheelchair. Hamm is paralyzed, and can no longer stand. His servant, Clov, is unable to sit down. In two ash cans that stand by the wall are Hamm's legless parents, Nagg and Nell. The world outside is dead...