In the following essay excerpt, Fletcher and Spurling identify the structure of Endgame, then examine how its various elements such as subject matter and physical objects fit into that structure.

Endgame is constructed in more or less clearly defined sections which are 'played without a break'; the sections being frequently marked off by pauses but never by an interval as significant as that between the movements in a piece of music. Hamm and Clov correspond constructionally less to the 'characters' in a traditional play than to musical instruments. Their special characteristics are not used in the development of a plot, but to carry as it were pitch and timbre, to give off matching or dissonant tones and colours. If we think of Hamm and Clov in the first instance as, for example, 'cello and violin instead of as two people that we might see walking the streets...