Samuel beckett waiting for godot endgame a readers guide to essential criticism by peter boxall editor 403 rating details 144 ratings 7 reviews in this readers guide peter boxall traces critical responses to waiting for godot and endgame from the 1950s to the present day. Since the first performances of waiting for godot in the early 1950s samuel beckett has become one of the most prominent authors of the twentieth century widely regarded as the last of the great modernists waiting for godot and endgame are two of his most famous plays and are taken by many to be defining dramatic representations of life in post war europe. Becketts great innovation in godot and endgame is both to question the formal structure that playwrights of previous traditions have felt obliged to respect and to offer a mimesis or representation of reality that recognizes and inscribes the formlessness of existence without attempting to make it fit any model in 1961 beckett wrote as