Editing Come and Go (section)

== Related Texts ==

=== ''[[Disjecta (Beckett essay)#Part IV: Human Wishes|Human Wishes]]'' ===
In 1936 Beckett began a full-length play entitled ''[[Disjecta (Beckett)#Part IV: Human Wishes|Human Wishes]]'' (after the poem by [[Samuel Johnson|Dr Johnson]], ''Vanity of Human Wishes''). It was abandoned but in 1980 he allowed a fragment of this is to be published in [[Ruby Cohn]]'s ''Just Play'' and was later made more widely available in ''[[Disjecta (Beckett)|Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment]]'' edited by [[Ruby Cohn|Cohn]].

"When the curtain rises, three women are seated, presumably encircled by the long gowns of the time [18th Century]. Mrs Williams is [[Meditation|meditating]], Mrs Desmoulins is [[knitting]] and Miss Carmichael is reading. During the course of the scene the latter two rise and temporarily leave their seats, but Mrs Williams's actions are confined to striking the floor with her stick."<ref>Cohn, R., ‘The Femme Fatale on Beckett's Stage’ in ''Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives'', p 163</ref>

Beckett may have been "motivated by the theme he clearly wishes to pursue: [[Samuel Johnson|Johnson]] in love"<ref>Ben-Zvi, L., ‘Biographical, Textual and Historical Origins’ in Oppenheim, L., (Ed.) ''Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies'' (London: Palgrave, 2004), p 141</ref> but that is not what he ended up writing about. "The "three women look as though they might have emerged from [[tragedy]]. Their [[dialogue]] – especially Mrs Williams's lines – occasionally recalls [[Restoration comedy]], but its substratum is human mortality, without hope of restoration. [On the other hand r]ather than … explicit references to death, ''Come and Go'' spirals delicately around absence and threat."<ref>Cohn, R., ‘The Femme Fatale on Beckett's Stage’ in ''Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives'', pp 163,164</ref> "However, more than death, it is ‘the peevishness of decay’<ref>Cohn, R., Ed. ‘Human Wishes’ in ''Just Play'' (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), p 295-305</ref> that pervades the scene, illustrated by the petty bickering and punctuated by the repeated silences that threaten to stop what action there is."<ref>Ben-Zvi, L., Biographical, Textual and Historical Origins in Oppenheim, L., (Ed.) ''Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies'' (London: Palgrave, 2004), p 145</ref> "The play fragment also points forward … to the elegant, old-fashioned language and formalised syntax of the three women in ''Come and Go''."<ref>Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 271</ref>

=== Good Heavens ===
Flo, Vi, and Ru began their life as Viola, Rose and Poppy in a typescript now held at Reading University Library headed ‘Scene 1’. Poppy reads aloud from a titillating book, interrupted at intervals by the others. The [[revue]]-like style bears little resemblance to the finished work but it is clearly its genesis. The finished work "Come and Go" is extraordinary in its seeming simplicity built upon a rigorous and meticulous structure which has remarkable musical aspects in its formal discipline and clarity. Detailed analysis (identical to musical analysis of a score) is revelatory regarding Beckett's bridging the gap between composing with notes and writing with words/images. The parallels with specific musical techniques/terminology such as cells, permutations, variants, inversions, codas, counterpoint, dynamics, etc. are uncanny. The final structure of 'come and Go" could easily be the precise basis for a well-balanced and rigorously formal musical composition. 

In subsequent drafts Beckett adds a title, ''Type of Confidence'', which he changes to ''Good Heavens''; the names also vanish to be replaced by the letters A, B and C. "Beckett began the play clearly with the structure of three confidential gossips clearly in mind … before going on to draft the play in full … ''Good Heavens'' is almost complete, apart from the final conversation between C and A. In both texts the conversation centres on two secrets: first how each woman manages to achieve her apparently flawless complexion and secondly the fact that the absent member of the trio is suffering from a terminal illness … The difference between what is said face to face and what is said behind the back of the missing person reveals both a devastating feminine hypocrisy and the irony that the secret is told by someone whom the hearer already knows (or soon discovers) to be doomed also. And most ironical of all, while each woman muses upon the fate of the other two, she remains supremely unaware of her own."<ref>Pountney, R., ‘Less = More: Developing Ambiguity in the Drafts of ''Come and Go''’ in Davis, R. J. and Butler, L. St J., (Eds.) ''‘Make Sense Who May’: Essays on Samuel Beckett's Later Works'' (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 13</ref> The final austerity achieved in the minimal text manages to reduce the triviality normally associated with "gossip." It is contained within a sustained potent atmosphere that is only briefly interrupted at the three whispering moments.

In a later draft Beckett introduces "three sorrowing husbands – all conspicuously absent from the marital home:<ref>Pountney, R., ‘Less = More: Developing Ambiguity in the Drafts of ''Come and Go''’ in Davis, R. J. and Butler, L. St J., (Eds.) ''‘Make Sense Who May’: Essays on Samuel Beckett's Later Works'' (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 14</ref>

<pre>
Rose (of Poppy):   I ran into her husband at the Gaiety. 
      He is half crazed with grief. 
Poppy (of Vi):   Her husband wrote me from Madeira. 
      He is heartbroken
Vi (of Rose):           Her husband called me from Naples. 
      He was weeping over the wire. 
</pre>

The fact that the whispered secret in ''Come and Go'' relates to life expectancy is made "more explicit [in ''Good Heavens''], even spelling out the terminal date of the third friend's incurable ailment (‘Three months. At the outside … Not a suspicion. She thinks it is heartburn’<ref>Reading University Library, RUL 1227/7/16/5</ref>)."<ref name="Knowlson, J 1979 p 121"/>

=== ''Eleuthéria'' ===
"The three women [in ''[[Eleutheria (play)|Eleuthéria]]''], Mesdames Krap, Meck and Piouk, look forward to Flo, Vi and Ru in ''Come and Go'' in their repeated concern for each other's appearance and health; in addition, like the women of the later short play, two of them, Violette and [[Leucanthemum vulgare|Marguerite]], have flower-inspired Christian names."<ref>Knowlson, J. and Pilling, J., ''Frescoes of the Skull'' (London: John Calder, 1979), p 25</ref>