Editing Come and Go (section)

=== 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"/>