Stage Directions in Footfalls – A Drama by Samuel Beckett

Metatextuality and paratextuality constitute two categories of transtextuality. The former has been a focal point of research for many scholars. Most of them strongly agree with that Samuel Beckett shuffled the role of the periferic text and the principal one. The unique character of the metatext’s role in Beckett’s theater comes to the fore in the case of a theatrical miniature entitled Footfalls.

The periferic text includes not only the specification of stage movements and decoration, but also outlines the play’s philosophical context. Moreover, it reveals the Beckettian vision of the world. Due to its clarity the periferic text takes on the role of the principal one without which and the transfer of literary sense or even the whole piece would be incomprehensible. Footfalls highlights the minimalist character of Beckett’s theater, it a specific kind of reductionism as well as an extremely ambiguous symbolism. Those phenomena derive their raison d’être only from the interconnectedness of the principle text and the periferic one.

In the Footfalls the periferic text bridges the gap between the peripheries of the periferic text the center of the principal text and does so in an even more distinct manner than in other plays by Beckett.