“We were not long together when she smelled the rat.”
The storyline of Play, such as it is, is about the discovery of an affair with another woman by the wife of the man having the affair. Information about the affair is revealed dialogue, but not conversation. The characters of the play—such as they are—are all speaking about the same time period and series of events, but they are not speaking to each other. As a result of this lack of conventional discourse, all the traditional elements of dramaturgy are conveyed through literary technique rather than such acting techniques as inflection and pantomime. Smelling the rat is such a technique; it is a metaphor for the husband’s acts of unfaithfulness and deception.
“She put a bloodhound on me.”
The wife hires a private detective to follow her husband and get the proof. He is quick to spot the guy and turns the table. The metaphorical bloodhound tracks down his prey, but proves less morally outraged than amorally corruptible. A little extra money from the prey stops the sniffing and a little later the wife confirms that the investigation failed to provide her evidence of the affair.
“She would settle my hash.”
One of the literary conventions that Beckett consciously ignores is the most fundamental of all: letting the audience know what happened here. This is not merely a case of presenting an ambiguous ending. The mingling of three separate perspectives telling their versions of the same events without allowing for easy interpretation of whose perspective might be most honest or factual is made even more confusing by having each line taking place at a different point on the chronological timeline than the one which came before or after it. According to the “other woman” the wife threatened to kill her but the metaphorical delivery of this information alone is enough to cast at least some doubt on the veracity, despite her claims to a witness who is, of course, not available.
“Like dragging a great roller, on a scorching day.”
Beginning from a point where communication is basically entirely dependent upon language, it is perhaps inevitable that the play ceaselessly moves toward the breakdown of even that. Inexorably, even the ability to understand the meaning of individual lines spoken out of context to what came before or comes after falls apart and almost the only thing left is figurative imagery; metaphors without direct objects of comparison.
“Am I much as . . . being seen?”
The final individually spoken line of the play becomes the establishing metaphor of its theme. The characters are just heads inside identical urns. They are the closest thing possible to symbols of people rather than actual people; just heads spouting echoes from the past. Unheard by the present and unaware of each other’s spoken thoughts in either the present or past, the man in the middle is asking the ultimate existential question.
