- Racine's Bérénice is a play "in which nothing happens for five acts."[213] In the preface to this play Racine writes: "All creativity consists in making something out of nothing." Beckett was an avid scholar of the 17th-century playwright and lectured on him during his time at Trinity. "Essential to the static quality of a Racine play is the pairing of characters to talk at length to each other."[59]
- The title character of Balzac's 1851 play Mercadet is waiting for financial salvation from his never-seen business partner, Godeau. Although Beckett was familiar with Balzac's prose, he insisted that he learned of the play after finishing Waiting for Godot.
- Many critics, including Al Alvarez and Christopher Ricks, regard the protagonists in Beckett's novel Mercier and Camier as prototypes of Vladimir and Estragon.[214] "If you want to find the origins of Godot", Beckett told Colin Duckworth once, "look at Murphy."[215] Here we see the agonised protagonist yearning for self-knowledge, or at least complete freedom of thought at any cost, and the dichotomy and interaction of mind and body. Mercier and Camier wander aimlessly about a boggy, rain-soaked island that, although not explicitly named, is Beckett's native Ireland. They speak convoluted dialogues similar to Vladimir and Estragon's, joke about the weather and chat in pubs, while the purpose of their odyssey is never made clear. The waiting in Godot is the wandering of the novel. "There are large chunks of dialogue which he later transferred directly into Godot."[216]
- Waiting for Godot has been compared with Tom Stoppard's 1966 play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Parallels include two central characters who appear to be aspects of a single character and whose lives are dependent on outside forces over which they have little control. There are also plot parallels, the act of waiting as a significant element of the play, during the waiting, the characters pass time by playing Questions, impersonating other characters, at times repeatedly interrupting each other while at other times remaining silent for long periods.[217]
- The 1991 West End production (see above), inspired Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson to develop Bottom, which Mayall described as a "cruder cousin" to Godot.[218]
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