Dramatic Form: The Example Of Godot

IN THE THEATER'S CANNIBALISTIC HABITOF making its own image part of the matter of a play there are certain interesting implications regarding the mechanics of form. Robert Nelson has argued that the play-within- a-play reveals the dramatist's controlling conception of the theater, and it is possible it seems to see in an inner form a personal gestalt that the outer form need not reveal. But formally there is something more involved. For if an art form can use the fact and nature of its own being for part of its statement, what is implied is that in the form itself there exists potential statement. This seems self-evident. But the implication is that theater, like painting, can divest itself of its outer form. For if the theater can make of its mimetic aspect a vehicle, in Wimsatt's sense, then theoretically at least it can make of it the dominant vehicle. What we normally think of as the mechanics of a play can become not only the dominant but the essential mode of statement. It is this I feel that accounts both for the importance and the uniqueness of Waiting for Godot.