With his little known radio play, Words and Music, Beckett concentrates on the

expression of doubt and hopelessness that characterizes the inferno. It is a world in

which human relations are burdened because each soul is so completely trapped in
its own identity. An old man, forced by two muses, Words and Music, to remember a
woman he once knew, realizes that he has never had genuine contact with another
human being.
In this piece, two characters entitled Words and Music (or Joe and Bob as they are
sometimes called) work together and against each other in order to produce songs,
musical interludes, and lyric poetry. To some extent, they are led by a third
character, Croak, who, as the name suggests, exists somewhere in between sound
and sense. The lyrical nature of this short piece ranges from the melancholic to the
gently comic.
The going is not easy; from the very beginning its obvious that Words and Music do
not enjoy each others company. The play opens with Music a small orchestra
tuning up much to the irritation of Words who is trying to rehearse a soliloquy on the
unlikely theme of sloth. The orchestra interrupts him in the middle of his speech and
again at the end when hes straining to hear if their master is approaching.
Squabbling servants appear often in the works of Shakespeare. Joe is much
like Malvolio, the strait-laced steward in the household of Lady Olivia, efficient but
also self-righteous, with a poor opinion of drinking, singing, and fun. (reference to
Shakespeare, isto kao sto se krapp uporedjuje sa prosperom)
Croak shuffles into the room and Joe and Bob both become subservient. Theyve
probably been together for a great many years, like Hamm and Clov, and rubbing
each other up the wrong way has become a means of entertaining themselves when
theyre not performing for their master. Croak realizes they will have been bickering
and gently reproves them: "My comforts! Be friends."
The play opens with only two of its three characters present. While Music
(comprising a small orchestra) tunes up, Words breaks in rather peremptorily to
rehearse his speech on one of Becketts favorite subjects, Sloth. As soon becomes
clear, the relationship between Words and Music is antagonistic; each implores,
loathes, interrupts, and seeks to gain ascendancy over the other until they hear the
sound of Croak, in his bedroom slippers, approaching from the distance. Croak
arrives as lord and peacemaker, addressing Words and Music as my comforts, my
balms, and more familiarly, and comically, as Joe and Bob, whom he advises to be
friends.
Croak considers for a moment and then announces the theme for the nights
entertainment: love. He calls for his club and thumps it on the ground: "Love!" We
now realise that Joe was mocking the old man in his earlier disquisition on sloth. The
speech he delivers is practically identical to the one he was rehearsing before; he
has simply swapped sloth with love. It is empty rhetoric. At one point he even

stumbles and says sloth by mistake. The feeling is that it wouldnt matter what the
theme chosen was this was the speech he was intending to deliver: "one-size-fitsall verbiage"
Ultimately most critics agree that Words and Music is a "composition about
composition".[26] Of course, a theme running through all of Becketts writing has
been the impossibility of meaningful expression through words alone and, in that
respect, Joe doesnt disappoint. Croak wants to feel. He wants to wallow in a
moment, exactly as Krapp does. He doesnt want to know. He doesnt need to
understand. What is there to understand? Viewed purely as a means of
communication, people revert to lovemaking to express their feelings, to say what
words cant say.
In Words and Music, the two characters, Words and Music, are asked by Croak to
express given themes: Words by means of the conceptual language of reason, and
Music, of course, by the immediate and direct non-representative language of
music. The three main themes are 'love', 'age' and 'the face,' but prior to this,
Words warms up by practicing to define the word 'sloth.'
Despite its brevity, Words and Music is, as all Becketts imaginative writings are, to
be thought of less as the means by which the author expresses or transmits a
certain content than as a machine for generating meanings, for provoking
responses from its bewildered audience of listeners and readers. Something surely
happens in Words and Musicor at least seems to happenbut exactly what it is is
impossible to say. Like its characters, its audience may well prefer that something
not be nothing. Meaning nothing itself, Words and Music can mean anything and
everything; it can accommodate those partial readings it invites yet resists.