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Samuel Beckett: A Short Biography

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old.

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The air is full of our cries.

— Waiting for Godot

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born without difficulty at Cooldrinach in Foxrock, County Dublin, on 13 April 1906, but grew old enough to fill the air with many different cries.

He was the second of two sons of a middle-class Protestant couple (his father managed a surveying firm) and grew up away from the rebellion waged nearby. Though quite energetic, he enjoyed even as a small boy the quiet of solitude.

He studied at Earlsfort House in Dublin, and then at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (where Oscar Wilde had gone) where he first began to learn French, one of the two languages in which he would write. A well-rounded athlete, Beckett excelled especially in cricket, tennis, and boxing in his school days.

Though he continued with sports, his attention turn