‘There's No Key’

One particularly telling, oft cited but rarely unpacked exchange is the (now) famous London meeting between Samuel Beckett and the eminent actor Ralph Richardson, the incident recounted by Beckett in a letter of 18 October 1954 to his American publisher, Barney Rosset, who would soon take on the additional responsibility of being Beckett's American theatrical producer as well:

Beckett's citing the exchange so forcefully to Rosset may have constituted something of a pre-emptive warning as the American publication of Godot had just appeared (two years ahead of the British edition) and its American theatrical premiere was imminent, if delayed; the play would finally open in try out, ill advisedly, as it turned out, in Miami Beach, Florida on 3 January 1956. Beckett had rehearsed the Richardson vignette a few days Mary Manning Howe, telling her that Richardson ‘Wanted the low-down on Pozzo, his home address, family background and curriculum vitae’. He repeated the incident to Howe yet again on the same day he wrote Rosset, this time with an even stronger admonition: ‘He asked a lot of stupid questions I was too tired to answer. There are no answers to such questions but less tired I could have found some. […] he is not the man for the play, and I do not think that the W. E. [West End] is the place for it either’ (Letters 2 508, n. 1).