Waiting for Godot Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if "Godot" won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. "Godot" became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since." In the Australian premiere at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne in 1957, Barry Humphries played Estragon opposite Peter O'Shaughnessy's Vladimir. Although not his favourite amongst his plays, "Waiting for Godot" was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held
Samuel Beckett in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin on Good Friday, 13 April 1906, to William Frank Beckett, a quantity surveyor and descendant of the Huguenots, and Maria Jones Roe, a nurse, when both were 35. They had married in 1901. Beckett had one older brother, Frank Edward Beckett (1902–1954). At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool in Dublin, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsfort