Peter O'Shaughnessy historian and folklorist". Peter O'Shaughnessy Peter O'Shaughnessy OAM (5 October 1923 – 17 July 2013) was an Australian actor, theatre director, producer and writer who presented the work of playwrights ranging from Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov to modern dramatists, such as Ionesco, Pinter and Beckett. He is best known as mentor to and collaborator with comedian Barry Humphries in his early career. O'Shaughnessy was a major exponent of Samuel Beckett, both in Australia and in Ireland. He produced the first "Waiting for Godot" in Australia in 1957. He played Krapp in the Australian premier of "Krapp's Last Tape" at
Vladimir (Waiting for Godot) (with Zero Mostel as Estragon) and - in one rather notorious version of the play - Steve Martin (with Robin Williams as Estragon) and Patrick Stewart. In Tom Stoppard's "Godot" pastiche, "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead", the character Guildenstern closely resembles Vladimir. "Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it's too late. They wouldn't even let us up." "Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my