Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape Summary | Part 1 Summary

An old man named Krapp sits facing away from his desk. An old fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder, microphone and boxes containing reels of recorded tapes sit on the desk.

Krapp sits motionless for a long moment, and then rises, fumbles in his pockets for a set of keys, searches through the desk and finds a banana. He peels it, throws the peel on the floor, puts one end of the banana in his mouth and doesn't move. He paces back and forth across the stage as he thoughtfully eats the banana. He almost slips on the peel but kicks it safely out of the way. Once he finishes the banana, he searches through the desk and finds a second banana. He peels it, puts the end in his mouth and remains still. Then he has an idea. He puts the banana in his pocket and hurries into the darkness. A cork pops. After a few moments, he returns with a ledger, sits and reviews it at the table.

Referring back and forth between the ledger and the boxes, Krapp goes through tapes with titles such as "mother at rest at last," "the dark nurse" and "memorable equinox" until he finds the one he's looking for, "farewell to love." He puts the tape on the tape recorder and listens closely as it plays.

Krapp hears his younger voice recounting the story of his thirty-ninth birthday on the tape. As he tries to get comfortable, he knocks one of the boxes of tapes off the table. Angry, he sweeps all the tapes and the ledger onto the floor, rewinds the tape and starts over.

Krapp-on-tape tells how he ate three bananas and could barely refrain from eating a fourth. He says a neighbor always sings at this hour and wonders if he ever sang. He tells how he is listening to random passages from another tape of another year, ten or twelve years ago. He mentions how he was living with a woman named Bianca at that point, and laughs at how young he sounded. Krapp-at-the-desk laughs as well. Krapp-on-tape talks about what the other Krapp-on-tape was talking about: statistics on how much he drank, plans for getting less involved with his sex life, laughing at his "youth" and a cry out to providence.

Krapp-at-the-desk switches off the tape and sits motionless for a moment He goes offstage. Another cork pops, and then another, and another. Krapp sings briefly in a raspy voice. He returns, wipes his mouth and listens again.