Hamm, blind and unable to stand, and Clov, unable to sit, inhabit a shelter while the world outside may be ending. Hamm's parents live in ashbins. Nothing happens. The dialogue circles, repeats, delays. Beckett wrote this after Waiting for Godot, and it is bleaker, more compressed, more final. The end is in the beginning and yet you go on: the line captures the play's vision. Endgame is chess terminology; the pieces are nearly gone but the game continues. Beckett strips theater to its bones and finds that even the bones have something to say.