A quick look at the subtitle of the play reveals that Beckett called it "a tragi-comedy in two acts," and this delicate balance between tragedy and comedy is probably the most essential ingredient in the play. Numerous critics have pointed out that Waiting for Godot is full of pratfalls and classic vaudeville "bits".
lack Comedy is laughter that is generated by something truly painful. When we are led to laugh at tragedy or real suffering like death or the genuinely horrific, we are in the world of Black Comedy. In Endgame Nell says, "nothing is funnier than un-happiness." Beckett leads us to laugh because it may be the only viable response to extreme anxiety. In Waiting for Godot, of course, what follows the "trouser" passage above is the quite serious and even solemn concluding lines of the play "they do not move."
Waiting for Godot