This article examines the transformation of the temporal foundations of modern drama by focusing on René Descartes’ philosophical formulation of time, and analyzes how this transformation gives rise to a fundamental crisis in the possibility of dramatic action and the organization of plot. In the Cartesian conception, time is understood not as an objective and continuous reality, but as a mental, discontinuous quantity lacking intrinsic duration—an understanding that weakens the traditional connection between consciousness, causality, and action. This study demonstrates that such a conception of time does not merely entail metaphysical or epistemological consequences, but also exerts a decisive influence on the formal structures of drama, thereby challenging the temporal foundations of classical dramaturgy.



Employing a qualitative, descriptive–analytical approach, the article investigates this philosophical crisis through two pivotal moments in the history of drama: Shakespearean tragedy and the Theatre of the Absurd. In the first step, Descartes’ conception of time is reconstructed on the basis of his primary texts, in relation to concepts such as duration, continuous creation, and the discreteness of instants, in order to establish the theoretical framework of the analysis. This formulation is then applied not as a source of direct historical influence, but as a conceptual horizon of interpretation in the analysis of two dramatic texts.



The findings of the research indicate that Hamlet functions as a threshold text in which time has not yet fully collapsed, but is no longer capable of guaranteeing the necessity of dramatic action; repeated suspensions, the rupture between thought and action, and the instability of the relation between consciousness and action all point to a crisis in the temporal ordering of the plot. By contrast, Waiting for Godot represents the final configuration of this crisis, where time is emptied of continuity, directionality, and causal capacity, and repetition, memory disturbance, and the replacement of action by waiting fundamentally undermine the possibility of plot. From this perspective, the transition from Hamlet to Waiting for Godot can be understood as a movement from doubt in time toward its complete collapse—a movement in which the disintegration of Cartesian time leads to the collapse of dramatic organization in modern drama.