It was inspired by Beckett's experience of listening to Magee reading extracts from Molloy and From an Abandoned Work on the BBC Third Programme in December 1957.

In a letter to a London bookseller Jake Schwartz on 15 March 1958, Beckett wrote that he had "'four states, in typescript, with copious notes and dirty corrections, of a short stage monologue I have just written (in English) for Pat Magee.

In a letter to Rosset's editorial assistant, Judith Schmidt, on 11 May 1959, Beckett referred to the staging of Krapp's Last Tape as its 'creation'," and he made numerous significant changes to the text over the years as he was involved in directing the play.

He fast-forwards to near the end of the tape to escape the onslaught of words, where suddenly the mood has changed and he finds himself in the middle of a description of a romantic liaison between himself and a woman in a punt.

This time he allows the tape to play to the very end, with the thirty-nine-year-old Krapp determinedly not regretting the choices he has made, certain that what he would produce in the years to come would more than compensate him for any potential loss of happiness.

"[12] The ending in which Krapp re-listens to his younger self discuss his romantic encounter is a scene of masochism reminiscent of Croak in Words and Music, tormenting himself with an image of a woman’s face.

This character is based on Miss Beamish, an eccentric novelist from Connacht whom Beckett had met in Roussillon, while hiding during World War II.

Although not an obvious symbol of death, this ball is a significant motif of childhood grief for Beckett though none of his biographers propose that the presence of the dog is anything more than artistic license.

For, as Dream of Fair to Middling Women had made clear ... the 'Alba', who, on Beckett’s own admission, was closely modelled on Ethna, had eyes like dark, deep pools.

As it happens, with Waiting for Godot, success had found him but, at 39, the future must have seemed a lot bleaker for the writer, the Second World War was ending and all Beckett had had published were a few poems, a collection of short stories and the novel, Murphy.

Of the physical activities that he once considered excesses only sex has come to play a reduced part in his lonely existence"[54] in the form of periodic visits from an old prostitute.

As evidenced most clearly in the novel Murphy, Beckett had a decent understanding of a variety of mental illnesses including Korsakoff's Alcoholic Syndrome––"A hypomaniac teaching slosh to a Korsakow's syndrome.

"[58] It is important to remember that Krapp has not simply forgotten his past but he has consciously and systematically rejected it as one way of reassuring himself that he has made the right decisions in "his yearly word letting.

"[64] In the 1985 television version, Beckett changed this phrase to "better than the finger and the thumb,"[65] an unambiguous reference to masturbation that would never have escaped the British Lord Chamberlain in the 1950s.

When John Hurt, as Krapp, is transfixed by the retelling of the events in the punt he literally cradles the machine as if it were the woman, recalling Magee’s original performance; Beckett took pains to point this out to Alan Schneider, who was at the time preparing his own version of the play, in a letter dated 21 November 1958, and incorporated the gesture in future productions in which he was involved.

[70] Later, on 4 January 1960, Beckett wrote a more detailed letter describing another unexpected revelation of that earlier performance, "the beautiful and quite accidental effect in London of the luminous eye burning up as the machine runs on in silence and the light goes down.

The play was first performed as a curtain raiser to Endgame (from 28 October to 29 November 1958) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Donald McWhinnie and starring Patrick Magee.

"[78] Later, Krapp's Last Tape, directed by Alan Schneider, was a long-running performance at the Provincetown Playhouse, for which a 33 RPM recording was issued (see article and liner notes).

[79][80] In 1971, Alan Schneider directed Jack MacGowran in a videotaped production that was meant to be broadcast on WNET, but for some reason was rejected and never shown and "languished in a closet" until found in 1988 and painstakingly restored.

[84] Max Wall performed Krapp on a number of occasions, including London's Greenwich Theatre (1975 – directed by Patrick Magee[85]) and Riverside Studios (1986).

John Hurt performed the role of Krapp for the version directed by Atom Egoyan for the Beckett on Film project, which was broadcast on television in 2001 and available on DVD in the box set or individually.

In November 2011, directed by Michael Colgan, he reprised the role pre-Broadway at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC[86] followed by a limited Broadway run.

[87] In December 2011, again directed by Colgan, he reprised the role at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City as part of the BAM 2011 Next Wave Festival.

Dennehy's double bill of Hughie/Krapp's Last Tape was performed at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, this time directed by Steven Robman, from 5 November – 16 December 2018.

[96] In April 2010 Irish actor Michael Gambon continued his relationship with both Beckett and the Gate Theatre when he returned to the Dublin stage as Krapp for a limited run which was followed by a transfer to London's West End.

In 2012, at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre, Gerard Murphy performed the role, even though he was suffering spinal cord compression due to prostate cancer.

In 2018, Bob Nasmith played Krapp to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of Theatre Passe Muraille in a production directed by Mac Fyfe.

Approached by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, to permit a television version of his 1969 Schiller-Theatre Das letzte Band [the German title of the play], Beckett wrote a set of "Suggestions for TV Krapp", which "was broadcast [on] 28th October 1969.

In the 2013 Canadian film Meetings with a Young Poet, the character of Lucia Martell wants the rights to the piece to transform it into a one-woman play as a vehicle for herself.

The play is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2008 film Synecdoche, New York and in Spalding Gray's A Personal History of the American Theatre, a 1985 monologue directed for television by Skip Blumberg.