Why are there so many stage directions in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot?

It is Beckett’s intention to convey his ideas not only through spoken dialogue, by also by means of several “stage languages”: gesture, proxemics, blocking, costume, etc.  To do this, it was necessary to dictate the details of these languages, rather than leave them up to the whims or aesthetic tastes of a director.  (It should be noted that when one reads a "normative" play, for example from a Samuel French publication, the stage directions were not written by the playwright, but inserted by the editor, usually following a director's choices in a premiere production.)

  Thus, there are "so many" stage directions because four characters (not including the boy messenger) must be conducted in every movement and gesture.  Take, for example, the complexity of the hat-juggling action.   In many respects, the play is as much a dance as it is a “play,” because in Beckett’s view of the world, human actions are as important as human utterances – virtually all of Beckett’s work stresses the physicality of our being, as much as or more than our “thinking” – the very duality of Gogo and Didi makes this same point. Directors who have ventured to ignore or depart from Beckett’s stage directions have invariably diluted the play’s impact.  To ignore these elaborate directions would be like changing the dialogue in a classic play.  The final stage direction (“They do not move.”) is essential to the play’s theme.