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'''''... but the clouds ...''''' is a television play by [[Samuel Beckett]]. Beckett wrote it between October–November 1976 "to replace a film of ''[[Play (play)|Play]]'' which the [[BBC]] had sent [him] for approval (and which he had rejected)"<ref>{{cite book |editor1-first=C. J. |editor1-last=Ackerley |editor2-first=S. E. |editor2-last=Gontarski |date=2006 |title=The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=77 |isbn=978-0-5712-2738-9}}</ref> due to "the poor quality of the film". [[Donald McWhinnie]] directed [[Billie Whitelaw]] and [[Ronald Pickup]]. It was first broadcast on 17 April 1977 as part of a programme of three Beckett plays entitled 'Shades' on [[BBC2]]. It was first published in ''Ends and Odds'' (Faber) 1977. An early title for the piece was '''''Poetry only love'''''.
==
The play opens in darkness. It fades up to a shot from behind of M, a "man sitting on [an] invisible stool and bowed over [an] invisible table."<ref name="multiref4">{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=257 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> He is wearing his [[nightshirt|gown]] and [[Nightcap (garment)|nightcap]]. This is the only way we ever see him in the present, bowed over his table. The camera returns to this image fifteen times throughout the play.▼
We hear a voice and assume it belongs to the man we are looking at, at least it is his thoughts we hear. He is remembering the circumstances under which he has seen the woman in the past. While he remembers we see M1, his remembered/imagined self, go through the motions described, at least what little actually takes place in the circle of light. He changes his mind about what causes her to appear. At first he says, "When I thought of her..."<ref>{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=259 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> but he realises that is inaccurate; the woman simply ''appears'' to him, and always at night. He goes over his routine, carefully starting from his return home after walking the roads since daybreak:<ref>Both in his biography of Beckett (''Damned to Fame'' p.634) and in a chapter within his book ''Frescoes of the Skull'' (p.261), James Knowlson draws a parallel with this man and the type of characters written by [[John Millington Synge|Synge]].</ref> he enters, goes to the closet and swaps his [[greatcoat]] and hat for a nightgown and cap, then he enters his sanctum and tries to summon her, always without joy, whereupon at dawn he dresses again and heads out on the road.▼
The voice lists the three instances listed above where the woman has appeared to him in the past. When he reaches the third one the camera cuts to the woman's face, "reduced as far as possible to eyes and a mouth",<ref name="multiref4"/> which mouths silently along with the voice, "...clouds...but the clouds...of the sky..."<ref name="ShorterPlays261">{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=261 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> The man then realises there is a fourth case, but not really a fourth ''{{linktext|per se}}'' because so much of the time, by far the greatest amount of the time, nothing happens, the woman never even appears.▼
Although from the opening scene it seems like he spends every night willing the woman to appear, this isn't the case. Sometimes he grows weary and occupies himself with other things that are "more ... rewarding, such as ... [[cube root]]s"<ref name="ShorterPlays261" /> or sits absorbed with nothing – which he describes as a mine – like the man in ''[[Film (film)|Film]]''.▼
We see M1 prepare for the road again and leave. The voice says, "Right," then the woman's face appears once more and the voice repeats the final four lines of Yeats's poem. This time, however, the woman does not mouth the words. Her face dissolves, we are left with the man sitting at his invisible table where we began and everything fades to black.▼
==Title==
The title comes from a phrase from the last verse of [[W. B. Yeats|W. B. Yeats's]] near-[[Solipsism|solipsist]] poem,
''[[The Tower (poem)|The Tower]]'':
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==Structure==
===Characters===
The director, Sidney Homan, defines the four 'characters' in this work:<ref name="Homan68">{{cite book |first=Sidney |last=Homan |date=1992 |title=Filming Beckett's Television Plays: A Director's Experience |___location=Lewisburg |publisher=Bucknell University Press |page=68 |isbn=978-0-8387-5234-0}}</ref>
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===Stages===
Unlike ''[[Quad (play)|Quad]]'', which utilises a single fixed camera throughout, there are a total of sixty camera shots in this piece, "the shape of an hour or a minute",<ref name="multiref3">{{cite book |first=Enoch |last=Brater |chapter=Intertextuality |editor1-last=Oppenheim |editor1-first=Lois |date=2004 |title=Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies |___location=London |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |page=37 |isbn=978-1-4039-0352-5}}</ref> which can be organised into four groups or stages. There are only two televisual techniques used throughout the play: fade and dissolve.
====Stage 1====
('''Directions 1-19'''): The first stage focuses on the past, those times when the woman did appear and M could be creative as a consequence.
====Stage 2====
('''Directions 20-26'''): The second stage examines where the poet is presently. There are three areas, just offstage in the darkness.
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====Stage 3====
('''Directions 27-52'''): In the third stage the poet lists four possibilities:
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====Stage 4====
('''Direction 53-60'''): In the final stage, the poet actually "finds success, almost as an ironic consequence of his despair. The woman appears and, this time, V is able to [recite] all four lines from Yeats's poem, rather than the truncated and hence frustrating single line of the television play's title."<ref name="Homan68" />
▲The play opens in darkness. It fades up to a shot from behind of M, a "man sitting on [an] invisible stool and bowed over [an] invisible table."<ref name="multiref4">{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=257 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> He is wearing his [[nightshirt|gown]] and [[Nightcap (garment)|nightcap]]. This is the only way we ever see him in the present, bowed over his table. The camera returns to this image fifteen times throughout the play.
▲We hear a voice and assume it belongs to the man we are looking at, at least it is his thoughts we hear. He is remembering the circumstances under which he has seen the woman in the past. While he remembers we see M1, his remembered/imagined self, go through the motions described, at least what little actually takes place in the circle of light. He changes his mind about what causes her to appear. At first he says, "When I thought of her..."<ref>{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=259 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> but he realises that is inaccurate; the woman simply ''appears'' to him, and always at night. He goes over his routine, carefully starting from his return home after walking the roads since daybreak:<ref>Both in his biography of Beckett (''Damned to Fame'' p.634) and in a chapter within his book ''Frescoes of the Skull'' (p.261), James Knowlson draws a parallel with this man and the type of characters written by [[John Millington Synge|Synge]].</ref> he enters, goes to the closet and swaps his [[greatcoat]] and hat for a nightgown and cap, then he enters his sanctum and tries to summon her, always without joy, whereupon at dawn he dresses again and heads out on the road.
▲The voice lists the three instances listed above where the woman has appeared to him in the past. When he reaches the third one the camera cuts to the woman's face, "reduced as far as possible to eyes and a mouth",<ref name="multiref4"/> which mouths silently along with the voice, "...clouds...but the clouds...of the sky..."<ref name="ShorterPlays261">{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=261 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> The man then realises there is a fourth case, but not really a fourth ''{{linktext|per se}}'' because so much of the time, by far the greatest amount of the time, nothing happens, the woman never even appears.
▲Although from the opening scene it seems like he spends every night willing the woman to appear, this isn't the case. Sometimes he grows weary and occupies himself with other things that are "more ... rewarding, such as ... [[cube root]]s"<ref name="ShorterPlays261" /> or sits absorbed with nothing – which he describes as a mine – like the man in ''[[Film (film)|Film]]''.
▲We see M1 prepare for the road again and leave. The voice says, "Right," then the woman's face appears once more and the voice repeats the final four lines of Yeats's poem. This time, however, the woman does not mouth the words. Her face dissolves, we are left with the man sitting at his invisible table where we began and everything fades to black.
==Interpretation==
In a number of other works Beckett has felt the need to split an individual into separate aspects of that character, e.g. ''[[Words and Music (play)|Words and Music]]'', where the writer, his words and his emotions are all represented by separate characters. "In ''... but the clouds ...'', however, Beckett is concerned not with fragments of the self, but the whole person. The [[protagonist]], M, sees himself whole, (as at the end of ''Film'') held in the light circle of the imagination ... The action of ''... but the clouds ...'' consists of M reliving past experience with such intensity that he can see himself performing his daily routine."<ref>{{cite book |first=Rosemary |last=Pountney |date=1978 |title=Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett's Drama 1956-1976 |___location=Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire |publisher=Colin Smythe |page=204 |isbn=978-0-3892-0776-4}}</ref>
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