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The man is a poet, “caught in the writer’s trap, the expectation of [[Artistic inspiration|inspiration]].”<ref>Pountney, R., ''Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama'' 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 205</ref> The woman seems to be his muse. It may be Beckett is personifying her as a woman only in the abstract sense but it is just as likely, considering Beckett’s most famous writer-character, ''[[Krapp%27s Last Tape|Krapp]]'', that she is also a lost love, a once-literal muse. Krapp’s imagination is impotent though. M has not reached that stage. He is still having occasional flashes on inspiration. And this must have been very much how the seventy-year-old Beckett felt himself; writing was becoming increasing difficult for him. Either way, “although not quite a character, she is … both an object of desire and a force beyond desire.”<ref>Worth, K., ‘Women in Beckett’s Radio and Television Plays’ in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) ''Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives'' (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 242</ref>
Krapp sat at a real table and heard a real voice, albeit himself as a younger man. The man in ''... but the clouds ...'' sits at an invisible table unable to write. Everything he encounters is outside a circle of dim, suffused light. This
Not all of Krapp’s actions take place at his table, we hear him pouring drinks and attempting to sing in the darkness surrounding his stage as a means of distracting himself from the task in hand; in ''Quad'', the players’ only reality is within the lighted square as is the case with the women of ''[[Come and Go]]'' but in ''... but the clouds ...'' all the real action takes place in the darkness, the central circle of light is a place of transition only.
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