Nacht und Träume (play)

Nacht und Träume (Night and Dreams) is the last television play written and directed by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English (mid-1982) for the German channel Süddeutscher Rundfunk, recorded in October 1982 and broadcast on 19 May 1983 where it attracted "an audience of two million viewers." The mime artist Helfrid Foron playing both parts.

It was published by Faber in Collected Shorter Plays in 1984. Originally entitled Nachtstück (Night Piece), it is a wordless play, the only sound that of a male voice humming, then singing, from the last seven bars of Schubert’s lied Nacht und Träume, words by Matthäus Casimir von Collin: "Holde Träume, kehret wieder!" ("Sweet dreams, come back"). Schubert was a composer much loved by Beckett – "the composer who spoke most to him … whom he considered a friend in suffering" – and this lied was one of the author’s favourites.

James Knowlson, in his biography of Beckett, states that the actual text used however was a slightly modified version by Heinrich Joseph von Collin, Matthäus’s brother.

Beckett lists five elements that make up the play: evening light, the dreamer (A), his dreamt self (B), a pair of dreamt hands and the last seven bars of Schubert’s lied. It reads more like a formula or a list of ingredients than a cast.

The action begins with a dreamer sitting alone in a dark empty room; his hands are resting on the table before him. He is on the far left of the screen and we are presented with his right profile. A male voice hums the last seven bars of the Schubert lied. Then we hear the same section sung, the man rests his head on his hands and the light fades until the words "Holde Träume" whereupon it fades up on the man’s dreamt self who is seated on an invisible podium four feet higher and well to the right of him. We see his left profile, a mirror image of his waking self. His is bathed in what Beckett describes as a "kinder light." The dreamer is still faintly visible throughout though.

A left hand appears out of the darkness and gently rests on B. As the man raises his head it withdraws. The right appears with a cup from which B drinks. It vanishes and then reappears to gently wipe his brow with a cloth. Then it disappears again. B raises his head to gaze upon the invisible face and holds out his right hand, palm upward. The right hand returns and rests on B’s right hand. He looks at the two hands together and adds his left hand. Together the three hands sink to the table and B rests his head on them. Finally the left hand comes out of the darkness and rests gently on his head.

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