The Birthday Party (1958)
Two sinister visitors, Goldberg and McCann, terrorise lodger Stanley Webber in a seaside boarding house
Literature · Playwrights
Harold Pinter
1930–2008 · British
Comedy of menace; Theatre of the Absurd
Harold Pinter, a tailor's son from Hackney, became the most influential British playwright of the late 20th century. Plays such as The Birthday Party, The Caretaker and The Homecoming use everyday speech, silences and unexplained threat, giving the language the word "Pinteresque". He also wrote acclaimed screenplays, became an outspoken political campaigner, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005.
How to spot them
- ▸The 'Pinter pause' and the adjective 'Pinteresque'
- ▸'Comedy of menace': Goldberg and McCann come for Stanley Webber
- ▸Betrayal, told in reverse chronological order
- ▸Born in Hackney, East London; acted under the stage name David Baron
- ▸Nobel Prize 2005; married to the historian Lady Antonia Fraser
Key works
The Caretaker (1960)
The tramp Davies plays the brothers Aston and Mick against each other in a junk-filled room; his first big success
The Homecoming (1965)
Teddy brings his wife Ruth home to his brutal all-male family in North London
Betrayal (1978)
A seven-year affair between Emma and her husband's best friend Jerry, told backwards
No Man's Land (1975)
The wealthy writer Hirst and the seedy poet Spooner, first played by Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud
The Dumb Waiter (1960 (first staged 1959))
Two hitmen, Ben and Gus, receive increasingly absurd food orders via a dumb waiter
Old Times (1971)
A married couple's visitor, Anna, disputes their memories of the past
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
His screenplay adapting John Fowles's novel, with a parallel modern story
Key ideas
- 'Comedy of menace', a term applied to his early plays: ordinary rooms invaded by unexplained threat
- Power struggles conducted through evasive, repetitive, everyday dialogue, with pauses and silences scripted
- Later overtly political work (One for the Road, Mountain Language) attacking torture and oppression
- Nobel lecture 'Art, Truth and Politics' (2005) fiercely criticised the Iraq War
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Hackney, London, on 10 October 1930, son of a Jewish tailor; died on 24 December 2008
- •As a young man he was fined as a conscientious objector for refusing National Service
- •Acted in repertory under the stage name David Baron
- •His first play was The Room (1957)
- •The Birthday Party closed after a week in London in 1958 despite a rave review from Harold Hobson
- •Wrote screenplays for Joseph Losey, including The Servant (1963), Accident and The Go-Between
- •Married the actress Vivien Merchant, then the historian Lady Antonia Fraser (1980)
- •Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005
- •Betrayal drew on his own affair with the broadcaster Joan Bakewell
- •The Comedy Theatre in London was renamed the Harold Pinter Theatre in 2011
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- The Nobel Prize — Harold Pinter – Biographical
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Harold Pinter
- Michael Billington — The Life and Work of Harold Pinter