A Study Op Dramatic Structure in Harold Pinter's Stage Plays
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A STUDY OP DRAMATIC STRUCTURE IN HAROLD PINTER'S STAGE PLAYS by CHRISTINE PATRICIA PARKIN born CHRISTINE PATRICIA GEORGE B.A. , University of Bristol, 1955 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the reauired standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1972 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of A The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date ABSTRACT Pinter has said that his main concern when writing a play is with structure, yet published criticism has so far paid little attention to this aspect of his craft. This study, therefore, examines the structures of Pinter's stage plays. The method followed is a chronological structural analysis moving from The Room through The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, Landscape and Silence to his latest play, Old Times, first produced in London on June 1, 1971- The opening chapter discusses the terms which form a background to the subsequent description of the dramatic structures. The analyses demonstrate that there are at least three major features of his craftsmanship to emerge at this point in his career. The first is that whereas the stage plays up to the writing of Landscape share a common, almost tradition• ally sequential narrative structure, the three latest plays, Landscape, Silence and Old Times, have differently shaped structures relying heavily on the exploration of memory and abandoning a normal sequential ordering of incident. This marked change implies a different use of time which is the second major feature, and is a consequence of the exploration of the past. It is accompanied in Landscape and Silence by a shift from dialogue in the previous plays to an almost exclu• sive reliance on monologue. Pinter also moves from his earlier comic-grotesque manner to a cooler, more subdued mode which uses lyrical and elegiac language. The third major feature of his craftsmanship is a certain rhythm of structure. This is a tendency to elaborate a one-act form into a larger structure, and then to take some feature or concern from previous work, paring down and compressing to make another one-act play, before building up and elaborating once more. Thus The Room is followed by the larger, three act structure of The Birthday Party to accommodate additional concerns. The Dumb Waiter shows the paring down process before the structural expansion in The Caretaker. The Homecoming, with its tighter two-act structure, is centrally placed, looking back to previously explored themes and anticipating the concern with memory in the three latest works. In the one-act Landscape Pinter abandons horizontal for vertical structure, explores cyclic rather than sequential time and uses monologue rather than dialogue. Silence illustrates a further paring down process in its even more austere denial of theatricality before the renewed building up process discernible in the two-act play, Old Times. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I Dramatic Structure and Pinter's Plays .... l CHAPTER II The Three Early Plays 18 CHAPTER III The Caretaker and The Homecoming 66 CHAPTER IV The Past is Another Countryi Landscape, Silence and Old Times 106 CONCLUSION 153 NOTES 157 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 160 CHAPTER I DRAMATIC STRUCTURE AND PINTER'S PLAYS The history of Harold Pinter's rise to fame and eminence as a playwright can he descried in the numerous reviews of the various performances of his plays and the rapidly growing xnumber of articles, pamphlets, theses and hooks about them. From the obscurity of acting small parts in provincial towns Pinter has fairly rapidly emerged as a playwright of consider• able success and stature. His plays usually have a strongly communicable emotional pattern to which audiences can respond, while the obscurities are not distracting enough to destroy or weaken the emotional powers in fact if anything they tend to add to the sense of growing tension and menace which has become so much the hallmark of the Pinter play. Moreover, Pinter's dialogue is often so true to the particularities of the kind of speech one can hear among working people in England, especially the Londoners, that the recognition of the patterns and special tone of such speech is extremely pleasurable and often very funny. This is true of the early plays to the extent that it may be said that Pinter is very much of his age in having dramatized areas of lower-class life, that he is part of that movement away from the genteel world of the drawing-room and the cocktail party to the bleaker world of bed-sitters, basements and a very different kind of party. From another point of view, it can be seen that Pinter has had the merit of being intellectually in fashion; he may be linked with one of 2 the most intellectually fashionable phenomena of recent years — the so-called theatre of the absurd. But the biggest single factor in Pinter's success and the one which will decide whether his plays will endure must ultimately be the growing mastery of his craft as playwright. And it is here that Pinter belongs to a long and respected tradition — - that of the all-round man of the theatre. He is actor, director and playwright. Furthermore, he is willing to ex• periment with many types of dramatic media besides that of the live theatre, namely television, cinema, radio and the animated cartoon. Katherine Burkman has summed up very clearly this aspect of Pinter's interest as a playwrights Pinter's own experience as an actor and director with radio, television, stage, and screen have doubtless contributed to his understandings of the economy necess• ary for each medium and for his unusual mastery of such a variety of forms. Despite his achievements, however, in the various entertainment media of our time, Pinter finds the theater "ultimately the most important medium," and he has suggested that he reserves his most important ideas for the stage. He finds writing for the theater the most difficult, the most restric• ted, "the most naked kind" of writing because "you're just there, stuck — there are your characters stuck on the stage, you've got to live with them and deal with them." All of Pinter's dramatic world exhibits something of this quality of dealing with life accurately and revealing it in its naked truth.1 Pinter thinks of his stage plays as the most important area of his work. It is also true that his main concern as a writer of plays is with dramatic structure. This study will therefore examine the structures of Pinter's stage playsJ The Room, 3 The Birthday Party, The Dumbwaiter, The Caretaker, The Home- coming, Landscape, Silence and Old Times. Plays written specifically for radio and television, together with the several filmscripts, thus fall outside the scope of this enquiry. In omitting A Slight Ache, A Night Out, Night School, The Dwarfs, The Collection, The Lover, Tea Party and The Base- ' ment» I do not wish to imply that those plays are not interest• ing in themselves, or are lacking in structural charm or fascination, for this is by no means the case. Most of them, though written either for radio or television, have been staged with varying success at later dates. The Collection and The Lover, while being essentially television plays with brief, rapidly changing scenes, visual effects, and close-up shots, can be adapted for the stage because the words are still a very important aspect of their power. In Tea Party and The Basement, however, everything important happens in pictures rather than in words. The television medium is used to maximum visual effect. It is vital to have camera-work in Tea Party, for instance, when Disson sees two ping pong balls coming towards him while playing table tennis. Equally, The Basement demands camera-work to give instant shifts from one mode of furnishing in the room to the other mode. When Tea Party and The Basement were adapted for the stage and run as a double bill at the Duchess Theatre from 17 September, 1970 for a short while, the reviews, although Pinter was already famous and respected, were possibly the most unfavourable of his career. One reviewer concluded that the plays "...won't 4 transfer to the stage despite great performances in both by Donald Pleasence. The revue sketches are very short, and since they are all designed as little items in the larger and more casual structure of the variety bill, they will not be considered for the purposes of this enquiry. Since Pinter criticism has so far been mainly concerned with linguistic effect, imagery, theme and meaning, in this study I prefer to confine my attention, as far as possible, to the almost unexplored territory of his dramatic structures. It is my contention in this thesis that close examina• tion of the structures of Pinter's stage plays demonstrates at least three major features of his craftsmanship. The first is that whereas the stage plays up to the writing of Landscape share a common, almost traditionally sequential narrative structure, the three latest plays, Landscape, Silence and Old Times use differently shaped structures relying heavily on the exploration of memory and abandoning a normal sequential ordering of incident.