Notes and References Notes and References Preface I. Time has altered the situation. John Osborne's play Inadmiss­ able Evidence opened at the Royal Court Theatre on September 9, 1964, followed by A Patriot for Me at the same theater which turned itself into a private club to avoid prosecution by the Lord Chamber­ lain; and in 1966 the National Theatre Company performed his latest play, A Bond Honored, a version of Lope de Vega's La Fianza Satis­ fecha. Harold Pinter has produced two new plays, but Brendan Behan died in 1964. 2. See also Sean O'Casey's rather sour dismissal in "The Bald Primaqueera" Atlantic Monthly (September, 1965). O'Casey does not appear to be very familiar with contemporary drama. Chapter One 1. I am grateful to my colleague, A. M. Goldman, for drawing my attention to this play. Hughie (published, 1959) is more a play to be read than acted, since most of the meaning emerges from the stage directions. It was left to dramatists like Beckett and Pinter to translate the unspoken into dialogue. 2. J. L. Styan, The Dark Comedy (Cambridge, 1962), p. 192. 3. I am greatly indebted to Mr. William's article that was first published in Twentieth Century, CLXX, 1011, and revised for The Pelican Guide to English Literature, The Modern Age, No. 7 (Lon­ don, 1961), pp. 496-508, under the title, "Recent English Drama." 4. The verse drama of Christopher Fry never presented such a challenge; its weakness was a strong tendency to use verse merely to decorate a romantic action rather than to create a new dramatic form. Fry has been more successful in producing verse drama than his avowed master T. S. Eliot, but only because Fry has avoided certain problems, the most crucial of which was to introduce to the majority theater serious considerations of serious problems and not simply making the audience laugh at a romantic situation deliberately kept unreal. Curtmantle {1961), Fry's most recent play, is, in fact, a play of ideas, argument, and seriousness, and the verse in it can be very flat indeed. Eliot's lucid style and sensibility drained his characters of vitality, and Fry has been no more successful. He did, however, [ 169} HAROLD PINTER create an audience not unfavorable to poetic drama. Something more than what his plays offered was needed; the fantastic existence orna­ mented with verse yielded no poetic vision of life. 5. Dennis Weiland, "Some Post-War Experiments in Poetic Drama," in William A. Armstrong (ed.), Experimental Drama (Lon­ don, 1963), pp. 36££. Dr. Weiland, however, succumbs to the idea of noncommunication; Eliot should have taught him that humankind can­ not bear very much reality; cf. lonesco's reply to Esslin's question on this matter, Observer (September 1, 1963): "Communication is not only possible; it is easy; sometimes even too easy. No, what I am con­ cerned about is that people are too lazy, too indolent to make the effort to communicate; that the tools of communication, language, have been allowed ,to fossilise into cliches and have lost the power to serve as instruments for genuine communication." 6. John Russell Taylor, Anger and After (London, 1963), pp. 115, 41. 7. John Mander, The Writer and Commitment (London, 1961), pp. 22, 180-81. 8. George E. Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox (New York, 1964), pp. 225, 243. 9. Bamber Gascoigne, Twentieth Century Drama (London, 1962), p. 49. 10. Cf. Kenneth Tynan, Tynan on Theater (London, 1964). Tynan prefers Brecht and is not remarkably sympathetic to Absurd Theater, irked as he is by "their pervasive tone of privileged despair." 11. Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism (New York, 1956), p. 12. This anthology of Existentialist writing is very useful. But as the reader will no doubt gather, I do not find a philosophical ground in Pinter's work-except as all literature is grounded in thought. 12. "Dans les Armes de la Ville," Cahiers de la Compagnie Made­ leine Renaud Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, No. 20 (October, 1957), quoted Martin Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd (New York, 1961), p. xix. 13. Quoted in David Tutaev, ''The Theater of the Absurd-How Absurd?'' Gambit, No. 2 (n.d.), p. 70. 14. Lloyd Alexander (trans.), Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (London, 1962), p. 130. 15. Ibid., pp. 171-72. 16. Ibid., p. 173. 17. Iris Murdoch, Sartre (London, 1961), p. 13. 18. Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, pp. 290-91. 19. R. D. Smith, "Back to the Text," in John R. Brown and Bernard Harris ( eds.), Contemporary Theater, Stratford-on-Avon Studies, No. 4 (London, 1965), p. 135. [ 170] Notes and References 20. "Harold Pinter Replies," New Theatre Magazine, XI, 2 (Janu­ ary, 1961), pp. 8-10. 21. F. N. Lees, "Samuel Beckett," Manchester Memoirs, CIV, 4 (1961-1962). 22. Tynan, Tynan on Theater, p. 63. 23. See Robert Brustein, The Theater of Revolt (London, 1965), Chap. VII. 24. See D. Krause, Sean O'Casey, The Man and His Work (Lon­ don, 1960), Chap. 2, where the bastard genre is discussed as one of the forms of twentieth-century drama. Dramatists as varied as Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw, Synge, O'Casey, Pirandello, Giradoux, Anouilh, Sartre, Wilder, Beckett, and Ionesco are all shown to have used music hall devices! 25. "Harold Pinter Replies," cf. New Comment (October, 1963), British Broadcasting Corporation, "Third Program." Pinter discussed his relationship with Beckett, describing his first contact with him, reading the novel Watt, as an absolute knockout; the plays of Beckett came later. 26. Martin Esslin, "Godot and His Children," in Armstrong, Experi­ mental Drama, pp. 128££. The quotations appear on pp. 136--37 and 140. The essay is very much in the same direction as the essay on Pinter in The Theater of the Absurd. 27. Styan, The Dark Comedy, pp. 234-35. 28. Ibid., pp. 235-36. 29. Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox, pp. 212-20, thinks more highly of Simpson than I do. He suggests in his last sentence that of all current dramatists, Simpson is closest in spirit to Jarry himseH. 30. Tutaev, "The Theater of the Absurd-How Absurd?", pp. 68-70. 31. Robert Bolt, interviewed in Plays and Players (December, 1963), p. 11. 32. "Writing for MyseH," Twentieth Century, CLXIX, 1008 (Feb­ ruary, 1961), pp. 172-75. This article, ironically, was not written by Pinter but compiled by Findlater from the tape of an interview. Mr. Pinter has always regarded this article as unsatisfactory. Chapter Two I. "Writing for MyseH." See Note 32, Chapter I. 2. The Observer profile (September 15, 1963) attributed the name "da Pinta" to Pinter's Portuguese ancestry. But Pinter himseH, in a letter to me dated April 28, 1964, pointed out that this was very remote. [ 171] HAROLD PINTER 3. David Campton, quoted Taylor, Anger and After, p. 165. 4. J. T. Boulton, "Harold Pinter; The Caretaker and Other Plays,'' Modern Drama (September, 1963), pp. 131-140, produces this ex­ cellent conception. 5. Interview by Hallam Tennyson, British Broadcasting Corpora­ tion General Overseas Service, August 7, 1960, quoted in Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, p. 199. 6. Interview by Tynan, British Broadcasting Corporation Home Service, October 28, 1960, quoted in Esslin, The Theater of the Ab­ surd, p. 199. 7. Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, p. 201. 8. Ibid., p. 200. 9. Clifford Leech, "Two Romantics: Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter," in Brown and Harris, Contemporary Theater, p. 26. 10. "Harold Pinter Replies." 11. John Bowen, "Accepting the Illusion," Twentieth Century, CLXIX, 1008 (February, 1961), p. 162. 12. The Room (New York,1961), p. 99. 13. Ibid., p. 110. 14. Ibid., p. 118. 15. Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox, p. 200. 16. Taylor, Anger and After, p. 287. 17. Ruby Cohn, "The World of Harold Pinter," Tulane Drama Review, VI, 3 (March, 1962), pp. 55-68. 18. Boulton, "Harold Pinter: The Caretaker and Other Plays," pp. 131-40. 19. Irving Wardle, Encore (July-August, 1958), pp. 39-40. 20. Jacqueline Hoefer, "Pinter and Whiting: Two Attitudes To­ wards The Alienated Artist," Modern Drama, IV (1962), pp. 402-8. 21. The Birthday Party (New York, 1961), p. 32. 22. Cf. the gloss of this device in Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City (New York, 1950), pp. 375££. 23. The Birthday Party, p. 54. 24. Ibid., p. 59. 25. Ibid., p. 80. 26. Ibicl., pp. 82-3. 27. Ibid., p. 84. 28. Ibicl., p. 88. 29. Clifford Leech, "Two Romantics: Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter," in Brown and Harris, Contemporary Theater, pp. 11-31. 30. Gregorz Sinko, "Stara i Mloda Anglia," Dialog, LX, 4 (April, 1961), pp. 97-99. 31. Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, p. 203. 32. Ibid., p. 205. [172] Notes and References 33. Gascoigne, Twentieth Century Drama, p. 206. 34. Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox, p. 201ff. 35. Tynan interview, Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, p. 205; Tennyson interview, ibid., p. 205. 36. Tynan interview, Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, p. 207. 37. Styan, The Dark Comedy, p. 236. 38. Bernard Dukore, "The Theater of Harold Pinter," Tulane Drama Review, VI, 3 (March, 1962), pp. 55-68. 39. Wilson Knight, "The Kitchen Sink," Encounter, XXI, 6 {De­ cember, 1963), pp. 48-54. 40. James T. Boulton, "Harold Pinter: The Caretaker and Other Plays," Modem Drama (September, 1963), pp. 131-140. 41. Taylor, Anger and After, p. 290. 42. Ibid., p. 291. 43. Sinko, "Stara i Mloda Anglia," pp. 97-99. 44. The Dumb Waiter (New York, 1961), pp. 102-3. 45. Tom Maschler (ed.) New English Dramatists, No.3, Introduc­ tion by J.