Pinter’s Use of A Room as a Setting in His Plays

Abstract

Harold Pinter (1930 -) is probably the subject of more academic commentary than any other living playwright. Born in Hackney in London's East End, he is the child of working-class Eastern European Jewish ancestry, and studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Central School of Speech and Drama. He is one of the most influential English playwrights of his generation. He is regarded as "a complete man of the theatre" (Bold, 7), for he is equally proficient as an actor, director or playwright. He has written in different genres and his work displays his expertise in 'various voices'. Using apparently commonplace characters and settings, he invests his plays with an atmosphere of fear, horror and mystery. The peculiar tension he creates often derives as much from the long silences between speeches which are ambiguous, yet vividly vernacular. His austere language is extremely distinctive. His plays frequently concern themselves with struggles for power in which the issues are obscure and the reasons for defeat and victory undefined. A common aphorism about Pinter's play is "A film with the final reel missing" (Copeland, unnumbered).