PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

As an opening statement to a study of Pinter it is difficult to think of anything more to the point than the recent remark by W. J. Free: "Harold Pinter's plays still puzzle audiences and critics after almost a dozen years of acquaintance with his work. In spite of a growing body of criticism, there are perhaps more unanswered questions about Pinter than about any other major contemporary playwright." Nothing that has subsequently appeared in print has mounted a serious challenge to that statement. Esslin's recent effort, The Peopled Wound, is undermined by the very praise of Time's review: "The Peopled Wound is valuable not because it makes some intuitive new leap of insight but because it gathers in one convenient place most of what has been said and thought about Pinter." It is precisely that "new leap of insight" that has evaded critics for more than a decade. Recognition of this problem and interest in its solution are registered in the ever-increasing volume of writing devoted to Pinter's work. At the same time his public reputation continues to grow, and anything he writes seems virtually guaranteed of a London run at the Aldwych (with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company) and a subsequent transfer to Broadway. Indeed, it is by no means unusual to hear him spoken of as the most important playwright now alive. Such opinions stand precariously alongside those that continue to register critical uncertainty about even the most basic issues raised by his work. Arguments about the meanings of his plays, about his use of symbolism, the kinds of characters he creates, and the kinds of communication problems they confront seem not to be moving toward any visible points of convergence. The field is proliferating but not progressing.

A study of critical opinion on Pinter's work confirms that the issues currently in dispute are much the same as those raised in the first influential statements of the early 1960's. Short essays by Taylor in Anger and After (1962) and Esslin in The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) reflect parameters of opinion that seem to have received little modification in the years since then. A decade of subsequent research seems not to have materially challenged the status of these first impressions. A reading of Esslin's The Peopled Wound reveals little about Pinter's basic method that would be out of place in his earlier essay, and Taylor reuses, almost without alteration, a central statement on Pinter's language from his 1962 publication when writing another essay on Pinter in 1971. The latter is of particular importance since it is widely recognized that Pinter's peculiar use of language is a major stumbling block for criticism of his work. It may well be that a basic cause of Free's "unanswered questions/' and of the field's failure to progress, is a persistent attempt to find answers to the wrong kinds of questions. It would be fruitful therefore to consider the centrality of the issues so far established in Pinter criticism.

Early efforts to cope with this new phenomenon 011 the English stage were not unlike those directed toward any innovative writer — the primary problem seemed to be to decide whose work Pinter's most resembled. As Wardle, looking back on his own involvement in this struggle, amusingly describes it:

When Harold Pinter's characters first appeared in public in 1958, nobody knew who the father was — and Pinter certainly wasn't telling. For critics, more than for other people, this is an inconvenience. Before you can say anything with any confidence, you feel you have to get the ideological coordinates right. ... We all dug around and discovered Pinter liked Kafka, and Beckett, and American gangster films, and I, for one, came up with the phrase "comedy of menace" which explained nothing but at least supplied a comforting label.

These connections turned out to be of little help. After being dismissed as a lesser Kafka, a poorer Beckett, a pale imitation of Ionesco, and a less humorous N. F. Simpson, Pinter continued to be very successful at being Pinter. Taylor's 1962 publication took the position that Pinter simply could not be placed in the book's schematization of developments on the English stage, and Esslin placed him vaguely on the fringes of the Theatre of the Absurd among the "parallels and proselytes." Ten years later the problem remains in its original form. A host of comparative statements have linked Pinter with the work of Chekhov, James, Pirandello, Coward, Genet, O'Neill, Brecht, and many more without providing a framework that substantially illuminates his achievement or his individuality. Caine's recent attempt to describe the structure of The Dumb Waiter by viewing it in terms of a historical perspective on structure in a one-act play is characteristic of this approach. The end product is a series of links between diverse plays that are not governed by their centrality as major statements about the individual plays. In Pinter's case, however, the problem seems not to be simply one of misplaced zeal: the problem of generalizing about structure in Pinter's work is only one aspect of what seems to be a recurring difficulty. Whether attention is directed toward character, plot, structure, theme, or any other abstraction, one encounters the same uncertainty over where and how to generalize. Basic to this problem, of course, is an uncertain grasp of the particulars of the plays.

The arguments over the general and the particular in Pinter's work provide an instructive background to the other basic issues in the field: what often seems a conflict of opposing views turns out to be a misplaced contrast between views which cannot logically be opposed. Consider, for example, the discussions of Pinter's characters. In the early plays Pinter tended to deal with characters at the lower end of the social scale. Accusations of triviality have frequently been based on the "commonplace" quality of characters who engage in what seems like "a meticulously accurate transcription of ordinary speech." Donoghue, for example, remarks of the early work: "In these four plays there is not a single relationship for which an intelligent adult would give tuppence." On the other hand, it is obvious that a great many intelligent adults have continued to hand in their tuppences, and a great deal more, to watch these relationships in action. Clearly there is some quality in these characters which raises them above the commonplace. Inevitably, the solution has been sought, and is still sought, in symbolic interpretations. Mick and Aston in The Caretaker transcend their prosaic existence and tread the junk-cluttered stage as the Gods of the Old and New Testaments. Edward and Flora in A Slight Ache become a dying-year god and a fertility goddess, and Riley in The Room a messenger from the dead. More recently The Homecoming has been transformed into a variant of the parable of the prodigal son. Teddy fits neatly into the leading...