ABSTRACT
The opening extract from the first scene of Betrayal is punctuated by pauses which are typical of H. Pinter’s plays and of much modern dramatic writing. However the pauses in the extract from Betrayal, as elsewhere in Pinter’s work, are central to the author’s intention and the text’s meaning. The silences and pauses which are indicated by the stage directions as well as the dotted lines in the text, convey the depth of feeling and shock which is all the more effective because of the restraint. In Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall, the intensity of the ending and the ambiguity about what exactly happened to the little child is emphasised by the pauses. M. Pfister suggests that the silences that occur in modern plays, by contrast, often serve to focus attention on the impossibility of speech: Like simultaneous speech, the use of fairly lengthy pauses between individual utterances can hardly be said to be a recent innovation in modern drama.
