ABSTRACT
Nearly thirty years ago I argued in an introduction to a volume on British playwrights that England’s theater had undergone a second Renaissance after World War II. There are few eras of theater history as fertile as the last half of the twentieth century in Great Britain. The range and accomplishments of its playwrights, the majority of whom are still producing fine plays and inspiring younger colleagues, is unparalleled. Of course, excitement over British theater led to new interest in Irish and American drama as well. Not surprisingly, many of the Irish and American dramatists have used themes and techniques first made popular by their British counterparts. I would not presume to rank the accomplishments of late twentieth-century British playwrights, nor do I feel it would be appropriate to do so. However, Harold Pinter’s guiding role in virtually all important aspects of modern drama cannot be overlooked. It could be said that Beckett’s poetic minimalism, dense with meaning, and John Osborne’s creative use of the stage to express his feelings of outrage and injustice, began a spirited uncovering of theatrical possibility. It remained for Pinter to alter expectations of drama permanently, however; and the language, action, and meaning of all performance art is inevitably measured against his achievements. Exposition and dialogue in such fine dramatists as, say, Eugene O’Neill or Arthur Miller, seem either contrived or turgid or both. Bertholt Brecht’s ambitious political sagas with immense casts of ensemble actors still provide theatrical excitement and intellectual stimulation, but their grandiosity, and that of his many imitators, seems to belong to an earlier era. Pinter’s audiences, like Brecht’s, are encouraged to “think,” but they are required also to observe subtleties of gesture, nuances of language, and minute details of staging. The intimacy of a Pinteresque stage space recalls Beckett’s, of course, but it is also more instantly recognizable.
