ABSTRACT
In No Man’s Land, Hirst and Spooner continue Pinter’s interest in competitive gamesmanship combined with memory in a play which explicitly takes virtue as its stated theme. When the famous, now dead-ended poet Hirst invites the seedy, failed poet Spooner into his home where they are joined by a pair of spiny, houseboybodyguards and lovers Foster and Briggs, Hirst hints he may have killed the woman he loved (at least in spirit), while Spooner proudly admits he has never been loved. But when Spooner attempts to insert himself into their domestic scene, Foster and Briggs counterattack with all the force of thugs. Yet with the greatest economy and subtly, it is Hirst who delivers the cruelest blow. When Spooner in the end offers his life in service to Hirst, Hirst dismisses him with “Let’s change the subject.” (91) Here in a gray world without women, where an acclaimed position cannot protect the private self, love again asserts itself in the forefront, displacing name and fame and fortune as the remembered greatest good.
