ABSTRACT
Like The Dwarfs, both The Collection and The Lover, which were frequently staged as a double bill, continue to attempt to verify the illusive qualities of identity, but unlike The Dwarfs both plays involve deliberate pretense which intensifies problems of verification that determine choice and action. Stella in The Collection tells her husband James she slept with Bill, then denies that she did, refusing to say more, while Richard in The Lover pretends to be Max, his wife Sarah’s lover. The characters in these plays have developed a consciousness of self Pinter’s earlier characters rarely display, and they cleverly employ that consciousness and wit to gain what they want from another. The deliberately assumed guises here again expose each character’s role as but a faint representation of larger identity, but these plays go further in realizing ethical dimensions within the questions of identity.
