ABSTRACT
What Yeats, Pound, and Eliot did for poetry in the early twentieth century, Harold Pinter later did for drama. He transformed it in ways that have yet to be fully articulated. He leveled easy distinctions between villain and victim, redefining each by rerouting our focus to include understanding, even compassion for both, and in doing so established a basis for an ethic where both bear responsibility. He sounded the realistic speech of ordinary people in spare dialogue rendered poetic and stamped it indelibly his own. His dialogue and its menace, more than any other aspect of his work, have attracted the label “Pinteresque,” suggestive of “Kafkaesque,” and his work is distinguished by being more deeply disturbing and unnerving than almost any other contemporary playwright’s. Yet his plays are simultaneously counterbalanced with that special delight of a high comic wit and a consistently resonant subtext. What is happening on several levels beneath the surface of the text is often more important than what is occurring on the surface. But Pinter remains a master of holding audience attention on level one.
