April 21, 2009
Robert C. Caisley
THEF 599, Research
Thear, Katie. Dealing with Aggressive Poultry. Broad Leys Publishing - Poultry and Smallholding Books. 2005: 1-4.
Thompson, Jennifer. “Women’s Liberation and Harold Pinter’s Play ‘The Homecoming’. Associated Content. December 18, 2007.
Woodward, Peter. “Old Times, Written by Harold Pinter.”
Introduction
Over the past few months I have read the following works by Harold Pinter: The Room, The Birthday Party, Betrayal, The Dumb Waiter, The Homecoming, The Caretaker, Old Times, and Mountain Language. In this paper I have a section for each play (sometimes two plays) I want to discuss, and I will start each section with a quote about the play or about Pinter’s works. Then I will make an argument for the quote, sometimes using examples from works by other artists or from my own work and sometimes using examples from performances of Pinter’s work. Through this I hope to achieve a better understanding of aspects of Pinter’s works that I might be able to apply to my own growth as a playwright.
Lee Evans and The Dumb Waiter
One Variety reviewer of The Dumb Waiter wrote in 2007, “First and foremost, Harold Pinter was, and is, an actor. That’s why he writes so uncommonly well for them, rather than merely providing mouthpieces for authorial ideas. Really strong actors seize upon the subtext coursing through the famous pauses, turning the sometimes frustratingly elliptical writing into powerfully resonant drama.” (Benedict). I agree with this statement and I want to explain why, referring to reviews of Lee Evans in the 2007 Trafalgar Studios production of The Dumb Waiter.
Peter Brown with London Theatre Guide wrote, “[Let] me be frank. I have never been a great fan of Lee Evans’s brand of humour.” Neither have I, from what I have seen of him in films, but Brown goes on to say:
Maybe I just need to see more of [Evans’] work, because his performance in ‘The Dumb Waiter’ is not only riveting and totally believable, it is a million miles from the comedian I’ve previously seen. In every sense, here is Lee Evans the actor, rather than Lee Evans [the] comedian, even though he has some incredibly funny lines, thanks to Pinter’s own distinctive brand of humour which manages to turn ordinary, everyday language into something that makes one want to burst into uncontrollable convulsions.
This tells me that Pinter’s lines were able to allow for the actor another way of expressing his skill; that they may have enhanced the actor’s performance.
Lizzie Loveridge with Curtain Up in London wrote, “Lee Evans started life as a very physical comedian, a clown […]. The remarkable thing about Lee Evans’ performances is the way he incorporates his clowning skills into his parts.” She goes on to explain how the actor was able to tackle the subtext in the scene in which Gus ties his shoes.
No-one who has seen this production of The Dumb Waiter can forget the way Gus ties and unties his shoe laces. He pulls them taut to make sure they are the same length and in a very studied fashion ties them only to untie them to take the shoe off and retrieve a piece of cardboard stuck inside the shoe. This is repeated with each foot. The effect is very funny as we look at a slightly obsessive man. [Evans] has some of the genius of Charlie Chaplin as he walks with a jerking movement around the stage. […His] his great skill is in the original way he moves his body, awkward, hesitant, gauche, screwing up his face, hunching his shoulders. His physical range is immense.
This could be seen as an example of an actor turning what Benedict would call a slice of “elliptical writing” in stage direction into drama that resonated. Instead of just seeing someone tie his shoes, Loveridge likely saw what we could argue was an example of what an actor, Pinter, writing for actors could accomplish. With that in mind, note what a third reviewer, Nicholas de Jongh with the Evening Standard, wrote (italics added):
The play’s abiding strangeness and capacity to induce mystified laughter lingers on, thanks to Harry Burton’s beautifully nuanced production and even more to a mesmerising, definitive performance by Lee Evans in which comedy and pathos are entwined. [….] Evans’s hilarious Gus, eyes vacant and feet splayed, face swivelling like a ruminant tortoise, regards life as a crossword puzzle from which almost all the clues have been expunged. No wonder he bombards his senior partner, Jason Isaacs‘s tougher, over-relaxed Ben, who reads choice shock-horror items from a broadsheet newspaper, with questions and complaints. Gus has been ridiculously categorised as a political protester against conformity’s forces. As Evans plays him he emerges as a fall-guy of a brutalised, anarchic, authoritarian society, a close relation of psychologically tortured Stanley in Pinter’s The Birthday Party and mentally-damaged Aston in The Caretaker. He acquires the poignancy of a man out of his depth, flailing in three feet of water.
That said, we can conclude that Pinter’s having been an actor may have enhanced the construction of his plays (not just The Dumb Waiter; note de Jongh mentioned two others) because it allowed the actors to play with it in ways they could not interact with a script constructed by a playwright who considered himself solely a “writer.”
Pecking Order in The Caretaker and The Room
Dominic Maxwell writes, “If you come at Pinter from the classroom, you may be ready for his weirdness, but not always his humour. His dark, claustrophobic battles of wills can also be incredibly funny. Because […] he’s showing us the way men jostle and fight for space in every exchange, in every detail, and he’s showing us life. We’re pecking-order animals […]”. I want to apply this statement to The Room and The Caretaker; that human beings are “pecking-order animals”. Poultry breeder Katie Thear defines “pecking order” as “a well-defined hierarchical pattern of behaviour that manifests in flocks,” so I decided to use poultry for comparison.
In a pecking order “There is a ‘top bird’ to which the rest will defer […] The pecking order extends downwards (just as it does in human societies), with the weakest having to survive as best as they can, dodging the onslaughts of the more powerful” (Thear, 1). At the beginning of The Caretaker, the top bird is Aston and the others are Mick and the newcomer, Davies. Aston claims, “I’m in charge” (The Caretaker, 12), but as characters aren’t always reliable we can look at the situation and their actions rather than the content of what they say. So based on the situation, we know the top bird isn’t Mick because Aston brought Davies to stay in the flat and had Mick been the top bird he would have kicked Davies out at the beginning.
“Where new birds are introduced to an existing flock, there are always problems because the natural pecking order is disrupted. […] It then becomes fair game to peck at and chase away the stranger” (Thear, 1). In The Caretaker, the new bird is Davies. Davies is attacked several times by Aston and Mick, yet he tries to assume the top of the order by being demanding and scheming to work his way up. In The Room, the new bird is Riley. About the basement, Rose says “I don’t know how they live down there. It’s asking for trouble. . . I’ve never seen who it is. Who is it? Who lives down there? […] I think it’s changed hands since I was last there. […] I don’t know who lives down there now. Whoever it is, they’re taking a big chance…There isn’t room for two down there, anyway” and remarks that maybe “foreigners” are living in the basement (The Room, 85-87). Sharma argues, “The basement as well as its occupant creates an aura of mystery and awe […] Rose’s fear of extraterrestrial being, it should be noted here, is analogous to the fear of Davies in The Caretaker. […] Her continual absorption in the occupant of the basement clearly shows her anxiety”. Sharma also observes, “The room is a symbol of safeguard and secure place for Rose and any intruder is forbidden to enter it for he may spoil and destroy peace and security. The room has always been a refuge from whatever it is she fears. All her anxieties are materialized with the entry of Riley. […] John Russell Taylor argues: ‘The menace comes from outside, from the intruder […] And the menace is inverse proportion to its degree of particularization, the extent to which it involves overt physical violence or direct threats’ ([The Angry Theatre: New British Drama. New York: Hill and Wang, 1962: 236.]) (Sharma, italics added).
Thear writes, “The type of environment plays a major part in behaviour, with flock density being foremost. The more birds there are in a given area, the more likely they are to peck at each other. Small, non-intensive flocks generally have fewer problems, not only because there are less of them, but also because they have more space in which to run away from potential bullies. […] It is important to stress this flock density aspect for if a small flock is confined in a small area it is just as likely to suffer from incidences of feather and vent pecking and cannibalism” (Thear, 3). The tight space in which the characters in The Caretaker and The Room are enclosed is a prime factor in the tension between them. Director Peter Hall said, “The dynamic in [Pinter’s] work is rooted in battles for control, turf wars […] His plays often take place in a single, increasingly claustrophobic room, where conversation is a minefield […]” (Gussow). This is clear in these two plays. In The Caretaker, Aston and Davies fight over Davies “jabbering” in his sleep (22), something Aston might not have heard if the quarters weren’t so cramped, and Mick and Davies argue about Davies “stinking the place out” (35) something that may have been less noticeable in a larger space.
“Traditional advice has always been to avoid mixing flocks. […] If it is absolutely necessary to introduce new birds to an existing flock they should be penned in a temporary area next to the run so that they can be seen but not harmed. It will be necessary to have a separate shelter for them during this period, which may be around 1-2 weeks. Placing the food for each set of birds on either side of the boundary is quite effective because it has them in close proximity, feeding rather than sparring, and all the time getting used to each other (Thear, 1).” According to Thear, the beds being across the room from one another should help to ease some of the aggression, but it only works to a point and they suggest putting in a partition (41). Then eventually Davies says he wants Aston’s bed so the draught doesn’t come in on his head (52). He demands other things as well; shoes, a shirt and money, among other things. In The Room, the separation between the basement and the room above keeps Rose and Bert from attacking Riley, but, like in The Caretaker, someone crosses to the other flock’s side.
“The pecking order may also extend sideways, with a previously untouched bird being attacked if, for example, it becomes ill or sustains a wound that attracts the unwanted attention of the other birds” (Thear, 1). “A bird that is sick tends to be picked on. […] A bird that is moulting or injured in some way attracts the attention of feather or vent peckers. Lice and mite infestations often have the bird pecking at their own feathers in order to gain relief, a habit that other birds will then continue. Once blood flows, it excites even more attention and can ultimately lead to cannibalism (Thear, 4). When he finds out about Aston’s having been institutionalized and having received electroconvulsive therapy, Davies uses it as an opportunity to climb the pecking order. Davies defends himself as being able to work with Mick in “decorating” though he is not trained in it, and in doing so he explains to Mick that Aston is “nutty” and therefore “would tell you anything out of spite” in hopes that Mick will come to favor Davies over Aston (73). In The Room, when Bert comes home, he attacks and kills the blind Riley. He could have killed him for any number of reasons other than being blind; racial hatred, being with his wife, and trespassing are some possible motives. Yet his blindness is also a possible motive.
The Caretaker concludes with Davies still attempting to ask for shoes and for Aston’s bed after Aston has evicted him and the cycle continues with an aggressive bird, Davies, trying to scratch his way to the top of the group. The Room ends after Bert walks away after killing Riley and and Rose grabs her eyes and says “Can’t see. I can’t see. I can’t see” (The Room, 110), she herself being injured by the effects of pecking-order violence. Thear’s advice about pecking order applies to The Caretaker and The Room so well that Maxwell’s comment on men as “pecking order animals” is not only valid but warrants further study at a later date.
The Idea that Western Society Grew Into The Birthday Party
David Farr, the 2008 director of The Birthday Party at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in the UK, said “there’s a Steven Spielberg film, Minority Report, which shows, like Pinter’s play, that punishment may precede the crime and that you are accused before you’ve actually done anything.” According to Michael Billington with the Guardian, “Farr’s point is well made. It also confirms that Pinter’s enduring, ultimately undefinable play, which left the critics floundering in 1958, has the power of all first-rate art to acknowledge the past and reflect the future while existing in the tangible present” (Billington). I want to examine the idea of Pinter’s play fitting better into Western culture today and possibly in the future than it did when it opened in 1958.
According to Billington, Pinter nearly quit being a playwright when he read the reviews of The Birthday Party, which opened at the Lyric Hammersmith on Monday, May 19 and was withdrawn by its producers that Saturday. Today the play is part of the Western canon, included in textbooks. The play’s reception today is vastly different than its initial reception likely because of the changes that have occurred in the last half-century.
The theatre world when the play opened in 1958 still wasn’t “revolutionized” much, not even after such authors as Beckett. Billington noted that when The Birthday Party debuted it was part of a season full of “drawing-room comedies and thrillers with titles like Breath of Spring, Not in the Book, Something to Hide and Any Other Business. […] In short, there was no ‘revolution’ in the late 1950s, merely a process of gradual change”. According to the International Herald Tribune, “Beginning in the late 1950s, John Osborne and Pinter helped to turn English theater away from the gentility of the drawing room. Pinter was to have the more lasting effect as an innovator and a stylist” (Gussow). Considering the plays the theatre had produced previously, it is possible that critics were not used to the innovation that was to come and of which Pinter would become a significant part.
Today we appreciate Pinter and Pinter-inspired playwrights because we have experienced half a century of them. That might make us more apt to accept The Birthday Party as effective drama. Dominic Maxwell wrote¸ “The way that Pinter depicted language changed drama for good. No Beckett, no Pinter – but no Pinter, no Mamet; no Pinter, no Churchill, no Hare, no . . . it’d be easier to list the playwrights who aren’t influenced by him than the ones who are” (Maxwell). So that tells me today we are more likely to read or perform The Birthday Party because we have grown more used to Pinter’s works.
An example is that Pinter’s play, Mountain Language, contains elements we identify with today that are also present in The Birthday Party. One of these is the political element. “Pinter’s political views were implicit in much of his work,” Gussow writes. “Though his plays deal with the slipperiness of memory and human character, they are also almost always about the struggle for power. […] While it was not immediately apparent, Pinter was always a writer with a political sensibility, which became overt in later plays like […] ‘Mountain Language’ (1988). These works, having to do ‘not with ambiguities of power, but actual power,’ he said, were written out of ‘very cold anger.’” Dominic Maxwell observes, “Even the shorter, blunter, more purposefully political work of [Pinter’s] later years – the interrogation scenes […] never stopped at finger-pointing. In implicating us all in the corruption of the political process, he stopped short of writing about them and us.” In Mountain Language he did not state who the characters represented. Likewise, Pinter does not say exactly who or what Goldberg and McCann represent in The Birthday Party. Some have asked if Goldberg and McCann represent two factions of religion, Judaism and Catholicism (Billington), but the script does not seem to say so outright. Nor does the script explain who Stanley or any of the other characters represent. There is no “us” or “them” in The Birthday Party.
Being used to Pinter and valuing his work are not the only reasons we are more likely to produce The Bithday Party today. It’s a timeless play because it’s about timeless issues, and its issues may be more prominent today than they were in 1958. Pinter once said that “his work was about ‘the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.’ Though he later regretted the image, it holds up as a metaphor for the undertow of danger that pervades his work” (Gussow). What The Birthday Party does that interests us in our time is it conveys a sense of danger. According to Billington, issues in The Birthday Party such as the interrogation of Stanley by Goldberg and McCann are seen in a new and more personal way today because of “our awareness of intimidation techniques that continue up to, but certainly won’t end, with Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.” According to the International Herald Tribune, “‘The Birthday Party’ opened in the West End in 1958 and received disastrous reviews. Then, prodded by the theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, Harold Hobson, the eminent critic of The Sunday Times of London, came to see it at a matinee. What he wrote turned out to be a life-changing review. Hobson wrote, ‘Though you go to the uttermost parts of the earth, and hide yourself in the most obscure lodgings in the least popular of towns, one day there is a possibility that two men will appear. They will be looking for you and you cannot get away. And someone will be looking for them too. There is terror everywhere.’” This relates to what director David Farr said about Minority Report. We live in an age where fear is prevalent, and that could be another reason The Bithday Party resonates better with today’s Western society than in 1958.
It is my belief that Western society “grew into” The Birthday Party as a child would grow into a shirt that was once too large for him. At first the shirt would seem ridiculous to wear, but with time the shirt would begin to fit. The Birthday Party may have been a poor fit in 1958, but in 2008 the Lyric Hammersmith was willing to try it on again.
The Homecoming and “Women”
Jennifer Thompson with Associated Content writes, “Aside from a reader’s initial reaction to Harold Pinter’s "The Homecoming" akin to visiting a Freudian fun-house, one must consider whether they ought to read it as a literal story or more as something figurative. The decade in which the story was written and first staged is important to its interpretation. The 1960s was a decade in which women’s liberations was a prominent movement. Movies and art reflected it […]. Was Harold Pinter making a statement about women’s liberation in writing ‘The Homecoming?’ It might not have been the only theme, or even the most pronounced theme, but it was certainly there. The entire plot line seems a tennis match of power between the sexes.” I thought this review was so different than others I had read about The Homecoming that I want to find examples in The Homecoming and interviews about it that support or disagree with Thompson.
Where The Homecoming was written in 1968 it is likely that Pinter was influenced by the issues current to the era, even if his work showed it just a little. The homecoming is described by some as “The story of an all-male family headed by a Lear-like father and the woman […] who enters and disrupts their domain” (Gussow) but that doesn’t automatically make it a play about “Women’s Lib”. One could argue that any play could be analyzed with a feminist lens (extreme or not).
Yet many who see or read the play see it as a reflection of Pinter’s contempt for women. According to The New Statesman Ruth in The Homecoming “disturbed even [Pinter’s] former mistress, Joan Bakewell” (Riddell) with her behavior during the play and her turning prostitute by the end of it. In The Homecoming Max demonizes the deceased mother, referring to her as a “woman of loose morals” and showing a strong distaste for her. So I see where some people argue that Pinter had a problem with women. Perhaps, though, they haven’t looked at female characters in his other plays, such as Ashes to Ashes and Mountain Language, which in my opinion have poignant female leads. These women may have difficulty with memory and/or articulating their thoughts, but so do many of Pinter’s leading men.
Pinter himself was reported to have said something that contradicted what reviewers said about his depiction of women in The Homecoming. “The Pinter oeuvre has, however, not always endeared him to feminists. In particular, Ruth, in The Homecoming - the don’s wife turned prostitute -. ‘A lot of women hate the play, but they’ve got it all wrong. Ruth has them all (her male in-laws) for breakfast. I don’t idealise women. I enjoy them. I have been married to two of the most independent women it is possible to think of. My first wife was incredibly independent, and I know of no more independent and intelligent spirit in the world than Antonia’” (Riddell).
What we can learn from this is that The Homecoming has an interesting issue attached to it; that when playwrights write plays with characters of a different sex, ethnicity, or creed than their own, we can ask ourselves, “How will the audience perceive this character? How will they perceive the group the character represents? How will they perceive I view members of that group?” and think about what it is we have to lose or again by representing it.
Would a Backwards Betrayal Approach Conventional Drama?
Dominic Maxwell, theatre editor for The Times, mentions the “love triangle” in Betrayal and says that Betrayal “might have been [Pinter’s] most conventional play if he hadn’t told the story in reverse”. I want to explore how the love triangle would make Betrayal seem like more “conventional” plays. To do this I am going to relate the love triangle in Betrayal to the love triangle in a script that was initially meant to be more “conventional”, and because I am doing this from a playwright’s standpoint I thought such a script could be one of my own, the two-act version of Finding Each Other Dead. It might help me with the next rewrite, or it might not, depending.
I purposely tried to adhere to convention when I wrote Finding Each Other Dead in two acts in early 2008. I was attempting to get a reading or a production with a group that advocated “realism”. I also had not yet been exposed to Pinter. So the Finding Each Other Dead project is in my opinion a worthy example of a conventional script that I can compare and contrast with Betrayal.
The love triangle in Betrayal with Emma, Robert and Jerry juxtaposes with the love triangle with Becky, Marty, and Watt in my student project Finding Each Other Dead. Much of the action in Betrayal takes place between Jerry and Robert, two best friends, and the subject is often Emma, as in Finding Each Other Dead much of the action takes place between Watt and Marty, also best friends, and the subject is often Becky. Though Becky isn’t married to Marty (whereas Emma is married to Robert), she is in a semi-serious relationship with Marty and her seeing Watt goes against it. Marty and Watt want Becky’s loyalty like Robert and Jerry both seem to want Emma’s. Becky likes both Marty and Watt for different reasons; Marty is stable and successful whereas Watt treats her with the utmost respect, and when she is unsatisfied with Marty she pursues Watt without telling Marty. Emma endures Robert and when she is unsatisfied with she gives in to Jerry, and she does so seemingly unbeknownst to Robert until he grows suspicious and discovers the affair. Marty several times nearly catches Becky and Watt in an awkward situation, just as Jerry worries his wife is finding clues to what is going on and Emma has a chance meeting with Jerry’s wife, both close calls.
If such a “love triangle” appears in a work that was meant to be conventional from the beginning (especially one written by an inexperienced BA theatre student), it brings Betrayal closer to being a work of conventional drama. Betrayal has a classic three-act structure, one feature that likens it to more “conventional” works. Finding Each Other Dead has a two-act structure (something I considered a growing trend in playwriting at the time), and a linear plotline with scenes in chronological order with no flashbacks. Had the scenes in Betrayal been in chronological order from first to last instead of last to first the play may have been considered similar to the works of conventional authors. Not that Betrayal is amateurish—definitely not. Just that it could be Pinter’s most conventional work as Maxwell suggests.
Old Times and Mark Rothko
“Like a painting by Mark Rothko this play is witty, humane, deeply satisfying and often indecipherable,” writes Peter Woodward, Director, at the Bench Theatre in Havant, Hampshire, UK. I wouldn’t know if Mark Rothko’s work was “witty” or “humane”, but I suppose I could describe it as being “deeply satisfying and often indecipherable,” still a matter of opinion. What I want to do here is look at the phrase “Like a Mark Rothko painting” and examine the similarities and differences between Old Times and what Mark Rothko said about his series of untitled images.
According to the National Gallery of Art, the American painter Mark Rothko said, “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.”
I would argue that the “large shape” of the plot structure in Old Times doesn’t exactly have “the impact of the unequivocal”. By definition the “unequivocal” does not leave room for misinterpretation or doubt, and the plot of Old Times is interpreted in various ways so that what happens in it is a matter of debate. True, it is linear and any reminiscences are given by characters in conversation rather than flashbacks, but what about the juxtaposition between the story of a man sobbing and Deely sobbing in the end? We don’t have an explanation of it, and it led Martin Esslin to say there were three ways to interpret the play (Olivira, 1).
I do think the world of Old Times “reasserts the picture plane”. To anyone not familiar with photography or painting, the picture plane is the imaginary area between what is seen and the vantage point. It is called a plane because it is imagined as a flat surface. The world of the play confirms the existence of the picture plane by showing us that there is a space between us as an audience and what is going on in the play. At first glance the world of Old Times appears to be quite similar to our own, but as the play progresses we become more aware of the difference between our world and theirs, thus becoming separated from it. By the end of the play we realize that we are looking at a picture rather than being a part of it. We have become distanced though we are still involved. With most conventional plays we don’t get this same effect; the picture plane is there but we are less likely to acknowledge it as being the picture plane rather than an actual space, and this is because the aim of conventional theatre is to connect rather than distance.
Other than the confusion of who exactly Anna is, I would say that “flat forms” in the characters of Old Times “destroy illusion and reveal truth”. We aren’t manipulated by stories of their entire lives or details of their daily ordeals, but rather experience their remembrances of particular points in their lives (the time Anna wore Kate’s underwear and Deely looked up her skirt, when Kate came home and found Anna in the bed and a man sobbing) that serve the story. Nor do the characters seem to have long, contemplative thought processes that drag us away from the story.
Conclusion
I confess that when I first began to read the Harold Pinter plays that I discussed in this essay, I didn’t know a lot about Pinter or his work. Having done this research I am confident that I can now better analyze plays, use more creative research methods, and write papers longer than a few pages. I learned through this experience that bad reviews aren’t the end of the world, that I should keep the actors in mind while writing plays, that genres outside theatre can relate to plays and be used in analysis of them. In the future I will be more apt to mention Pinter in class discussions, more willing to study other playwrights, and more likely to ask myself “does the play I’m writing work?”.
Works Cited
Billington, Michael. “Fighting talk.” The Guardian, Saturday 3 May 2008.
Brown, Peter. “The Dumb Waiter at Trafalgar Studios.” London Theatre Guide. February 9, 2007.
Jongh, Nicholas de. “Evans mesmerising in vintage piece of theatre.” Evening Standard. September 2, 2007.
Loveridge. Lizzie. “The Dumb Waiter: A CurtainUp London Review.”
Maxwell, Dominic. “British theatre will never be the same without Harold Pinter.” The Times. December 26, 2008.
The National Gallery of Art. “Mark Rothko.” Washington, DC.
Olivira, Ubiratan Paiva de. “Old Times.” Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Pinter, Harold. Betrayal. Complete Works: Four. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 1981.
Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party. The Birthday Party and The Room: 2 Plays by Harold Pinter. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 1968.
Pinter, Harold. The Caretaker. The Caretaker and The Dumb Waiter. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 1960.
Pinter, Harold. The Dumb Waiter. The Caretaker and The Dumb Waiter. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 1960.
Pinter, Harold. The Homecoming. The Essential Pinter: Selections from the Work of Harold Pinter. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 2006.
Pinter, Harold. Mountain Language. The Essential Pinter: Selections from the Work of Harold Pinter. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 2006. Pinter, Harold.
Old Times. Complete Works: Four. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 1981.
Pinter, Harold. The Room. The Birthday Party and The Room: 2 Plays by Harold Pinter. Grove Press, Inc. New York: 1968.
Quigley, Austin E. The Pinter Problem. Princeton University Press. Princeton: 1975.
Riddell, Mary. “The New Statesman Interview - Harold Pinter.” New Statesman. November 8, 1999.
Sharma, Laxmi. “Dialectic Of Pinteresque In Harold Pinter’s ‘The Room’”. Literary India. January 28, 2009.
