Abstract
In considering The Birthday Party, The Caretaker and other plays of Pinter’s early period, one is immediately struck both by the considerable number of common concerns explored in the plays, and by an evident shift in fundamental emphasis. Pinter here works rather like a painter drawn to specific subject matter whose practice is continually to approach his material from different perspectives, with varied groupings, focuses and lights. It is as if, in The Caretaker, Pinter had got to the heart of the matter, in its very simplicity recognising the supererogatory and redundant aspects of earlier work. To resort to an oversimplification, realism triumphed over symbolism. Indeed such concerns as self-delusion, insecurity, domination and menace remain constants, but in The Caretaker we find an aesthetic resolution, a confident realisation of intuition and creativity meeting in perfect expression, quite freed from the constraints of mannerism.
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© 1988 Ronald Knowles
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Knowles, R. (1988). Plays. In: The Birthday Party and The Caretaker. Text and Performance. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08928-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08928-4_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-42271-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-08928-4
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