The Primacy of Performance in Pinter’s Plays

Abstract

Milton’s Samson Agonistes was written without a performance in mind and Ibsen took great care with the publication of his plays, knowing that they would be read much more as texts than seen as performances. Most playwrights, however, generally write for performance. Why then suggest that performance has a greater primacy in Pinter’s drama than in others’? A few broad distinctions might bring us closer to an answer. There are a number of plays which can be considered as drama of ideas. Shaw and Sartre come to mind, for example. Here it could be said that performance illustrates a prior reality, a truth of politics or morality which unfolds and develops dramatising a prior form of propositional knowledge.