Anglo-Tragic: Pinter and the English Tradition

Abstract

English tragicomedy was born out of two parallel movements, a native renaissance after Suez and the impact of the modernist renewal taking place elsewhere in Western Europe. It was the age of the loss of Empire. In the theatre it saw a direct challenge to the conventions of the country-house thriller and the drawing-room farce. John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and John Arden all had plays produced by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court which attacked the complacencies of the British Establishment. But it was Harold Pinter who presented the boldest challenge in terms of dramatic form. Without doubt Pinter is indebted to the English naturalism which he acted out in repertory duringhis early stage career. He makes as much use, even more use, of its possibilities than Osborne or Wesker. Equally he challenges the whole heritage of dramatic realism. In Pinter the Real is always problematic, always in abeyance. He himself has asserted that his stage does not separate truth from falsehood, or appearance from reality. Character, memory, the past, all action off-stage, anything unseen can be contested. Pinter distances himself from the earlier tragicomic tradition of Shaw and Chekhov through the legacy of modernist innovation. Here the impact of Joyce, Eliot and Kafka was extremely powerful, while the impact of Beckett was absolute.