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Drama
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter was born in London's
East End in 1930 to a Jewish family that aspired to the middle class. Coming
of age during the years of World War Two and thus directly experiencing the
bombing of London by the Nazis, Pinter was and is keenly aware of war, sudden
violence, and a nationalism that evolves into fascism. Some of his most recent
plays and screenplays deal directly with such topics, as his level of direct
political involvement increased dramatically in the 1980s and 90s, including
at times a strong criticism of Anglo-American policies toward such nations
as Nicaragua and such topics as the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Pinter studied at London's Royal
Academy of Dramatic Arts and then joined an acting company that toured the
provinces, including Ireland, where he met and married his first wife, the
actress Vivien Merchant. He turned to writing in the later 1950s, writing
a novel Dwarfs and completing his first play, a one-act drama entitled
The Room, in 1957. Since that time, he has written dozens of plays
for the theater and radio, and written such celebrated screenplays and film
adaptations as The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981; from John Fowles'
novel), The Handmaid's Tale (1990; from Margaret Atwood's novel), The
Remains of the Day (1992, from Kazuo Ishiguro's novel), and numerous others.
He has also acted on stage and in film—in the 1999 film version of Jane Austen's
novel Mansfield Park and the 2001 HBO film adaption of Margaret Edson's
Wit, for example.and directed numerous productions including an acclaimed
adaptation of David Mamet's Oleanna in 1993-94 starring David Suchet.
He is married to the Lady Antonia Fraser and has served as an administrator
for England's National Theatre.
As the new millennium begins,
Pinter is widely recognized as England's most distinguished living playwright.
Like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, two writers for whom he has expressed
the deepest admiration, Sir Harold Pinter has influenced an entire generation
(or two) of younger dramatists, most notably Mamet, and the roster of actors
who have appeared in his plays includes many of the most celebrated performers
of the twentieth century stage: Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson,
Alan Bates, Helen Mirren, Donald Pleasence, Robert Shaw, Ben Kingsley, Jeremy
Irons, Miranda Richardson, Patricia Hodge, Michael Gambon , and many others.
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Selected Bibliography of Pinter's Work
Plays
The Room (1957)
The Birthday Party (1958)
A Slight Ache (1959)
The Caretaker (1960)
The Dumb Waiter (1960)
The Collection (1961)
The Homecoming (1965)
Old Times (1971)
No Man's Land (1975)
Betrayal (1978)
The Hothouse (1958; first produced 1980)
A Kind of Alaska (1983)
One for the Road (1984)
Mountain Language (1988)
The New World Order (1991)
Party Time (1991)
Moonlight (1993)
Ashes to Ashes (1996)
Celebrations (2000)
Screenplays
The Caretaker (1964)
The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
The Go-Between (1970)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
Betrayal (1982)
The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
The Remains of the Day (1992)
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Further Reading about Pinter's Life
Aragay, Mireia. "Writing, Politics, and Ashes to Ashes: An Interview with Harold Pinter." The Pinter Review (1995-96): 4-15.
Billington, Michael. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.
Gussow, Mel. Conversations with Pinter. New York: Grove Press, 1996.
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Further Reading About Pinter's Work
Bloom, Harold, ed. Harold Pinter. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Bold, Alan, ed. Harold Pinter: You Never Heard Such Silence. London/Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1985.
Burkman, Katherine H. The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis in Ritual. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1971.
_________________. "Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes: Rebecca and Devlin as Albert Speer." The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 1997 and 1998. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: The U of Tampa P, 1999. 86-96.
Cahn, Victor L. Gender and Power in the Plays of Harold Pinter. New York: St. Martin's, 1993.
Diamond, Elin. Pinter's Comic Play. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1985.
Esslin, Martin. Pinter the Playwright. London: Methuen, 1982.
Gordon, Lois, ed. Harold Pinter: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1990.
Hall, Ann C. "A Kind of Alaska": Women in the Plays of O'Neill, Pinter, and Shepard. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1993.
Knowles, Ronald. Understanding Harold Pinter. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1995.
Peacock, D. Keith. Harold Pinter and the New British Theatre. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997.
The Pinter Review: Annual Essays. 2001 special issue on Ashes to Ashes
Prentice, Penelope. The Pinter Ethic. New York: Garland, 1994.
Quigley, Austin E. The Pinter Problem. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975.
Silverstein, Marc. Harold Pinter and the Language of Cultural Power. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1993.
_____________. ".Talking about Some Kind of Atrocity': Ashes to Ashes in Barcelona." The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 1997 and 1998. 74-85.
Watt, Stephen. Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998.
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