The Birthday Party by Pinter as a Comedy of Manner :: essays research papers

AS 'COMEDY OF MANNER' Once asked what his plays are about, Pinter lobbed back a phrase "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet", which he regrets has been taken seriously and applied in popular criticism. Despite Pinter's protestations to the contrary, many reviewers and other critics still find that Pinter's "remark", though "facetious"(teasing), is still an apt description of his plays. Now the Phrase "comedy of menace" is often applied to it and suggests that although they are funny, they are also frightening or menacing in a vague and undefined way. Even as they laugh, the audience is unsettled, ill at ease and uncomfortable. Pinter?s own comment clarifies it: "more often than not the speech only seems to be funny - the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life". (What situations appear funny to us? But in fact for the character concerned is a terrifying experience.) Now the question arises that does Pinter?s work really go in accordance to the ?comedy of manners. A critic says: "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter's drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterized as 'comedy of menace,' a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop (spy) on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by establishing themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the unpredictability and elusiveness (ambiguity) of the past." The general setting of the play is naturalistic and mundane, involving no menace. However one of Pinter?s greatest skills is his ability to make an apparently normal and trivial object, like a toy drum, appear strange and threatening. Pinter can summon forth an atmosphere of menace from ordinary everyday objects and events, and one way in which this is done is by combining two apparently opposed moods, such as terror and amusement. Another technique that Pinter uses to create an atmosphere of menace is to cast doubt on almost everything in the play. One method of doing this is to have a character give a clear and definite statement and then have him flatly deny it later on.