The document provides an introduction to Harold Pinter's 1958 play "The Birthday Party". It discusses Pinter as a playwright and his establishment of the "comedy of menace" genre. It then summarizes the plot of the play, in which a man named Stanley is unsettled by the arrival of two mysterious men at the boarding house where he lives. It also discusses how the play exemplifies Pinter's unique style, known as being "Pinteresque", through its minimal plot, limited characters, and use of tension-filled dialogue.

1. ‘The Birthday
Party ‘ as
‘Pinteresque
play’

2. Introduction
★ Name :- Aarti Bhupatbhai Sarvaiya
★ Roll No :- 01
★ Enrollment No :- 4069206420220027
★ Sem :- 2(M.A.)
★ Batch :- 2022-2024
★ Paper No. :- 110
★ Paper Code :- 22403
★ Paper Name :-History of English Literature – From 1900 to 2000
★ Submitted to :- Smt. S. B. Gardi, Department of English,M.K.B.U.
★ Dated on :- 15 March 2023
★ Email :- aartisarvaiya7010@gmail.com

3. Points to Ponder :-
About the Playwright
About the Play
‘The Birthday Party ‘ as pinteresque
play
Conclusion
References

4. About the Playwright
Harold Pinter was British playwright. Born into a working-class family, he acted with
touring companies until 1959.
The full-length The Birthday Party (1958). His next major plays, The Caretaker
(1960) and The Homecoming (1965), established his reputation as an innovative and
complex dramatist, sometimes considered as belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd.
He often used disjointed small talk and lengthy pauses in dialogue to convey a
character’s thought, which often contradicts his speech.
Pinter’s later plays include Old Times (1971), No Man’s Land (1975), Betrayal (1978;
film, 1983), Mountain Language (1988), Moonlight (1993), and Celebration (2000).
He also wrote radio and television plays, as well as screenplays for The Go-Between
(1970), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Handmaid’s Tale (1990), and
Sleuth (2007). In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

5. About the Play
The Birthday Party, drama in three acts by Harold Pinter, produced in 1958 and
published in 1959. Pinter’s first full-length play established his trademark “comedy
of menace,” in which a character is suddenly threatened by the vague horrors at large
in the outside world. The action takes place entirely in a shabby rooming house where
Stanley, a lazy young boarder, is shaken out of his false sense of security by the
arrival of two mysterious men who proceed to “punish” him for crimes that remain
unrevealed. A birthday party staged by Stanley’s landlady soon turns into an
exhibition of violence and terror.
Harold Pinter (1930-2008) is mostly acclaimed as a wonderful playwright of the twentieth century despite his
other roles of a poet, an actor and so on. He was influenced by the modernist playwright Samuel Beckett and
his plays. But as a tribute to his unique style of writing Pinter was accredited with the adjective ‘Pinteresque’,
which makes him different from other writers of the period. His 1958 play The Birthday Party serves a best
example for the justification of the Pinteresque as remarkably distinctive. The play employs a very few
characters and portrays the life in the post-war world. (Fathima)

6. ‘The Birthday Party ‘ as pinteresque
play
Harold Pinter is widely regarded as one of the most influential representatives of British
theatre in the twentieth century. The significance of his tremendous contribution to
modern theatre has been summed up in one theatrical terminology, namely,
“Pinteresque”. Though Pinter’s plays are characteristic of minimal plots and limited
characters, the dialogues are filled with powerful tension. (Pinter)
The word ‘play’ literally means to have fun and thus postmodernism hints at a kind of
celebration of something. In order to mark this transition, the Pinteresque in The
Birthday Party offers a clear cut distinction between the two periods and hence takes in
both the elements of modernist and postmodernist movements in the history of English
literature and the post war world in general. This makes Pinter an absurdist in style
while drifting away from the complete sense of an absurd writer. The very fact puts his
play in the list of the comedy of menace which intermingle the elements of tragedy and
comedy.

7. Continue…..
The word ‘Pinteresque’ defines the period of high modernism after the 1950’s when the
play was written. It was a time when disorder was the order of the day. The fundamental
belief that man is a social animal proved to be a failure. Because the disorder was due
to the fragmentation of particularly the social institutions and thereby confusion
pervaded in the society. (Fatima)
Harold Pinter is trying to portray a similar twentieth- century culture when he deviates
from the usual custom of giving enough background information about the characters.
They are known by their age, that is simply some meaningless number, and not by their
profession or their relationship with each other.This lack in background information may
mean that the characters are different independent individuals with little connection
between them and who are yet to create a meaning for their own life.
Pinter can be seen in his way of presenting the most antithetical aspects of his time
through Stanley and Goldberg. Those antithetical aspects are nothing but the conflicts
within a person about either maintaining a questioning attitude towards the society or
being complacent about it.

8. Continue…..
Petey, Goldberg and Mccann use their powerful rhetoric to silence others,
especially Stanley, and become representatives of the capitalist ideology.
But the unique charm of Pinter as a writer lies in the fact that he never
makes these characters especially Goldberg villainous in nature.

9. Conclusion
Harold Pinter’s plays usually start with laughter; he uses funny elements, and eventually, the setting
turns into psychological and physical violence. His plays are more surprising for the audience, and
during these stages, the play examines identity, through existentialism in the form of the Absurd
Theatre. The play shows how a man in the entertainment of others has been ignored and wholly
abandoned.
The play depicts the mental and neural depression of postwar individuals
and reflects how people are abstracted from society. Obscurity is the most
prominent component in The Birthday Party that takes place through
conversations and interactions that give us some significant clues to
understand the ambiguity of the world where we live in. Harold Pinter
creates an ambiguous story to recount thecurrent situation of the world.
(Saman)

10. Works Cited
Britannica, The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia. "Harold Pinter". Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Mar. 2023,
https://www.britannica.com/facts/Harold-Pinter. Accessed 12 March 2023.
Hashemipour, Saman. The Pinteresque Absurdum in the Birthday Party. SSRN, 15 Apr. 2020,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3558397.
Pinter, Harold. “Power From Pinteresque Discourse in The Birthday Party.” CORE, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/236303963.pdf.
Accessed 15 March 2023.
S, Fathima Jinan. “Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal.” Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research
Journal, 31 12 2017, https://www.the-criterion.com/V8/n6/BT01.pdf. Accessed 15 March 2023.

11. Thank You