Complete Works, Volume IV Read online

  Complete Works: Four

  Volume Four of the Collected Works of Harold Pinter

  By the same author

  PLAYS

  Ashes to Ashes · Betrayal · The Birthday Party · The Caretaker · Celebration and the Room · The Collection and the Lover · The Homecoming · The Hothouse · Landscape and Silence · Mountain Language · Moonlight · No Man’s Land · Old Times · One For The Road · Other Places (A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, Family Voices) · Party Time · Remembrance of Things Past (with Di Trevis) · The Room and the Dumb Waiter · A Slight Ache and Other Plays · Tea Party and Other Plays

  Plays One

  (The Birthday Party, The Room, The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, The Hothouse, A Night Out, “The Black and White,” “The Examination”)

  Plays Two

  (The Caretaker, The Dwarfs, The Collection, The Lover, Night School, Trouble in the Works, The Black and White, Request Stop, Last to Go, Special Offer)

  Plays Three

  (The Homecoming, Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape, Silence, Night, That’s Your Trouble, That’s All, Applicant, Interview, Dialogue for Three, “Tea Party,” Old Times, No Man’s Land)

  Plays Four

  (Betrayal, Monologue, One for the Road, Mountain Language, Family Voices, A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, Precisely, The New World Order, Party Time, Moonlight, Ashes to Ashes, Celebration, Umbrellas, God’s District, Apart from That)

  SCREENPLAYS

  Harold Pinter Collected Screenplays One

  (The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, Accident, The Last Tycoon, Langrishe, Go Down)

  Harold Pinter Collected Screenplays Two

  (The Go-Between, The Proust Screenplay, Victory, Turtle Diary, Reunion)

  Harold Pinter Collected Screenplays Three

  (The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Heat of the Day, The Comfort of Strangers, The Trial, The Dreaming Child)

  PROSE, POETRY AND POLITICS

  The Dwarfs (a novel)

  100 Poems by 100 Poets (an anthology)

  99 Poems in Translation (an anthology)

  Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2005

  War

  HAROLD PINTER

  Complete Works: Four

  OLD TIMES

  NO MAN’S LAND

  BETRAYAL

  MONOLOGUE

  FAMILY VOICES

  With an introduction by the author

  Grove Press

  New York

  This collection copyright © 1981 by Neabar Investments Ltd.

  Old Times copyright © 1971 by FPinter Limited

  No Man’s Land copyright © 1975 by FPinter Limited

  Betrayal copyright © 1978, 1980 by FPinter Limited

  Monologue copyright © 1973 by Fraser52 Limited

  Family Voices copyright © 1981 by Neabar Investments Ltd.

  “Speech at Hamburg” (Introduction) copyright © 1970 by FPinter Limited

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

  ISBN 978-0-8021-5050-9

  eISBN 978-0-8021-9226-4

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that these plays are subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

  First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform them, and those other rights stated above, for all plays in this volume, must be made in advance to the author’s sole agent: Judy Daish Associates Ltd., 2 St. Charles Place, London W10 6EG, England.

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  CONTENTS

  Chronology

  Introduction

  Old Times

  No Man’s Land

  Betrayal

  Monologue

  Family Voices

  HAROLD PINTER: A CHRONOLOGY

  Year of writing

  First performance

  1949

  Kullus

  (short story)

  1952–6

  The Dwarfs

  (novel)

  1953

  Latest Reports From the Stock Exchange

  (short story)

  1954–5

  The Black and White

  (short story)

  1955

  The Examination

  (short story)

  1957

  The Room

  May 15, 1957

  1957

  The Birthday Party

  April 28, 1958

  1957

  The Dumb Waiter

  January 21, 1960

  1958

  A Slight Ache

  July 29, 1959

  1958

  The Hothouse

  April 24, 1980

  1959

  Revue sketches—

  Trouble in the Works; The Black and White

  July 15, 1959

  Request Stop; Last to Go; Special Offer

  September 23, 1959

  That’s Your Trouble; That’s All; Applicant; Interview; Dialogue for Three

  1959

  A Night Out

  March 1, 1960

  1959

  The Caretaker

  April, 27, 1960

  1960

  Night School

  July 21, 1960

  1960

  The Dwarfs

  December 2, 1960

  1961

  The Collection

  May 11, 1961

  1962

  The Lover

  March 28, 1963

  1963

  The Pumpkin Eater

  (screenplay)

  1963

  The Caretaker

  (screenplay)

  1963

  The Servant

  (screenplay)

  1963

  Tea Party

  (short story)

  1964

  Tea Party

  March 25, 1965

  1964

  The Homecoming

  June 3, 1965

  1965

  The Quiller Memorandum

  (screenplay)

  1965

  The Compartment

  (unpublished, unproduced screenplay)

  (adapted for stage as The Basement)

  1966

  Accident

  (screenplay)

  1966

  The Bas
ement

  February 28, 1967

  1967

  Landscape

  April 25, 1968

  1968

  Silence

  July 2, 1969

  1968

  The Birthday Party

  (unpublished screenplay)

  1969

  The Homecoming

  (screenplay)

  1969

  Night

  April 9, 1969

  1970

  The Go-Between

  (screenplay)

  1970

  Langrishe, Go Down

  (screenplay)

  1970

  Old Times

  June 1, 1971

  1971

  Poems

  (poems)

  1972

  Monologue

  April 10, 1973

  1972

  The Proust Screenplay

  (unproduced screenplay)

  1974

  The Last Tycoon

  (screenplay)

  1974

  No Man’s Land

  April 23, 1975

  1975

  The Coast

  (short story)

  1976

  Problem

  (short story)

  1977

  Lola

  (short story)

  1977

  I Know the Place

  (poems)

  1978

  Betrayal

  November 15, 1978

  1980

  Family Voices

  January 22, 1981

  1981

  The French Lieutenant’s Woman

  (screenplay)

  1982

  Victoria Station

  A Kind of Alaska

  Performed with Family Voices as a trilogy titled Other Places in 1982

  1982

  Victory

  (unproduced screenplay)

  1982, 1983

  Betrayal

  (screenplay)

  1983

  Precisely (sketch)

  December 18, 1983

  1984

  Turtle Diary

  (screenplay)

  1984

  One for the Road

  March 15, 1984

  1987

  The Handmaid’s Tale

  (unpublished screenplay)

  1988

  The Heat of the Day

  (screenplay)

  1988

  Mountain Language

  October 20, 1988

  1989

  Reunion

  (screenplay)

  1989

  The Comfort of Strangers

  (screenplay)

  1990

  Ten Early Poems

  (poems)

  1991

  The New World Order

  July 19, 1991

  1991

  Party Time

  October 31, 1991

  1991

  Party Time

  (screenplay)

  1993

  Moonlight

  September 7, 1993

  1993

  The Trial

  (screenplay)

  1995

  Short Story

  (short story)

  1995

  Girls

  (short story)

  1996

  Ashes to Ashes

  September 12, 1996

  1997

  The Dreaming Child

  (unproduced screenplay)

  1997

  God’s District (sketch)

  1999

  Celebration

  March 16, 2000

  1999

  Sorry About This

  (short story)

  2000

  The Tragedy of King Lear

  (unpublished screenplay)

  2000

  Remembrance of Things Past

  November 23, 2000

  2000

  Tess

  (short story)

  2001

  Voices in the Tunnel

  (short story)

  2002

  “The Disappeared” and Other Poems

  (poems)

  2002

  Press Conference (sketch)

  2005

  Voices

  (radio play)

  2006

  Apart From That (sketch)

  2007

  Sleuth

  (screenplay)

  2007

  The Mirror

  (short story)

  2007

  Six Poems for A.

  (poems)

  INTRODUCTION

  A speech made by Harold Pinter in Hamburg, West Germany, on being awarded the 1970 German Shakespeare Prize.

  When I was informed that I was to be given this award my reaction was to be startled, even bewildered, while at the same time to feel deeply gratified by this honour. I remain honoured and slightly bewildered, but also frightened. What frightens me is that I have been asked to speak to you today. If I find writing difficult I find public address doubly so.

  Once, many years ago, I found myself engaged uneasily in a public discussion on the theatre. Someone asked me what my work was ‘about.’ I replied with no thought at all and merely to frustrate this line of enquiry: ‘The weasel under that cocktail cabinet.’ That was a great mistake. Over the years I have seen that remark quoted in a number of learned columns. It has now seemingly acquired a profound significance, and is seen to be a highly relevant and meaningful observation about my own work. But for me the remark meant precisely nothing. Such are the dangers of speaking in public.

  In what way can one talk about one’s work? I’m a writer, not a critic. When I use the word work I mean work. I regard myself as nothing more than a working man.

  I am moved by the fact that the selection committee for the Shakespeare Prize has judged my work, in the context of this award, as worthy of it, but it’s impossible for me to understand the reasons that led them to their decision. I’m at the other end of the telescope. The language used, the opinions given, the approvals and objections engendered by one’s work happen in a sense outside one’s actual experience of it, since the core of that experience consists in writing the stuff. I have a particular relationship with the words I put down on paper and the characters which emerge from them which no one else can share with me. And perhaps that’s why I remain bewildered by praise and really quite indifferent to insult. Praise and insult refer to someone called Pinter. I don’t know the man they’re talking about. I know the plays, but in a totally different way, in a quite private way.

  If I am to talk at all I prefer to talk practically about practical matters, but that’s no more than a pious hope, since one invariably slips into theorising, almost without noticing it. And I distrust theory. In whatever capacity I have worked in the theatre, and apart from writing, I have done quite a bit of acting and a certain amount of directing for the stage, I have found that theory, as such, has never been helpful; either to myself, or, I have noticed, to few of my colleagues. The best sort of collaborative working relationship in the theatre, in my view, consists in a kind of stumbling erratic shorthand, through which facts are lost, collided with, fumbled, found again. One excellent director I know has never been known to complete a sentence. He has such instinctive surety and almost subliminal powers of communication that actors respond to his words before he has said them.

  I don’t want to imply that I am counselling lack of intelligence as a working aid. On the contrary, I am referring to an intelligence brought to bear on practical and relevant matters, on matters which are active and alive and specific, an intelligence working with others to find the legitimate and therefore compulsory facts and make them concrete for us on the stage. A rehearsal period which consists of philosophical discourse or political treatise does not get the curtain up at eight o’clock.

  I have referred to facts, by which I mean theatrical facts. It is true to say that theatrical facts do not easily disclose their secrets, and it is very easy, when
they prove stubborn, to distort them, to make them into something else, or to pretend they never existed. This happens more often in the theatre than we care to recognize and it is proof either of incompetence or fundamental contempt for the work in hand.

  I believe that when a writer looks at the blank of the word he has not yet written, or when actors and directors arrive at a given moment on stage, there is only one proper thing that can take place at that moment, and that that thing, that gesture, that word on the page, must alone be found, and once found, scrupulously protected. I think I am talking about necessary shape, both as regards a play and its production.

  If there is, as I believe, a necessary, an obligatory shape which a play demands of its writer, then I have never been able to achieve it myself. I have always finished the last draft of a play with a mixture of feelings: relief, disbelief, exhilaration, and a certainty that if I could only wring the play’s neck once more it might yield once more to me, that I could get it better, that I could get the better of it, perhaps. But that’s impossible. You create the word and in a certain way the word, in finding its own life, stares you out, is obdurate, and more often than not defeats you. You create the characters and they prove to be very tough. They observe you, their writer, warily. It may sound absurd, but I believe I am speaking the truth when I say that I have suffered two kinds of pain through my characters. I have witnessed their pain when I am in the act of distorting them, of falsifying them, and I have witnessed their contempt. I have suffered pain when I have been unable to get to the quick of them, when they willfully elude me, when they withdraw into the shadows. And there’s a third and rarer pain. That is when the right word, or the right act jolts them or stills them into their proper life. When that happens the pain is worth having. When that happens I am ready to take them into the nearest bar and buy drinks all round. And I hope they would forgive me my trespasses against them and do the same for me. But there is no question that quite a conflict takes place between the writer and his characters and on the whole I would say the characters are the winners. And that’s as it should be, I think. Where a writer sets out a blueprint for his characters, and keeps them rigidly to it, where they do not at any time upset his applecart, where he has mastered them, he has also killed them, or rather terminated their birth, and he has a dead play on his hands.