Pinter, Harold

Pinter, Harold
born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.

British playwright and actor.

Born into a working-class family, he acted with touring companies until 1959. His early one-act plays were followed by 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), and Moonlight (1993). He also wrote radio and television plays as well as screenplays for The Go-Between (1971) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).

* * *

▪ 2009

      British playwright, director, actor, screenwriter, and political activist

born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.

died Dec. 24, 2008, London
achieved international renown—and the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature—as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II English-language dramatists. His 29 plays are noted for their use of understatement and subtle underlying menace within deceptively ordinary settings, while his characters' colloquial “Pinteresque” speech consists of disjointed and oddly ambivalent conversation punctuated by resonant hesitations and silences that reveal not only the characters' own alienation and the difficulties they have in communicating but also the many layers of meaning that can be contained in even the most innocuous statements. The son of a Jewish tailor, Pinter grew up in a working-class area in London's East End. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1948 but left after two terms to become an actor. Pinter toured Ireland and England with various acting companies, appearing under the name David Baron in provincial repertory theatres until 1959. After 1956 he began to write for the stage. The one-act dramas The Room (1957) and The Dumb Waiter (1959) established the mood of comic menace that was to figure largely in his later works. Pinter's first full-length play, The Birthday Party (1958; filmed 1968), puzzled the London audiences and lasted only a week. After his radio play A Slight Ache (1959) was adapted for the stage (1961), his reputation as the originator of a unique dramatic idiom was secured by his next two full-length plays, The Caretaker (1960; filmed 1963) and The Homecoming (1965; filmed 1969). Pinter's later successes included Old Times (1971), No Man's Land (1975), Betrayal (1978; filmed 1983), Moonlight (1993), and Celebration (2000). From the 1970s on, Pinter directed his own and others' works, wrote radio and television dramas, made occasional acting appearances, and wrote adapted motion-picture screenplays. Among the latter are The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), The Go-Between (1970), The Last Tycoon (1976), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), and the remake of Sleuth (2007). Pinter was also a noted poet, and his verse—such as that collected in War (2003)—often reflected his sometimes controversial left-wing political views. Pinter was made (2002) a Companion of Honour and named (2007) a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.

* * *

▪ British dramatist
born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.
died Dec. 24, 2008, London

      English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence—and even silence—to convey the substance of a character's thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

      The son of a Jewish tailor, Pinter grew up in London's East End in a working-class area. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1948 but left after two terms to join a repertory company as a professional actor. Pinter toured Ireland and England with various acting companies, appearing under the name David Baron in provincial repertory theatres until 1959. After 1956 he began to write for the stage. The Room (first produced 1957) and The Dumb Waiter (first produced 1959), his first two plays, are one-act dramas that established the mood of comic menace that was to figure largely in his later works. His first full-length play, The Birthday Party (first produced 1958; filmed 1968), puzzled the London audiences and lasted only a week, but later it was televised and revived successfully on the stage.

      After Pinter's radio play A Slight Ache (first produced 1959) was adapted for the stage (1961), his reputation was secured by his second full-length play, The Caretaker (first produced 1960; filmed 1963), which established him as more than just another practitioner of the then-popular Theatre of the Absurd. His next major play, The Homecoming (first produced 1965), helped establish him as the originator of a unique dramatic idiom. Such plays as Landscape (first produced 1969), Silence (first produced 1969), Night (first produced 1969), and Old Times (first produced 1971) virtually did away with physical activity on the stage. Pinter's later successes included No Man's Land (first produced 1975), Betrayal (first produced 1978), Moonlight (first produced 1993), and Celebration (first produced 2000). From the 1970s on, Pinter did much directing of both his own and others' works.

      Pinter's plays are ambivalent in their plots, presentation of characters, and endings, but they are works of undeniable power and originality. They typically begin with a pair of characters whose stereotyped relations and role-playing are disrupted by the entrance of a stranger; the audience sees the psychic stability of the couple break down as their fears, jealousies, hatreds, sexual preoccupations, and loneliness emerge from beneath a screen of bizarre yet commonplace conversation. In The Caretaker, for instance, a wheedling, garrulous old tramp comes to live with two neurotic brothers, one of whom underwent electroshock therapy as a mental patient. The tramp's attempts to establish himself in the household upset the precarious balance of the brothers' lives, and they end up evicting him. The Homecoming focuses on the return to his London home of a university professor who brings his wife to meet his brothers and father. The woman's presence exposes a tangle of rage and confused sexuality in this all-male household, but in the end she decides to stay with the father and his two sons after having accepted their sexual overtures without protest from her overly detached husband.

      Dialogue is of central importance in Pinter's plays and is perhaps the key to his originality. His characters' colloquial (“Pinteresque”) speech consists of disjointed and oddly ambivalent conversation that is punctuated by resonant silences. The characters' speech, hesitations, and pauses reveal not only their own alienation and the difficulties they have in communicating but also the many layers of meaning that can be contained in even the most innocuous statements.

      In addition to works for the stage, Pinter wrote radio and television dramas and a number of successful motion-picture screenplays. Among the latter are those for three films directed by Joseph Losey, The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1970). He also wrote the screenplays for The Last Tycoon (1976), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), the screen version of his own play Betrayal (1983), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), and Sleuth (2007). Pinter was also a noted poet, and his verse—such as that collected in War (2003)—often reflected his political views and involvement in numerous causes. In 2007 Pinter was named a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • PINTER, HAROLD — (1930–2005), English playwright, Nobel laureate. Born in Hackney, London, the son of a tailor, Pinter was on the stage from 1949 to 1957 under the name of David Baron, acting chiefly in repertory and with touring companies in Ireland. His first… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Pinter, Harold — (1930 )    Born in Hackney a working class neighborhood in London s East End the son of a Jewish tailor, he was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School and spent two years at London s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1950 he started publishing …   British and Irish poets

  • Pinter, Harold — ► (n. 1930) Dramaturgo británico. Autor de El montacargas y La fiesta de cumpleaños (1958), entre otras. * * * (n. 10 oct. 1930, Londres, Inglaterra). Dramaturgo y actor británico. Nacido en el seno de una familia de la clase obrera, actuó en… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Pinter, Harold — (b. 1930)    British playwright. Born in London, Pinter became internationally acclaimed for plays depicting marital and other personal relationships fraught with tension under a light, even banal, surface. Among his plays are The Birthday Party… …   Who’s Who in Jewish History after the period of the Old Testament

  • Pinter,Harold — Pin·ter (pĭnʹtər), Harold. Born 1930. British playwright, screenwriter, and director. His plays, including The Dumbwaiter (1957) and The Birthday Party (1960), create an atmosphere of menace.   Pin ter·esqueʹ ( ĕskʹ) adj. * * * …   Universalium

  • Pinter, Harold — (b. 1930)    British dramatist. Born in London, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. From 1949 to 1960 he was a profes sional actor. His works include The Room, The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, A Night Out, A Slight… …   Dictionary of Jewish Biography

  • Pinter — Pinter, Harold …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Harold Pinter and academia — concerns academic recognition of and scholarship pertaining to 2005 Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, CH, CBE, who is an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, and political activist born in 1930.Although, due to illness, he had… …   Wikipedia

  • Harold Pinter — Harold Pinter …   Wikipedia Español

  • pinter — [ pɛ̃te ] v. <conjug. : 1> • 1270; de pinte ♦ Pop. 1 ♦ V. intr. Boire beaucoup. ⇒ picoler. Il pinte sec. 2 ♦ V. pron. SE PINTER : s enivrer. Se pinter au whisky. P. p. adj. Il est complètement pinté. ⇒ ivre. ● pinter verbe transitif (de… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”