SOURCE: “Perceiving Pinter,” in The English Record, No. 2, Winter, 1971, pp. 30-35.

In the following essay, Rickert argues that contrary to Pinter’s assertions, he is not a conventional playwright, and does not have the traditional aim of exploring social forces or analyzing social order, but is concerned with investigating the problems of identity and communication.

Pinter is not particularly easy to understand. He admits that “the theatre is a large, energetic, public activity,” but he goes on nonetheless to say that for him “writing is … a completely private activity … What I write has no obligation to anything other than to itself.”¹ There is a paradox here—the obvious conflict between the public aspect of the theatre and the private side of the drama. No matter how private the activity is, we, the audience, want to be able to make sense of what we see. And indeed Pinter's plays...