SOURCE: “The Homecoming: Kith and Kin,” in Modern British Dramatists: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by John Russell Brown, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968, pp. 145-63.

In the following essay, Nelson explicates The Homecoming by associating it with the biblical stories of the Prodigal Son and Ruth, and with Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

Without exception, Harold Pinter's plays have titles which seem neither enigmatic nor evocative. Casually scanned, they seem not to merit a second look, since they simply abstract a central object, person, or event from the context of the play. This is again true of his most recent play, The Homecoming. The title would seem at first glance to indicate nothing but the central event around which the action pivots, or, to put it in the terminology of the well-made play, its inciting incident.

In the first act, the stage is set for the bizarre but logical consequences...