SOURCE: “Mr. Pinter and the Fearful Matter,” in Texas Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3, Autumn, 1961, pp. 257-65.

In the following essay, Dick examines the themes in Pinter’s work and considers Pinter's plays in the context of the renaissance of English theater in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“I think communication is a very fearful matter. …”

Harold Pinter: Monitor B.B.C. television interview, June 1960.

In three years, from 1957 to 1960, Harold Pinter has produced an astonishing volume of dramatic work. This consists of several radio and television plays, including the B.B.C.'s succès d'estime, A Slight Ache (also broadcast on the German radio), and A Night Out, a grim farce written for commercial television; many revue sketches, the most stylistically distinguished being those written for several London shows; two one-act plays, The Room and The Dumb Waiter, and two three-act plays, The Birthday Party and The...