SOURCE: “Comedies of Menace,” in Harold Pinter, revised edition, Twayne Publishers, 1981, pp. 38-76.

In the following essay, Hinchliffe offers synopses of Pinter's works and of critical responses to them.

The title of this chapter was first applied to Pinter by Irving Wardle in Encore (September 1958), though it had appeared as the subtitle of a play by David Campton called The Lunatic View in 1957. Campton explicitly devoted the Absurd to social comment—as a weapon against complacency and in his “sick” comedies the source of menace is clear enough. In Pinter it has been universalized without losing its power. Pinter's terror is outside every door. In the “Tempo” program about his adolescence in Hackney Pinter denied that the atmosphere of violence was attributable to his Jewishness, though that must have contributed to his recognition of it. Trussler has objected to the use of “comedy” on the grounds that comedy...