Complete Works, Volume IV (2 page)

INTRODUCTION

A speech made by Harold Pinter in Hamburg, West Germany, on being awarded the 1970 German Shakespeare Prize.

When I was informed that I was to be given this award my reaction was to be startled, even bewildered, while at the same time to feel deeply gratified by this honour. I remain honoured and slightly bewildered, but also frightened. What frightens me is that I have been asked to speak to you today. If I find writing difficult I find public address doubly so.

Once, many years ago, I found myself engaged uneasily in a public discussion on the theatre. Someone asked me what my work was ‘about.’ I replied with no thought at all and merely to frustrate this line of enquiry: ‘The weasel under that cocktail cabinet.’ That was a great mistake. Over the years I have seen that remark quoted in a number of learned columns. It has now seemingly acquired a profound significance, and is seen to be a highly relevant and meaningful observation about my own work. But for me the remark meant precisely nothing. Such are the dangers of speaking in public.

In what way can one talk about one’s work? I’m a writer, not a critic. When I use the word work I mean work. I regard myself as nothing more than a working man.

I am moved by the fact that the selection committee for the Shakespeare Prize has judged my work, in the context of this award, as worthy of it, but it’s impossible for me to understand the reasons that led them to their decision. I’m at the other end of the telescope. The language used, the opinions given, the approvals and objections engendered by one’s work happen in a sense outside one’s actual experience of it, since the core of that experience consists in writing the stuff. I have a particular relationship with the words I put down on paper and the characters which emerge from them which no one else can share with
me. And perhaps that’s why I remain bewildered by praise and really quite indifferent to insult. Praise and insult refer to someone called Pinter. I don’t know the man they’re talking about. I know the plays, but in a totally different way, in a quite private way.

If I am to talk at all I prefer to talk practically about practical matters, but that’s no more than a pious hope, since one invariably slips into theorising, almost without noticing it. And I distrust theory. In whatever capacity I have worked in the theatre, and apart from writing, I have done quite a bit of acting and a certain amount of directing for the stage, I have found that theory, as such, has never been helpful; either to myself, or, I have noticed, to few of my colleagues. The best sort of collaborative working relationship in the theatre, in my view, consists in a kind of stumbling erratic shorthand, through which facts are lost, collided with, fumbled, found again. One excellent director I know has never been known to complete a sentence. He has such instinctive surety and almost subliminal powers of communication that actors respond to his words before he has said them.

I don’t want to imply that I am counselling lack of intelligence as a working aid. On the contrary, I am referring to an intelligence brought to bear on practical and relevant matters, on matters which are active and alive and specific, an intelligence working with others to find the legitimate and therefore compulsory facts and make them concrete for us on the stage. A rehearsal period which consists of philosophical discourse or political treatise does not get the curtain up at eight o’clock.

I have referred to facts, by which I mean theatrical facts. It is true to say that theatrical facts do not easily disclose their secrets, and it is very easy, when they prove stubborn, to distort them, to make them into something else, or to pretend they never existed. This happens more often in the theatre than we care to recognize and it is proof either of incompetence or fundamental contempt for the work in hand.

I believe that when a writer looks at the blank of the word he has not yet written, or when actors and directors arrive at a given moment on stage, there is only one proper thing that can take place at that moment, and that that thing, that gesture, that word on the page, must alone be found, and once found, scrupulously protected. I think I am talking about necessary shape, both as regards a play and its production.

If there is, as I believe, a necessary, an obligatory shape which a play demands of its writer, then I have never been able to achieve it myself. I have always finished the last draft of a play with a mixture of feelings: relief, disbelief, exhilaration, and a certainty that if I could only wring the play’s neck once more it might yield once more to me, that I could get it better, that I could get the better of it, perhaps. But that’s impossible. You create the word and in a certain way the word, in finding its own life, stares you out, is obdurate, and more often than not defeats you. You create the characters and they prove to be very tough. They observe you, their writer, warily. It may sound absurd, but I believe I am speaking the truth when I say that I have suffered two kinds of pain through my characters. I have witnessed
their
pain when I am in the act of distorting them, of falsifying them, and I have witnessed their contempt. I have suffered pain when I have been unable to get to the quick of them, when they willfully elude me, when they withdraw into the shadows. And there’s a third and rarer pain. That is when the right word, or the right act jolts them or stills them into their proper life. When that happens the pain is worth having. When that happens I am ready to take them into the nearest bar and buy drinks all round. And I hope they would forgive me my trespasses against them and do the same for me. But there is no question that quite a conflict takes place between the writer and his characters and on the whole I would say the characters are the winners. And that’s as it should be, I think. Where a writer sets out a blueprint for his characters, and keeps them rigidly to it, where they do not at any time upset his applecart, where he has mastered them, he has also killed them, or rather terminated their birth, and he has a dead play on his hands.

Sometimes, the director says to me in rehearsal: ‘Why does she say this?’ I reply: ‘Wait a minute, let me look at the text.’ I do so, and perhaps I say: ‘Doesn’t she say this because he said that, two pages ago?’ Or I say: ‘Because that’s what she feels.’ Or: ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. But somehow we have to find out.’ Sometimes I learn quite a lot from rehearsals.

I have been very fortunate, in my life, in the people I’ve worked with, and my association with Peter Hall and the Royal Shakespeare Company has, particularly, been greatly satisfying. Peter Hall and I, working together, have found that the image must be pursued with the
greatest vigilance, calmly, and once found, must be sharpened, graded, accurately focused and maintained, and that the key word is economy, economy of movement and gesture, of emotion and its expression, both the internal and the external in specific and exact relation to each other, so that there is no wastage and no mess. These are hardly revolutionary conclusions, but I hope no less worthy of restatement for that.

I may appear to be laying too heavy an emphasis on method and technique as opposed to content, but this is not in fact the case. I am not suggesting that the disciplines to which I have been referring be imposed upon the action in terms of a device, or as a formal convenience. What is made evident before us on the stage can clearly only be made fully evident where the content of a scene has been defined. But I do not understand this definition as one arrived at through the intellect, but a definition made by the actors, using quite a different system. In other words, if I now bring various criteria to bear upon a production, these are not intellectual concepts but facts forged through experience of active participation with good actors and, I hope, a living text.

What am I writing about? Not the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

I am not concerned with making general statements. I am not interested in theatre used simply as a means of self-expression on the part of the people engaged in it. I find in so much group theatre, under the sweat and assault and noise, nothing but valueless generalizations, naïve and quite unfruitful.

I am aware, sometimes, of an insistence in my mind. Images, characters, insisting on being written. You can pour a drink, make a telephone call or run around the park, and sometimes succeed in suffocating them. You know they’re going to make your life hell. But at other times they’re unavoidable and you’re compelled to try to do them some kind of justice. And while it may be hell, it’s certainly for me the best kind of hell to be in.

However, I find it ironic that I have come here to receive this distinguished award as a writer, and that at the moment I am writing nothing and can write nothing. I don’t know why. It’s a very bad feeling, I know that, but I must say I want more than anything else to fill up a blank page again, and to feel that strange thing happen, birth through fingertips. When you can’t write you feel you’ve been banished from yourself.

Old Times

Old Times
was first presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, on 1 June 1971, with the following cast:

All in their early forties

Directed by
Peter Hall

The play was produced for television by the BBC in October 1975 with the following cast:

Directed by
Christopher Morahan

It was produced at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, in April 1985 with the following cast:

Directed by
David Jones

PLACE

A converted farmhouse.

A long window up centre. Bedroom door up left. Front door up right.

Spare modern furniture.

Two sofas. An armchair.

Autumn: Night.

ACT ONE

Light dim. Three figures discerned.

DEELEY
slumped in armchair, still.

KATE
curled on a sofa, still.

ANNA
standing at the window, looking out.

Silence

Lights up on Deeley and Kate, smoking cigarettes.

Anna’s figure remains still in dim light at the window.

KATE
(
Reflectively.
) Dark.

Pause

DEELEY
Fat or thin?

KATE
Fuller than me. I think.

Pause

DEELEY
She was then?

KATE
I think so.

DEELEY
She may not be now.

Pause

Was she your best friend?

KATE
Oh, what does that mean?

DEELEY
What?

KATE
The word friend . . . when you look back . . . all that time.

DEELEY
Can’t you remember what you felt?

Pause

KATE
It is a very long time.

DEELEY
But you remember her. She remembers you. Or why would she be coming here tonight?

KATE
I suppose because she remembers me.

Pause

DEELEY
Did you
think
of her as your best friend?

KATE
She was my only friend.

DEELEY
Your best and only.

KATE
My one and only.

Pause

If you have only one of something you can’t say it’s the best of anything.

DEELEY
Because you have nothing to compare it with?

KATE
Mmnn.

Pause

DEELEY
(
Smiling.
) She was incomparable.

KATE
Oh, I’m sure she wasn’t.

Pause

DEELEY
I didn’t know you had so few friends.

KATE
I had none. None at all. Except her.

DEELEY
Why her?

KATE
I don’t know.

Pause

She was a thief. She used to steal things.

DEELEY
Who from?

KATE
Me.

DEELEY
What things?

KATE
Bits and pieces. Underwear.

Deeley chuckles.

DEELEY
Will you remind her?

KATE
Oh . . . I don’t think so.

Pause

DEELEY
Is that what attracted you to her?

KATE
What?

DEELEY
The fact that she was a thief.

KATE
No.

Pause

DEELEY
Are you looking forward to seeing her?

KATE
No.

DEELEY
I am. I shall be very interested.

KATE
In what?

DEELEY
In you. I’ll be watching you.

KATE
Me? Why?

DEELEY
To see if she’s the same person.

KATE
You think you’ll find that out through me?

DEELEY
Definitely.

Pause

KATE
I hardly remember her. I’ve almost totally forgotten her.

Pause

DEELEY
Any idea what she drinks?

KATE
None.

DEELEY
She may be a vegetarian.

KATE
Ask her.

DEELEY
It’s too late. You’ve cooked your casserole.

Pause

Why isn’t she married? I mean, why isn’t she bringing her husband?

KATE
Ask her.

DEELEY
Do I have to ask her everything?

KATE
Do you want me to ask your questions for you?

DEELEY
No. Not at all.

Pause

KATE
Of course she’s married.

DEELEY
How do you know?

KATE
Everyone’s married.

DEELEY
Then why isn’t she bringing her husband?

KATE
Isn’t she?

Pause

DEELEY
Did she mention a husband in her letter?

KATE
No.

DEELEY
What do you think he’d be like? I mean, what sort of man would she have married? After all, she was your best—your
only—friend. You must have some idea. What kind of man would he be?

KATE
I have no idea.

DEELEY
Haven’t you any curiosity?

KATE
You forget. I know her.

DEELEY
You haven’t seen her for twenty years.

KATE
You’ve never seen her. There’s a difference.

Pause

DEELEY
At least the casserole is big enough for four.

KATE
You said she was a vegetarian.

Pause

DEELEY
Did
she
have many friends?

KATE
Oh . . . The normal amount, I suppose.

DEELEY
Normal? What’s normal? You had none.

KATE
One.

DEELEY
Is that normal?

Pause

She . . . had quite a lot of friends, did she?

KATE
Hundreds.

DEELEY
You met them?

KATE
Not all, I think. But after all, we were living together. There were visitors, from time to time. I met them.

DEELEY
Her visitors?

KATE
What?

DEELEY
Her visitors. Her friends. You had no friends.

KATE
Her friends, yes.

DEELEY
You met them.

Pause

(
Abruptly.
) You lived together?

KATE
Mmmnn?

DEELEY
You lived together?

KATE
Of course.

DEELEY
I didn’t know that.

KATE
Didn’t you?

DEELEY
You never told me that. I thought you just knew each other.

KATE
We did.

DEELEY
But in fact you lived with each other.

KATE
Of course we did. How else would she steal my underwear from me? In the street?

Pause

DEELEY
I knew you had shared with someone at onetime . . .

Pause

But I didn’t know it was her.

KATE
Of course it was.

Pause

DEELEY
Anyway, none of this matters.

Anna turns from the window, speaking, and moves down to them, eventually sitting on the second sofa.

ANNA
Queuing all night, the rain, do you remember? my goodness, the Albert Hall, Covent Garden, what did we eat? to look back, half the night, to do things we loved, we were young then of course, but what stamina, and to work in the morning, and to a concert, or the opera, or the ballet, that night, you haven’t forgotten? and then riding on top of the bus down Kensington High Street, and the bus conductors, and then dashing for the matches for the gasfire and then I suppose scrambled eggs, or did we? who cooked? both giggling and chattering, both huddling to the heat, then bed and sleeping, and all the hustle and bustle in the morning, rushing for the bus again for work, lunchtimes in Green Park, exchanging all our news, with our very own sandwiches, innocent girls, innocent secretaries, and then the night to come, and goodness knows what excitement in store, I mean the sheer expectation of it all, the looking-forwardness of it all, and so poor, but to be poor and young, and a girl, in London then . . . and the cafés we found, almost private ones, weren’t they? where artists and writers and sometimes actors collected, and others with dancers, we sat hardly breathing with our coffee, heads bent, so as not to be seen, so as not to disturb, so as not to distract, and listened and listened to all those words, all those cafés and all those people, creative undoubtedly, and does it still exist I wonder? do you know? can you tell me?

Slight pause

DEELEY
We rarely get to London.

Kate stands, goes to a small table and pours coffee from a pot.

KATE
Yes, I remember.

She adds milk and sugar to one cup and takes it to Anna. She takes a black coffee to Deeley and then sits with her own.

DEELEY
(
to Anna.
) Do you drink brandy?

ANNA
I would love some brandy.

Deeley pours brandy for all and hands the glasses. He remains standing with his own.

ANNA
Listen. What silence. Is it always as silent?

DEELEY
It’s quite silent here, yes. Normally.

Pause

You can hear the sea sometimes if you listen very carefully.

ANNA
How wise you were to choose this part of the world, and how sensible and courageous of you both to stay permanently in such a silence.

DEELEY
My work takes me away quite often, of course. But Kate stays here.

ANNA
No one who lived here would want to go far. I would not want to go far, I would be afraid of going far, lest when I returned the house would be gone.

DEELEY
Lest?

ANNA
What?

DEELEY
The word lest. Haven’t heard it for a long time.

Pause

KATE
Sometimes I walk to the sea. There aren’t many people. It’s a long beach.

Pause

ANNA
But I would miss London, nevertheless. But of course I was a girl in London. We were girls together.

DEELEY
I wish I had known you both then.

ANNA
Do you?

DEELEY
Yes.

Deeley pours more brandy for himself.

ANNA
You have a wonderful casserole.

DEELEY
What?

ANNA
I mean wife. So sorry. A wonderful wife.

DEELEY
Ah.

ANNA
I was referring to the casserole. I was referring to your wife’s cooking.

DEELEY
You’re not a vegetarian, then?

ANNA
No. Oh no.

DEELEY
Yes, you need good food in the country, substantial food, to keep you going, all the air . . . you know.