Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Neal R. Norrick and William Baker

Critical Essay by Neal R. Norrick and William Baker

SOURCE: Norrick, Neal R., and William Baker. “Metalingual Humor in Pinter's Early Plays.” English Studies 76, no. 3 (May 1995): 253-63.

In the following essay, Norrick and Baker assert that much of the humor in Pinter's early plays derives from his masterful use of typical, everyday speech.

In his “Writing for Myself,” Pinter says, ‘I had a pretty good notion in my earlier plays of what would shut an audience up; not so much what would make them laugh; that I had no ideas about’. If we assume that Pinter is not simply being coy here, he certainly stumbled onto some effective ideas about ‘what would make them laugh’ early, and developed them into a whole brace of comic strategies as he went on. But Pinter goes on to say that his experience as an actor gave him a feeling ‘for speakable dialogue',¹ and much of what makes dialogue speakable...
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