The Birthday Party as comedy of menace

Name: Drashti V. Dave

Assignment topic: The Birthday Party as comedy of menace.

 Submitted to: Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English

Maharaja Krisnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Paper no: 9 – The Modernist Literature

Roll no: 06               Year: 2014

Sem: 3                      M.A. part-2

The Birthday Party as comedy of menace

Introduction about of the play:  The Birthday Party (1957) is the second full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter’s best-known and most frequently performed plays. The Birthday Party has been described by Irving Wardle and later critics as a “Comedy of Menace” and by Martin Esslin as an example of the “Theatre of the Absurd” It also includes such features as the fluidity and ambiguity of time, place and identity and the disintegration of language.

About Harold Pinter and his writing style:  He has presented the characteristics of the Absurd theatre in the background of the English ethos. The essence of the European Absurd theatre finds a new dimension in the plays of Pinter. He has shown the inherent drawbacks and tension in the social life of today. His dramatic style and techniques have certainly given a novel direc­tion to the drama today. The theatre with which are associated Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter, the stage is invariably occupied by a few characters and each one of them expresses his ideas vehemently. The modern stage has taken many turns the main being the Poetic theatre, the Angry theatre and the Absurd theatre.

Pinter has maintained that his plays are not intricate and are easy to grasp. He has denied the presence of any allegorical mean­ing in his plays. Brevity is the hallmark of Pinter’s dialogue which naturally gives rise to many shades of meaning. The reader of Pinter’s plays cannot always arrive at the exact meaning of the cryptic sentences, and one can draw many alternative ideas from them. Pinter’s plays have a suggestive power which is missing in the works of many contemporary dramatists. Following the traditions of the Absurd theatre Pinter has debunked the excessive stress on language and logic.

Pinter’s famous play The Birthday Party shows the attempts of Stanley to evade all the connections of his past life and begin a new life. But Stanley does not succeed in this attempt and he is literally dragged away by his erstwhile partners from whom he tried to escape. Stanley loses his will-power and becomes a pathetic figure, an embodiment of the anxiety and fear felt by the individual in the modern world. (haroldpinterand the absurdtheatre)

What is Comedy of Menace? Literal meaning of menace means person or thing likely to cause serious harm. Here we deeply understand that what is the meaning of comedy of menace and how it is related with the play.

Menace (a threat or the act of threatening)
A ‘menace’ is something which threatens to cause harm, evil or injury; which doesn’t seem like a logical idea to fit with comedy.
Violence and menace are mostly below the surface of the play. Mick moves swiftly and silently and is an unpredictable character.

The playwright’s objective in mixing comedy & the threat of menace is to produce certain effects (like set up dramatic tension or make the audience think a character is a weasel because they are acting nice or funny, but planning to do something evil) or to convey certain social or political ideas  to the audience. (eliteratysociety.com, 2011)

The phrase comedy of menace as a standalone description inspires both positive and negative feelings. Title “comedy of menace” immediately brings contradictions to mind because comedy is generally something that makes people laugh. The word menace implies something threatening; this phrase involves laughing at an ominous situation.

Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N.F. Simpson and Harold Pinter.

The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle; who borrowed it from the subtitle of Campton’s play: The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter’s and Campton’s plays in Encore in 1958.

Irving Wardle used ‘comedy of menace’ in a review of several of Pinter’s work.

Comedy of Menace and the play:  

Pinter’s comedies of menace have a rather simplistic setting he might focus on one or two powerful image and usually are set in just one room The Birthday Party is one of them.

A powerful force that isn’t specifically defined to the audience threatens characters in the play. The dramatist exploits the kind of menace as a source of comedy. Harold Pinter exploited the positions of the kind of situation in his early plays like; “The Room”, “The Birthday Party”, and “A Slight Ache” where both the character and the audience face an atmosphere apparently funny but actually having suggestiveness of some impending threat from outside.

Pinter himself explained the situation thus; “more often than not the search only seems to be funny- the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life”. He also said; “Everything is funny until the horror of the human situation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusions and self-deceptions like Stanley’s dream of a world tour s a pianist, because it is built out of pretence”.

Some plays are able to successfully mingle; drama with comedy. One specific example from The Birthday Party is a character joking around about being in a menacing situation while cleaning his gun to deal with the threat.

Pinter himself has been quoted as saying that he is never been able to write a happy play and that situation can be both true and false.

However as The Birthday Party shows it is quite possible for a playwright to create both humor and menace in the same play, and even at a same time in order to produce certain effects and to transmit ideas to the audience.

Comedy is present in The Birthday Party from the very first scene; it is a way of gently introducing the audience to the world which Pinter is trying to create the humor is quite suitable at first for example the exchange between Petey and Meg about whether Stanley is up or not plays on the words up and down.

Meg: Is Stanley up yet?

Petey: I don’t know. Is he?

Meg: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him down

Petey: Well then he can’t be up

Meg: Haven’t you seen him down?

(Conversation between Meg and Stanley)

This type of dialogue creates humor at situation. Although the repetitions in this short exchange will not make the audience burst out with laughter they can make them smile and the humor also lulls them into a sense of comfort.

Pinter’s absurdist style has been called comedy of menace, some productions of his work concentrate primarily on the menace.

Comedy of menace in relation to the dramatic content of the play:

The comedy of menace – is a tragedy with a number of comic elements. Some elements of comedy of menace; it is a comedy which also produces an overwhelming tragic effect.

Throughout the play we are kept amused and yet throughout the play we find over selves also on the brink of terror. We feel uneasy all the time even when we are laughing or smiling with amusement. That all things or elements which we feel are the effect of comedy of menace.

The menace evolves from actual violence in the play or from an underlying sense of violence throughout the play. It may develop from a feeling of uncertain and insecurity.

This feeling of menace establishes a strong connection between character’s predicament and audience’s personal anxieties.

The atmosphere of menace: It also created by Pinter’s ability to drop suddenly from a high comic level into deep seriousness. By this technique the audience is made aware that the comedy is only at surface layer. The sudden outbreaks of violence (verbal/physical?) in the play confirm this and leave the audience unsure of what will come next.

There are so many questions arise in mind while reading of the play but there is no certain answer of this. May be because of that Pinter’s own comment like this; “more often than not the speech only seems to be funny- the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life.”

While we are talking about atmosphere there is some kind of fear in the play but that – fear for what? – by whom? But this type of question is remaining unanswered. Just as Stanley or Meg is the main vehicle for comedy in the play; so one more question arises that is he the main vehicle for the presentation of fear? Or is any other character frightened?

Answer of this question is yes because tone of the play is tragic or fearful but fear of what? It isn’t clear here. All the characters are suffering from the fear of unknown, may be possible that characters are laugh to forget their fear; they live in a past or avoid seeing in mirror because of fear. Means some unknowingly fear is here and that is the atmosphere of menace.

(Conversation between Goldberg- McCann and Stanley represent menacing effect)

The room or house represents security from the outside world but sadly it is impossible to sustain. The menace in the form of Goldberg and McCann represents a hostile outside world;, they are the exception to the rule where life is normal and pleasant outside. The general setting of the play is naturalistic and mundane, involving no menace. However on of Pinter’s greatest skill is his ability to make an apparently normal and trivial object like a toy drum, appear strange and threatening.

In the plays of Pinter the atmosphere is charged with fear and threat to the natural harmony of life. Though Pinter depends on the form of comedy than that of tragedy, this does not decrease the hidden menace against the characters who want to escape from the forces of evil. Pinter likes to show the inevitable contradic­tions faced by people in today’s world. The tentacles of evil forces drag the individual into the mire of corruption and nefarious acti­vities. Pinter’s plays have been rightly called the comedies of menace. (haroldpinterand the absurdtheatre)

Pinter can summon forth an atmosphere of menace from ordinary everyday objects and events and one way in which this is done by combining two apparently opposed moods, such as terror and amusement. 

Stanley is destroyed by ‘a torrent of words’ but mingled in with the serious accusations so Birthday Party is for both freighting and funny. For example: Stanley’s behaviour during the game- funny but terrifying because the audience is aware that much more is at stakes than appears on the surface. This is one source of menace, namely the audience’s awareness that trivial actions are often concealing thoughts and events of much larger significance. It may be that the audience feels a sense of guilt at their own laughter.

However Pinter makes sure that some things like the threatening ambience is leased by the use of humor. Pinter also makes sure that menacing atmosphere is elevated at times which actually emphasize how strong this atmosphere is. Whole length of the play was filled with menacing atmosphere we would know that Stanley will lose the power struggle from the beginning. The humor also brings a certain level of normality the menacing atmosphere can increase slowly and it is again creating more suspense. Here Pinter says that he completely agree the description of the Birthday Party as a Comedy of Menace. While comedy and menace both appear separately in the play it is together that they affect the audience most.

The association two seemingly in the play it is together that one play allows the audience to realize some of Pinter’s preoccupations conquering the inadequacy of language but also its power. As well as, the fact that we can associate these two terms; finding something menacing yet humorous at the same time could also be a way for Pinter to show the paradoxical nature of human beings. 

Another technique that Pinter uses to create an atmosphere of menace to cast doubt on almost everything in the play. The play nature of reality here is confused the audience no longer knows what is true or what is not true and out of this comes an atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty.

Conclusion: Thus to conclude we may say that absurdity of the play which is represents through menacing effect has its own symbolic significance. It tries to explain the human predicament in this indifferent and hostile world. Means Pinter shows us reality of life, one of the major points of view about the play is;

Meaninglessness and nothingness of human existence.

Life under constant shadow of fear and menace.

These are similarity between both the plays which are very famous in modern time; one is Waiting for Godot and another Birthday Party because they both are very much related or depended on human life. In Waiting for Godot Beckett often reduced character, plot and dialogue to a minimum in an effort to highlight fundamental question of human existence. The same characteristic in Birthday Party as well.

Because it is also unpleasant truth about human existence. At the end of the play in Act-3, Petey is tongue-tied and silent his emotions and thoughts remain unexpressed.

Pinter says: “Everything is funny until the horror of the human situation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusions and self-deceptions like Stanley’s dream of a world tour as a pianist, because it is built out of pretence. In our present day world everything is uncertain there is no fixed point and we are surrounded by the unknown.”

This unknown occurs in many plays, there is no kind of horror about and I think that this horror and absurdity go together. (From his interview: Wikipedia)

Pinter’s statement also shows hostile reality of life. One more thing is that here we are shown how nothingness is important for human predicament. “Nothing” means “Something” it is the main base of the play. Pinter has delicately deployed the theatre of absurd and his idiosyncratic theatre of comedy of menace so that he could forward solutions for the dominating existential problems of man entrapped in his era. Pinter was a leader in the theatre of menace.