COMPLETE WORKS: THREE
This book is Volume Three of the Collected Works of Harold Pinter.
By the same author
PLAYS
Ashes to Ashes · Betrayal · The Birthday Party · The Caretaker · Celebration and the Room · The Collection and the Lover · The Homecoming · The Hothouse · Landscape and Silence · Mountain Language · Moonlight · No Man’s Land · Old Times · One For The Road · Other Places (A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, Family Voices) · Party Time · Remembrance of Things Past (with Di Trevis) · The Room and the Dumb Waiter · A Slight Ache and Other Plays · Tea Party and Other Plays
Plays One
(The Birthday Party, The Room, The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, The Hothouse, A Night Out, “The Black and White,” “The Examination”)
Plays Two
(The Caretaker, The Dwarfs, The Collection, The Lover, Night School, Trouble in the Works, The Black and White, Request Stop, Last to Go, Special Offer)
Plays Three
(The Homecoming, Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape, Silence, Night, That’s Your Trouble, That’s All, Applicant, Interview, Dialogue for Three, “Tea Party,” Old Times, No Man’s Land)
Plays Four
(Betrayal, Monologue, One for the Road, Mountain Language, Family Voices, A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, Precisely, The New World Order, Party Time, Moonlight, Ashes to Ashes, Celebration, Umbrellas, God’s District, Apart from That)
SCREENPLAYS
Harold Pinter Collected Screenplays One
(The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, Accident, The Last Tycoon, Langrishe, Go Down)
Harold Pinter Collected Screenplays Two
(The Go-Between, The Proust Screenplay, Victory, Turtle Diary, Reunion)
Harold Pinter Collected Screenplays Three
(The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Heat of the Day, The Comfort of Strangers, The Trial, The Dreaming Child)
PROSE, POETRY AND POLITICS
The Dwarfs (a novel)
100 Poems by 100 Poets (an anthology)
99 Poems in Translation (an anthology)
Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2005
War
HAROLD PINTER
COMPLETE WORKS: THREE
THE HOMECOMING
TEA PARTY
THE BASEMENT
LANDSCAPE
SILENCE
REVUE SKETCHES:
Night
That's Your Trouble
That's All
Applicant
Interview
Dialogue for Three
With the memoir “Mac” and the short story “Tea Party”
GROVE PRESS
New York
This collection copyright © 1978 by FPinter Limited
The Homecoming copyright © 1965, 1966, 1967 by FPinter Limited
Tea Party, The Basement copyright © 1967 by FPinter Limited
Landscape copyright © 1968 by FPinter Limited
Silence, Night copyright © 1969 by FPinter Limited
Applicant copyright © 1961 by FPinter Limited
Dialogue for Three copyright © 1963 by FPinter Limited
That’s Your Trouble, That’s All, Interview copyright © 1966 by FPinter Limited
“Mac” copyright © 1968 by FPinter Limited
“Tea Party” (short story) copyright © 1963 by FPinter Limited and Theater Promotions Ltd.
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ISBN 978-0-8021-5049-3
eISBN 978-0-8021-9225-7
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Grove Press
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Contents
Chronology
Mac
THE HOMECOMING
TEA PARTY
THE BASEMENT
LANDSCAPE
SILENCE
REVUE SKETCHES
Night
That's Your Trouble
That's All
Applicant
Interview
Dialogue for Three
Tea Party (short story)
Harold Pinter: A Chronology
Year of writing First performance
1954–5 The Black and White
(short story)
1955 The Examination
(short story)
1957 The Room
May 15, 1957
1957 The Birthday Party
April 28, 1958
1957 The Dumb Waiter
January 21, 1960
1958 A Slight Ache
July 29, 1959
1958 The Hothouse
April 24, 1980
1959 Revue sketches—Trouble in the Works;
The Black and White
July 15, 1959
Request Stop; Last to Go;
Special Offer
September 23, 1959
That's Your Trouble;
That's All; Applicant;
Interview;
Dialogue for Three
February–March 1964
1959 A Night Out
March 1, 1960
1959 The Caretaker
April 27, 1960
1960 Night School
July 21, 1960
1960 The Dwarfs
December 2, 1960
1961 The Collection
May 11, 1961
1962 The Lover
March 28, 1963
1963 Tea Party
(short story)
1964 Tea Party
March 25, 1965
1964 The Homecoming
June 3, 1965
1966 The Basement
February 28, 1967
1967 Landscape
April 25, 1968
1968 Silence
July 2, 1969
1969 Night
April 9, 1969
1970 Old Times
June 1, 1971
1972 Monologue
April
10, 1973
1974 No Man's Land
April 23, 1975
1978 Betrayal
November 15, 1978
1980 Family Voices
January 22, 1981
1982 Victoria Station
A Kind of Alaska
performed with Family Voices as a trilogy titled Other Places in 1982
1984 One for the Road
March 15, 1984
1988 Mountain Language
October 20, 1988
Mac
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ANEW MCMASTER was born in County Monaghan on Christmas Eve 1894 and was 16 when he made his first stage appearance as ‘The Aristocrat’ in ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ with Fred Terry at the New Theatre, London. He died in Dublin on August 25th, 1962, a few days after appearing in the ‘dream scene’ from ‘The Bells’ at an Equity concert. His acting career had spanned half a century and his death was the end of an era. He was the last of the great actor-managers, unconnected with films and television.
From 1925 onwards he and his company played a repertoire of Shakespeare's plays across the world and the roles which made his reputation were Hamlet, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Petruchio, Richard III, Shylock and, above all, Othello. He occasionally played outside his company as when he took over from Fredric March to tour America in the Broadway production of O'Neill's ‘Long Day's Journey into Night’, but he was never long away from Shakespeare or Ireland. When asked why, he replied ‘I suppose I'm a wanderer and I like playing in the theatre. It makes no difference to me if I'm on Broadway or in the smallest village hall in Ireland. The only thing that matters is that I am playing.’
I've been the toast of twelve continents and eight hemispheres! Mac said from his hotel bed. I'll see none of my admirers before noon. Marjorie, where are my teeth? His teeth were brought to him. None before noon, he said, and looked out of the window. If the clergy call say I am studying King Lear and am not to be disturbed. How long have you been studying King Lear, Mac? Since I was a boy. I can play the part. It's the lines I can't learn. That's the problem. The part I can do. I think. What do you think? Do you think I can do it? I wonder if I'm wise to want to do it, or unwise? But I will do it. I'll do it next season. Don't forget I was acclaimed for my performance in Paddy The Next Best Thing. Never forget that. Should I take Othello to the Embassy, Swiss Cottage? Did you know Godfrey Tearle left out the fit? He didn't do the fit. I'm older than Godfrey Tearle. But I do the fit. Don't I? At least I don't leave it out. What's your advice? Should I take Othello to the Embassy, Swiss Cottage? Look out the window at this town. What a stinking diseased abandoned Godforgotten bog. What am I playing tonight, Marjorie? The Taming of the Shrew? But you see one thing the Irish peasantry really appreciate is style, grace and wit. You have a lovely company, someone said to me the other day, a lovely company, all the boys is like girls. Joe, are the posters up? Will we pack out? I was just driving into this town and I had to brake at a dung heap. A cow looked in through the window. No autographs today, I said. Let's have a drop of whiskey, for Jesus’ sake.
Pat Magee phoned me from Ireland to tell me Mac was dead. I decided to go to the funeral. At London Airport the plane was very late leaving. I hadn't been in Ireland for ten years. The taxi raced through Dublin. We passed the Sinn Fein Hall, where we used to rehearse five plays in two weeks. But I knew I was too late for the funeral. The cemetery was empty. I saw no-one I knew. I didn't know Mrs. Mac's address. I knew no-one any more in Dublin. I couldn't find Mac's grave.
I toured Ireland with Mac for about two years in the early 1950s. He advertised in ‘The Stage’ for actors for a Shakespearian tour of the country. I sent him a photograph and went to see him in a flat near Willesden Junction. At the time Willesden Junction seemed to me as likely a place as any to meet a manager from whom you might get work. But after I knew Mac our first meeting place became more difficult to accept or understand. I still wonder what he was doing interviewing actors at Willesden Junction. But I never asked him. He offered me six pounds a week, said I could get digs for twenty-five shillings at the most, told me how cheap cigarettes were and that I could play Horatio, Bassanio and Cassio. It was my first job proper on the stage.
Those two? It must be like two skeletons copulating on a bed of corrugated iron. (The actor and actress Mac was talking about were very thin.) He undercuts me, he said, he keeps coming in under me. I'm the one who should come under. I'm playing Hamlet. But how can I play Hamlet if he keeps coming under me all the time? The more under I go the more under he goes. Nobody in the audience can hear a word. The bugger wants to play Hamlet himself, that's what it is. But he bloodywell won't while I'm alive. When I die I hope I die quickly. I couldn't face months of bedpans. Sheer hell. Days and months of bedpans. Do you think we'll go to heaven? I mean me. Do you think I'll go to heaven? You never saw me play the Cardinal. My cloak was superb, the length of the stage, crimson. I had six boys from the village to carry it. They used to kiss my ring every night before we made our entrance. When I made my tour of Australia and the southern hemisphere we were the guests of honour at a city banquet. The Mayor stood up. He said: We are honoured today to welcome to our city one of the most famous actors in the world, an actor who has given tremendous pleasure to people all over the world, to worldwide acclaim. It is my great privilege to introduce to you – Andrew MacPherson!
Joe Nolan, the business manager, came in one day and said: Mac, all the cinemas in Limerick are on strike. What shall I do? Book Limerick! Mac said. At once! We'll open on Monday. There was no theatre in the town. We opened on the Monday in a two thousand seater cinema, with Othello. There was no stage and no wingspace. It was St Patrick's night. The curtain was supposed to rise at nine o'clock. But the house wasn't full until eleven thirty, so the play didn't begin until then. It was well past two in the morning before the curtain came down. Every one of the two thousand people in the audience was drunk. Apart from that, they weren't accustomed to Shakespeare. For the first half of the play, up to ‘I am your own for ever’, we could not hear ourselves speak, could not hear our cues. The cast was alarmed. We expected the audience on stage at any moment. We kept our hands on our swords. I was playing Iago at the time. I came offstage with Mac at the interval and gasped. Don't worry, Mac said, don't worry. After the interval he began to move. When he walked onto the stage for the ‘Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm’ scene (his great body hunched, his voice low with grit), they silenced. He tore into the fit. He made the play his and the place his. By the time he had reached ‘It is the very error of the moon; She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad’ (the word ‘mad’ suddenly cauterized, ugly, shocking), the audience was quite still. And sober. I congratulated Mac. Not bad, he said, was it? Not bad. Godfrey Tearle never did the fit, you know.
Mac gave about half a dozen magnificent performances of Othello while I was with him. Even when, on the other occasions, he conserved his energies in the role, he always gave the patrons their moneysworth. At his best his was the finest Othello I have seen. His age was always a mystery, but I would think he was in his sixties at the time. Sometimes, late at night, after the show, he looked very old. But on stage in Othello he stood, well over six foot, naked to the waist, his gestures complete, final, nothing jagged, his movement of the utmost fluidity and yet of the utmost precision: stood there, dead in the centre of the role, and the great sweeping symphonic playing would begin, the rare tension and release within him, the arrest, the swoop, the savagery, the majesty and repose. His voice was unique: in my experience of an unequalled range. A bass of extraordinary echo, resonance and gut, and remarkable sweep up into tenor, when the note would hit the back of the gallery and come straight back, a brilliant, stunning sound. I remember his delivery of this line: ‘Methinks (bass) it should be now a huge (bass) eclipse (tenor) Of sun and moon (baritone) and that th’affrighted globe (bass) Should yawn (very deep, the abyss) at alteration.’ We all watched him from the wings.
He was c
apable, of course, of many indifferent and offhand performances. On these occasions an edgy depression and fatigue hung over him. He would gabble his way through the part, his movement fussed, his voice acting outside him, the man himself detached from its acrobatics. At such times his eyes would fix upon the other actors, appraising them coldly, emanating a grim dissatisfaction with himself and his company. Afterwards, over a drink, he would confide: I was bad tonight, wasn't I, really awful, but the damn cast was even worse. What a lot.
He was never a good Hamlet and for some reason or other rarely bothered to play Macbeth. He was obsessed with the lighting in Macbeth and more often than not spent half his time on stage glaring at the spot bar. Yet there was plenty of Macbeth in him. I believe his dislike of the play was so intense he couldn't bring himself to play it.
It was consistent with him that after many months of coasting through Shylock he suddenly lashed fullfired into the role at an obscure matinee in a onehorse village; a frightening performance. Afterwards he said to me: What did I do? Did you notice? I did something different. What did you think of it? What was it I did? He never did it again. Not quite like that. Who saw it?
In the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice one night I said to him (as Bassanio) instead of ‘For thy three thousand ducats here is six’, quite involuntarily, ‘For thy three thousand buckets here is six’. He replied quietly and with emphasis: ‘If every bucket in six thousand buckets were in six parts, and every part a bucket I would not draw them – I would have my bond’. I could not continue. The other members of the court scene and I turned upstage. Some walked into the wings. But Mac stood, remorseless, grave, like an eagle, waiting for my reply.
Complete Works, Volume III Page 1