Complete Works, Volume III

C
OMPLETE
W
ORKS
: T
HREE

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

H
AROLD
P
INTER

C
OMPLETE
W
ORKS
: T
HREE

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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[email protected]
.

ISBN 978-0-8021-5049-3

eISBN 978-0-8021-9225-7

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that these plays are subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

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Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

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

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 capable, 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.

Sometimes after a matinee of Macbeth and an evening of Othello we all stayed on stage, he'd get someone to put on a record of Faust, disappear behind a curtain, reappear in a long golden wig, without his teeth, mime Marguerite weaving, mime Faust and Mephistopheles, deliver at full tilt the aria from Verdi's Othello ‘Era La Notte e Cassio Dormia’, while the caretaker swept the dust up, and then in a bar talk for hours of Sarah and Mrs. Pat Campbell, with relish, malice and devotion. I think he would still be talking about them now, if he wasn't dead, because they did something he knew about.

In order to present Oedipus the company had to recruit extras from the town or village we were in. One night in Dundalk Mac was building up to his blind climax when one of the extras had an epileptic fit on stage and collapsed. He was dragged to the wings where various women attended to him. The sounds of their ministrations seeped onto the stage. Mac stopped, turned to the wings and shouted: ‘For God's sake, can't you see I'm trying to act!’

His concentration was always complete in Oedipus. He was at his best in the part. He acted with acute ‘underness’ and tenacity. And he never used his vocal powers to better or truer effect. He acted along the spine of the role and never deviated from it. As in his two other great roles, Othello and Lear, he understood and expressed totally the final tender clarity which is under the storm, the blindness, the anguish. For me his acting at these times embodied the idea of Yeats’ line: ‘They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay, Gaiety transfiguring all that dread’. Mac entered into this tragic gaiety naturally and inevitably.

He did Lear eventually. First performance somewhere in County Clare, Ennis, I think. Knew most of the lines.
Was
the old man, tetchy, appalled, feverish. Wanted the storm louder. All of us banged the thundersheets. No, they can still hear me. Hit it, hit it. He got above the noise. I played Edgar in Lear only a few times with him before I left the company. At the centre of his performance was a terrible loss, desolation, silence. He didn't think about doing it, he just got there. He did it and got there.

His wife, Marjorie, was his structure and support. She organised the tours, supervised all business arrangements, sat in the box office, kept the cast in order, ran the wardrobe, sewed, looked after Mac, was his dresser, gave him his whiskey. She was tough, critical, cultivated, devoted. Her spirit and belief constituted the backbone of the company. There would have been no company without her.

Ireland wasn't golden always, but it was golden sometimes and in 1950 it was, all in all, a golden age for me and for others. The people came down to see him. Mac travelled by car, and sometimes some of us did too. But other times we went on the lorry with the flats and props, and going into Randon or Clough-jordan would find the town empty, asleep, men sitting upright in dark bars, cowpads, mud, smell of peat, wood, old clothes. We'd find digs; wash basin and jug, tea, black pudding, and off to the hall, set up a stage on trestle tables, a few rostra, a few drapes, costumes out of the hampers, set up shop, and at night play, not always but mostly, to a packed house (where had they come from?); people who listened, and who waited to see him, having seen him before, and been brought up on him.

Mac wasn't any kind of dreamer. He was remote from the Celtic Twilight. He kept a close eye on the box office receipts. He was sharp about money, was as depressed as anyone else when business was bad. Where there was any kind of company disagreement he proved elusive. He distanced himself easily from unwelcome problems. Mrs Mac dealt with those. Mac was never ‘a darling actor of the old school’. He was a working man. He respected his occupation and never stopped learning about it, from himself and from others.

For those who cared for him and admired him there must remain one great regret; that for reasons I do not understand, he last played in England, at Stratford, in 1933. The loser was the English theatre.

Mac wasn't ‘childlike’ in temperament, as some have said. He was evasive, proud, affectionate, mischievous, shrewd, merry, cynical, sad, and could be callous. But he was never sour or self-pitying. His life was the stage. Life with a big L came a bad second. He had no patience with what he considered a world of petty sufferings, however important they might seem to the bearer. He was completely unsentimental. Gossip delighted him, and particularly sexual gossip. He moved with great flexibility and amusement through Catholic Ireland, greatly attracted by the ritual of the Church. He loved to speak of the mummy of the Blessed Oliver Plunkett in Drogheda ‘with a lovely amber spot on its face’. He mixed freely with priests and nuns, went to Mass, sometimes, but despised the religious atrophy, rigidity and complacency with which he was confronted. He mixed with the priests partly because he enjoyed their company, partly because his livelihood depended upon them. He was a realist. But he possessed a true liberality of spirit. He was humble. He was a devout anti-puritan. He was a very great piss-taker. He was a great actor and we who worked with him were the luckiest people in the world and loved him.