Harold Pinter’s dramas have been so impactful in the 20th century that they have spawned their own words used to describe certain hallmarks of his works: “Pinteresque” and “The Pinter Pause.” In 2005 the Swedish Academy noted this very thing when it bestowed the Nobel Prize for Literature upon him: “Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century. That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: ‘Pinteresque’.”
“Pinteresque” refers to certain elements of the famed playwright’s work. It is a part of the vernacular and has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (“Pinter's plays are typically characterized by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses”). A Chicago Tribune critic explained it thusly: “It implies a drama of mystery, enigma, ritualistic behavior and (above all) menace, all taking place in a seemingly innocuous and immediately recognizable setting.” The Vienna Review explained, “[it is] writing that is spare and ironic, a constructive malaise of pauses and omissions where both insight and creative illogic explode out of the gaps.”
“The Pinter Pause,” part of the Pinteresque, is exactly what it sounds like, and is fully display in The Homecoming. Characters’ lines are interspersed with ellipses or with the stage direction of “Pause.” It is a moment of silence but also one of tension, of possible revelation. It is enigmatic but revealing; the audience knows to pay attention because something significant is being implied. The words used by characters are simple and succinct enough already, and the pause gives them even more weight. In Pinter’s essay “Writing for the Theatre,” he explained, “I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.”
Pinter himself was rather annoyed with the ubiquitousness of the terms. He is quoted as saying, “Those silences have achieved such significance that they have overwhelmed the bloody plays—which I find a bloody pain in the arse” and “These damn silences and pauses are all to do with what's going on… and if they don't make any sense, then I always say cut them. I think they've been taken much too far these silences and pauses in my plays. I've really been extremely depressed when I've seen productions in which a silence happens because it says silence or a pause happens because it says pause. And it's totally artificial and meaningless. When I myself act in my own plays, which I have occasionally, I've cut half of them, actually.” He also refused to define a “Pinter moment” and simply said “What I write is what I write.” Many actors have also felt the weight of the pauses and tried to find out the best way to work around them without making their acting too portentous and histrionic.
