AS 'COMEDY OF MANNER'
Once asked what his plays are about, Pinter lobbed back a phrase "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet", which he regrets has been taken seriously and applied in popular criticism. Despite Pinter's protestations to the contrary, many reviewers and other critics still find that Pinter's "remark", though "facetious"(teasing), is still an apt description of his plays. Now the Phrase "comedy of menace" is often applied to it and suggests that although they are funny, they are also frightening or menacing in a vague and undefined way. Even as they laugh, the audience is unsettled, ill at ease and uncomfortable. Pinter?s own comment clarifies it:
"more often than not the speech only seems to be funny - the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life".
(What situations appear funny to us? But in fact for the character concerned is a terrifying experience.)
Now the question arises that does Pinter?s work really go in accordance to the ?comedy of manners. A critic says:
"Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter's drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterized as 'comedy of menace,' a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop (spy) on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by establishing themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the unpredictability and elusiveness (ambiguity) of the past."
The general setting of the play is naturalistic and mundane, involving no menace. However one of Pinter?s greatest skills is his ability to make an apparently normal and trivial object, like a toy drum, appear strange and threatening. Pinter can summon forth an atmosphere of menace from ordinary everyday objects and events, and one way in which this is done is by combining two apparently opposed moods, such as terror and amusement.
Another technique that Pinter uses to create an atmosphere of menace is to cast doubt on almost everything in the play. One method of doing this is to have a character give a clear and definite statement and then have him flatly deny it later on.
Wilson, T. W. (n.d.). "This is War" American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States. Retrieved April 14, 2011, from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/wilsonwarmessage.htm
Steve Almond’s “Funny is the New Deep” talks of the role that comedy has in our current society, and most certainly, it plays a huge role here. Namely, through what Almond [Aristotle?] calls the “comic impulse”, we as a people can speak of topics that would otherwise make many of uncomfortable. Almond deems the comic impulse as the most surefire way to keep heavy situations from becoming too foreboding. The comic impulse itself stems from our ability and unconscious need to defend and thus contend with the feeling of tragedy. As such, instead of rather forcing out humor, he implies that humor is something that is not consciously forced out from an author, but instead is more of a subconscious entity, coming out on its own. Almond emphasizes
These two satirical works make litotes of preposterous situations, thus shedding light on the absurdity at hand. This is an especially effective technique, because a character or narrator is involved in a ridiculous situation. The reader, from an...
In Alain de Botton’s book, Status Anxiety, he argues that the aim of humorists is not solely entertainment, but also to convey a message that isn’t always okay to state directly. There are many places where his argument can apply. Even with humor, some topics are still too controversial to joke about; However, in most cases, humor can lighten things up and make it easier to discuss topics that otherwise would not be as easy to talk about without heavy arguments. There are many cases that would make his argument true. There are many examples that support his argument, and that help to show the importance of humor in arguing, including cartoons, comics, works of literature, and also when thinking of hosts of television programs.
When a wife surprises her husband on his birthday, an ironic turn of events occurs. Katherine Brush’s “The Birthday Party” is a short story about relationships, told from the perspective of a nearby observer. Brush uses the words and actions of the married couple to assert that a relationship based on selfishness is weak.
In a more extreme version of the play, directed by Baz Lurhmann, some of the weapons such as swords were replaced by modern day guns, but despite this he still managed to keep it all in context by cleverly placing words, or using other satire. With this paper I hope to produce my own unique version of the play.
The play defies easy definition and various critics have labeled it variously as absurdist, existentialist, comical, burlesque, metaphorical or grim. The playwright on the other hand maintained that all through the creation of his work he strove to bring in the comic element and any tragedy that seems part of the play, may have crept in inadvertently and whenever it has been staged as a serious play, audience reaction to it has been cold.
The first main area of art and reality colliding in the play is the existence of characters who are referred to as Characters. Pirandello stretches the bounds of meta-theater by having actors portray Characters who swear they are not actors, when faced with other actors playing actual actors and a Director. The layers of unraveling of reality are astounding. The Characters must try and convince not only the Actors and the Producer of their true nature, but also the audience. Pirandello must convey his beliefs about the essence of art through the mouths of Characters seemingly unattached to the actuality of the theater around them. In the play, the Producer acts on stage in place of the author, questioning the sincerity and the true nature of the Characters, who become his r...
Some of the central components to this book include but are not limited to: a glossary of terms and concepts, notes on the play’s production history, a compilation of pertinent socio-cultural information, playwright information, history/historiography, dramatic criticism/commentary, a scene break-down, notes on genre, pertinent notes on characters (like their specific functions throughout the play), and other references like images of art, architecture, and geography (4).
Starting with the title itself, there’s quite a bit of wordplay in this play. List as many examples as you can find. How does this use of language contribute to the tone and spirit of the play?
Deception and misunderstandings are important sources of humour throughout the play and both comedy features are predominately evident in Act 1 in the ‘cigarette case’ scene. In this scene, the audience is exposed to deceit and lies created by the main protagonist Jack (also known as Ernest in the city) and the deuteragonist, Algernon; which creates humour for the audience because of mistaken identity and deception together with dramatic revelation, chaos and confusion.
On “The Importance Of Being Earnest”, Act II lines 1324 to 1446 the sources of humor of these passage are the satirization of the Victorian era norms, violations against common sense, mockery of love and delusion. All of these humorous source are provided by the extravagant author Oscar Wilde in the short passage of 122 lines.
Elin Diamond defines "Gestus" as "a moment in performance that makes visible the contradictory interactions of text, theater apparatus, and contemporary social struggle." (Diamond 519) Gestus makes it clear that the apparatus is doing something else entirely. "The term "apparatus" draws together several related aspects in theater production: the hierarchy of economic control, the material features of machinery and properties, and, more elusively, the social and psychological interplay between stage and audience." (Diamond521) Society works in certain ways to try and tell us what is normal. In this theoretical essay, Diamond suggests that there is a contradiction within the play that portrays women as having free choice, which in this time,
The playwright uses different images and symbols as developed by female actors to ease his communication on various circumstances that drew the Denmark community backwards. In his play, he uses the Denmark society as the setting so as to
A still more critical interest emphasizes what a play says by unsaying it.in other words,what attracts most critics is pinter’s innovative use of silence,or,better to say,a character’s willful refusal to speak,respond,or engage in any conversation with other characters.this refusal to talk,this insistence on silence seems to say more than what the actual words uttered would imply.this dichotomy between what is said and what is unsaid is the most aspect of pinter’s dialogue.