The document discusses Harold Pinter's play "The Caretaker" and how it exemplifies the "comedy of menace" genre. It defines comedy of menace as a play that creates a sense of looming threat or danger through humorous situations and dialogue. In The Caretaker, Pinter uses elements like cramped settings, lack of communication between characters, and prolonged silences to cultivate an atmosphere of invisible menace and suspense for the audience. While humorous interactions occur, the audience is left questioning the characters' intentions and waiting for something threatening to possibly happen, though it never does.

1. By Salma AGUEB
The comedy Of Menace in Pinter’s
The Caretaker

2. Outline
 The Comedy Of Menace: Definition
 Why Menace And Not Threat?
 The comedy of menace in The Caretaker
 Conclusion

3. The Comedy Of Menace
 A ‘comedy’ is a humorous play with elements
of surprise, incongruity (things that don’t fit
logically together), conflict, & repetitiveness
that often leads the audience to expect one
thing will happen, then delivers the opposite to
amuse and make the audience laugh.
 It signifies a kind of play in which a character
or more feels the menacing presence whether
actual or imaginary, of some obscure and
frightening force, power or person. The
dramatist exploits this kind of menace as a
source of comedy.

4.  There is a widespread misconception that the term was
coined by David Campton to describe his play The Lunatic
View and that the drama critic Irving Wardle borrowed it
from Pinter however it is all a chronological
misunderstanding for Wardle article “The Comedy Of
Menace” was published in 1958 while Campton only
inserted the subtitle to his play’s title by 1960 borrowing it
from Wardle and not the opposite.
 Comedy of menace is a term used to describe the plays of
David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold
Pinter by drama critic Irving Wardle.
 In his article Wardle describes Pinter’s drama stating
that « His main characters tend first to appear
entrenched in a secure retreat from which they are
eventually torn by some agent of external malignancy
»

5. Why Menace and not Threat?
 Wardle ‘s choice of the term menace instead of
threat is not arbitrary . It is based on a subtle
difference between the two terms for threat is
more discursive and menace is more implicit.
 The comedy of menace hints at danger and
threat yet it never manifests. The concept of
menace is therefore more abstract and implicit
than threat.
 The intensification of menace by means of
comedy and laughter is an important feature of
the comedy of menace.

6. Wardle On Pinter :
Early in his writing career Pinter admitted to three
influences: Franz Kafka, American gangster films,
and Samuel Beckett. . . . At that time his plays,
more than those of any other playwright's [sic],
were responsible for the newly coined term
'comedy of menace.' This phrase certainly makes
sense when applied to The Birthday Party . . . or
to The Dumb Waiter. . . . But 'menace' is hardly
the word for The Caretaker, and still less for
subsequent plays in which Pinter increasingly
exchanged his derelict settings and down-and-out
characters for environments of moneyed
elegance (657–58). (Qtd. in Merritt 240)

7. Elements of the comedy of
menace in The Caretaker
 Harold Pinter exploited the comedy of menace in
his early plays with situations that are apparently
funny but actually suggesting some impending
threat from outside.
 Pinter creates an atmosphere of menace through
a variety of dramatic elements and techniques.
First of all, he lets situations fall from a light-
hearted situation unexpectedly down to one
which is highly serious.

8.  "The comedy of menace" was a tagline thought
up early on to describe Pinter's knack of fusing
veiled threats with sharp one-liners. Half way into
his breakthrough play there is a cheeky, wordless
sequence that is both a hoot for the audience and
as dark as they come. Mick, who has taken an
instant dislike to Davies, a tramp who his brother
Aston has brought home, lies in wait in pitch
darkness for the old man, then charges him with
an Electrolux vacuum cleaner: This is the climax
of menace in the play.

9.  Pinter wrote the play while he and his wife were
living in Chiswick. Some of the events in the play
were drawn on those from his own life at the time;
he explained that the flat he let had an owner of
the house like Mick, and this man had a brother
who was secretive and had a history of mental
illness and electrical shock treatment. There was
also a tramp that the brother brought home one
night who would later become Davies.
 Pinter originally intended the play to end
with Aston murdering Davies, it instead ends with
Aston politely but emphatically asking Davies to
leave the home.

10.  The Setting: London flat. One-room setting for the
play’s entire three acts. The poor state of the
room is crucial to the plot. A bucket catches
rainwater dripping through its leaking roof. The
room has no washing or cooking facilities, and
there is no heat. The only window is half-covered
with a sack, letting in the rain.
 Davies’ bed is covered by mundane items that
make a bizzare collection when heaped together.
They include a kitchen sink, a stepladder, a coal
bucket, a lawn mower, a shopping trolley, boxes,
and the drawers of a sideboard. All these items
must be moved before Davies can sleep on his
bed. Beside the bed is a gas stove. Though it is
clearly not connected, Davies complains about its
presence and the danger of fire or explosion.

11.  Elsewhere in the room are a cupboard containing
such items as a clothes horse upon which Davies
sometimes hangs his trousers at night, piles of
boxes and newspapers, and an electric toaster,
which Aston tries to fix throughout the play.
 The room is full of useless objects which cram the
room giving a feeling of claustrophobia.

12. Silence in the play:
 When the curtain rises, Mick shares the activity of
the audience. 'He slowly looks about The
Room looking at each object in turn. He looks up
at the ceiling, and stares at the bucket. Then he
separates himself from the audience. “Ceasing,
he sits quite still, expressionless, looking out
front. Silence for thirty seconds.” Mick then
leaves upon hearing 'muffled voices'.

13.  This silent is in dramatic contrast to the end of the
play. By the end, Mick, in effect, rejects the
audience by walking offstage after a prolonged
silence, while at the close it is Davies who is left
onstage rejected by the audience as they
recognize that he must go. Mick's silence and
departure stays as a qualm, leaving a question
behind the laughter that is immediate.
 In the play silence as a tool of the theater of the
absurd serves to highlight aspects of menace in
the play: silence is used as a tool of menace.

14.  Pinter exploits different kinds of comedy in a
cumulative and structured way: comedy of
character is established in Act I and then
extended by the music-hall monologue and broad
farce in Act II. Comedy of language, gesture and
action is then allowed to build up to the moment
when it is dramatically ended by Aston's long,
painful account of treatment in a mental hospital,
and the events leading up to it. Aston's speech
has always been recognized as a major moment
in the movement of the play.

15. Conclusion
 The lack of communication and confinement
created a constant feeling of an invisible threat in
the play.
 The emphasis upon this ordinary room and the
‘ordinary’ interaction between these three
characters make the audience question what is
happening therefore creating doubt and
suspicion.
 The audience know nothing about the characters,
their history, their disposition etc. but they are
watching them in this room, waiting for something
that doesn’t happen creating an atmosphere of
suspense and menace.