In Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' is it true to say that the character of Stanley is a tragic character? 'The Birthday Party' was one of Harold Pinter's many plays

Dudley Beal

English

Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’

In Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ is it true to say that the character of Stanley is a tragic character?

‘The Birthday Party’ was one of Harold Pinter’s many plays. It was his second play and was staged in 1958, but for only one week. This was due to the enormous dislike that people and critics alike had for it. This play was said not to have fit in with the criteria of what people wanted to see at that time i.e. musicals or thrillers. The Birthday Party was considered a second movement of 1950’s British Theatre- The theatre of the absurd. A movement depicting life as meaningless and devoid of god. However. The Birthday party was not hated by everyone. A theatrical critic by the name of Harold Hobson commented that the play was both “interesting and hallowed. Other Playwrights were also doing plays like The Birthday Party. In 1956 there was what is called, The Movement of Angry Young Men which was very critical on the British and completely different to what the British people would pay to see. One of these ‘Angry Young Men’ was a John Osbourne, who in 1956 staged his third play, ’Don’t Look Back in Anger’, a Shocking play which the New York Times Exclaimed as a play that “wiped the smiles of the audiences smug little faces”.

Eight years later, The Royal Shakespeare Company bought the rights of ‘The Birthday Party’ and tried to revive the once condemned play. It was a huge success and in being so, was put on Broadway three years later. In just nine years and many hard struggles and disappointments Pinter and his play had gone from alleged ‘flop’ to theatrical masterpiece.

Pinter wrote ‘The Birthday Party’ at the young age of twenty eight. He was born in 1930 in Hackney brought up by his Jewish parents. 75 years later he won the Nobel Prize for literature. His work is thought by many to be post-modern. It is deemed this for his work is said to “underline the ability of the theatre to reflect the elusive nature of reality, and at the same time, points to the inadequacy of theatrical presentation.

In the first act of the play it does not seem that the character of Stanley is tragic in anyway. ...