A study of structural characteristics in Modern Dramas of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an

Author, with Reference to Dialogue, Time, and Context

Saeed Yazdani1 and Azita Asgari2 1Department of English, Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bushehr, Iran

2Department of Dramatic Literature, Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bushehr, Iran

Abstract: Modernism as a period in the history of literature, thought, arts, and other disciplines have had great influence on drama too. It is a movement which aims at defying the established traditional conventions. It challenges conventional surface coherence and appearance of harmony in the literary works. It involves a literary structure that departs from conventionality and realism. Drama has not been an exception. Modern drama has taken a step beyond the well-made plays of the classics and other realistic dramas. This is clear in Pirandello’s Six Character in Search of an Author, and Pinter’s Betrayal. Both the dramatists have taken a step to defy the well-made play of their predecessors, including the realistic dramatists like Wilde and Ibsen. Although Ibsen has been considered as the pioneer of modern drama initiating a reversal in the form of the well-made plays, but Pirandello and Pinter have maintained the modernist tradition in their own special ways. Pirandello in Six Characters in Search of an Author, a modern tragicomedy, creates a modern structure with six characters that are different from the typical traditional and conventional characters. Pirandello’s plays are seen as forerunners for the Theatre of Absurd. Pinter too has established his own modern form of drama based on a reversal of traditional well-made play. Betrayal features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their dishonesty, and (self-) deceptions. Pinter's particular usage of reverse chronology in structuring the plot is innovative; the first scene takes place after the affair has ended, and the final scene ends when the affair begins. An important issue in both the plays is the different roles of time, context, and language which are considered the basic constituents of modern drama. This article intends to trace how Pirandello and Pinter have made use of time, dialogue, and context, to produce the above-mentioned modern dramas.

Key Words: Modernism, Betrayal, Dialogue, context, Reverse Chronology, Convention

1. Introduction An important characteristic of modern drama is the role language, time and place play. Here time and

language have lost their importance and the modern drama seems to be timeless. It has been affected by its predecessors but ultimately has ended in the Absurd. These changes and influences have been important in producing new forms, styles and context within a new framework. This new attitude has been the only end which this article follows. The main problem brought to surface in this article is the structure of modern drama with special reference to time, place and dialogue. Since the modern text does not follow the past and traditional conventions, it uses a language which defies the commonly used conventional languages. There is no absolute meaning in dialogue, whether explicit or implicit, and there is no way to make out if a character is honest or dishonest. It is meant to impose a change in drama in general. The long dialogue of the classical drama is replaced with the short one. Dialogue has two functions: 1) it magnifies plot and completes it; 2) it makes the audience acquainted with characters of the play. It forms the main part of a text; it is distinguished from the text covering the stage. The main function of dialogue in a drama is to introduce characters and

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2011 International Conference on Languages, Literature and Linguistics IPEDR vol.26 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore

their status in the social context. In his Poetics, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of dialogue, particularly in tragedy.

Time and place also play important roles in the modern drama. Roland Barthes (1915-1980), the French critic, was the first one who spoke about time. He believes that time is an unonscious time. He considers the time of the text dependant on the world of the text, and different from the conscious language. Marcel Proust, the French writer, considers the time of the text from an existentialist’s point of view; he believes that time is dependent on the world of text which becomes meaningful with the help of existentialistic, emotional, psychological and historical context. Different aspects of time in literature can be studied from three perspectives: First, the time of action which is the conscious and measurable, and refers to the time needed for reading the story. Second, the time of the text which consists of years, months, days, hours and minutes included in the text itself. For example the novel War and Peace deals with the details of 15 and half years of the life of a nation and different characters in the story. Third, the life time which refers to the real time of events appearing as summaries in the story.

2. Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author Another important dramatist who has written modern drama is Luigi Pirandello (1867) who uses such

elements as masks and disguise in Six Characters in Search of an Author. Pirandello was concerned about the relationship between art and nature. He believed that since truth keeps on changing, and art remains forever and keeps its own fixed state, therefore theatre is the most satisfactory art, because every drama is prone to change at every performance. He was critical of the classical well-made play, because he believed that even the most realistic dramas are able to only make meaningless imitation of realities. He was part of a movement in the early 20th century called Theatricalism or anti-illusionism. The Theatricalists rejected realist drama and substituted the dreamlike, the expressive, and the symbolic. They disapproved of realism because it had abandoned the defining tools of drama, such as interaction between actors and audience, soliloquies, asides and bare stages. They thought realism could not depict the inner lives of human beings.

The play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, begins with an acting company preparing to rehearse a play, incidentally one of Pirandello's own plays. As the rehearsal is about to begin the play is unexpectedly interrupted by the arrival of six strange people. The Director of the play, furious at the interruption, demands an explanation. The father reveals the characters as unfinished characters in search of an author to finish their story. The Director initially believes them to be mad, but as they begin to argue amongst themselves and reveal details of their story he begins to listen. While he isn't an author, the Director agrees to stage their story despite the disbelief amongst the jeering actors. After a 20 minute break the characters and the company return to the stage to act out some parts of the story. They begin to act out the scene between the Stepdaughter and the Father in Madame Passe's shop, which the Director decides to call Scene I. The Characters are very particular about the setting, wanting everything to be as realistic as possible. The Director asks the Actors to observe the scene for he intends for them to act it out later. This sparks the first argument between the Director and the Characters over the acting of the play, with the Characters assuming that they would be acting it out seeing as they are the Characters already. The Director moves the play on anyway, but the Stepdaughter has more problems with the accuracy of the setting, saying she doesn't recognize the scene. Just as the Director is about to begin the scene once more he realizes that Madame Pace is not with them. The Actors watch in disbelief as The Father lures her to the stage by hanging their coats and hats on racks, "attracted by the very articles of her trade".

The scene naturally begins between Madame Passe and the Stepdaughter, with Madame Passe exhorting the Step-Daughter, telling her she must work harder herself to save the Mother's job. The Mother protests at having to watch the scene, but she is restrained. After the Father and Stepdaughter act half of the scene the Director stops them so that the Actors may act out what they have just done. The Characters break into laughter as the Actors try to imitate them. They continue but The Step-Daughter cannot contain her laughter as the Actors use the wrong tones of voice and gestures. The Father begins another argument with the Director over the realism of the Actors compared to the Characters themselves. The scene of conversation between the Father and the Stepdaughter blurs the line between reality and acting; the scene closes with the Director pleased with the first act. The drama ends with the Child drowning in a fountain and the Boy

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committing suicide with a revolver. The final lines end with the Director confused over whether it was real or not, concluding that whether it was real or not he lost a whole day over it.

Pirandello has defies and challenges the conventions, structures and languages of the classical well-made plays. Six Characters in Search of an Author is different from its predecessors as far as language, time, and character are concerned. As far as its structure is concerned, the play has the form of theatre within theatre. It lacks in the unities of time, place and action. The play is a combination of tragedy and comedy, imaginary and real in a terrible situation which is absolutely new and complicated. It is a play which breaths and speaks. It is its own motivating force, and intends to display itself at any cost. It is a comedy in which a vain attempt is made to be performed on the stage. It is an ambiguous and aimless drama which is meant to be performed on a stage which is empty and is not ready for performance.

An important issue in Six Characters in Search of an Author is its narration style. The most prominent narration technique in the play is the dramatic narration. In the theatrical narration of story, through the dialogues of characters, one notices that such dialogues are made often, that the life story of the characters are narrated through these dialogues. It also has its own dramatic characteristics. In the play, the two thematic levels the separation of which forms the main form of the work, are joined together in the end. The bullet kills the boy both in the narrative past associated with the six characters and in the present time in the stage where the actors rehearse their roles for the play: the curtain also which was up, based on the rules of narrative drama, is now dropped in order to combine the reality of practice with that of the audience. This narrative way of representation are mostly present in soliloquies which, like the words uttered by the narrators in the novels, consist of personal opinions about subject, time, place, and events. For instance, in another part of the conversation between the characters, it runs like this:

Step daughter: yes! I should say so! He used to follow me throughout the street. He kept laughing at me and when I reached home, he would waive his hands… like this. I would change the state of my eyes and look at him in a strange manner… Director: But, do you know? These are the minor details of the subject. Boy: [in an insulting manner] yes … this is only a story! A story! Father: It is really a story! This is life! Love! (Pirandello 38)

These soliloquies do not follow a dialectic pattern. These types of memories and stories of their lives and what has happened to them resemble the biographical narratives, or, the confession-like narratives, which are often found in the words spoken by The Father. Sometimes in some of the long and complicated dialogues and soliloquies made by The Father, one can trace the philosophical words of Pirandello himself; these are manifest in the innermost words of Pirandello, expressed through the character of the Father.

Another important thing in this drama is the presence of other languages than the Italian one. For example, French and Spanish. When the Stepdaughter starts singing and dancing, it is in French, and some other words spoken by Madam Passé are Spanish. This seems to be a sort of deconstructing the ordinary language conventions which are in contrast to the philosophical dialogues of the Father. It should be added that, as mentioned earlier, long scenes are characteristic of the modern drama, which is observed in Pirandello’s. There are also some dialogues which show terror and anxiety of the characters; these are also characteristic of modern drama. Another thing is that the dialogues and stage instructions about time and place, give plenty of information to the audience. What happens in the end intensifies the fluidity of the place. It is after the shooting scene that the reality of the drama and the narrative are mixed. No one knows if the shooting has been a part of the drama, or, someone has killed himself on the stage. All the events taking place before being proved as dramatic or real, are drowned within a chiaroscuro which Pirandello defines as being present in the present time. Pirandello states: “This scene – the scene when the imaginative reality of these six characters is accepted – is not fixed, and nothing in this drama is preplanned. Everything is being made, and on the move. Everything seems to be momentary experience. Even the place where in this life is not formed is being shaped, and intends to change” (Pirandello, 124). The presence of Madam Passé on the stage, according to Pirandello, seems to be real. He considers her alive, not because it has existed before, but because at that time she is being born as a real person. “She needs to be what she is. There is a sudden change in the reality in this scene, because it is in the imagination of the poet that such character can be created like this, not on the stand located on a stage … this imaginary birth depends on a real necessity, a

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necessity that has a magical and organic relationship with the work” (124-5). Therefore, we are able to see that giving life to imagination on the stage is an important element of this drama. It is here that the border between imaginary and real is removed.

“The disruption in time sequence” is another dominating dramatic element in this drama. It means that a narrative which is disintegrated can be displayed without considering time sequence. As Pirandello states: “Even if the Father and Stepdaughter keep on playing their roles hundreds of times, the moment when the life of this work of art should be shouted out, the shouting is heard again and again, without any change in the form; the repetition… [is] caused by external factors, but, in contrast, it seems that every shout is alive and fresh forever!” (122) It is also clear in the conversation between the Director and the Mother, when the former considers it useless to keep on crying now that things happened. The Mother pleads: “No! It is happening now, it happens always! I do not pretend, sir! I am alive at every moment of my sufferings. There seems to be no ending to this suffering” (Pirandello, 79). These characters are men anxious, inconsistent, unreliable, worried about present and future, suspecting everyone; these modern men are a combination of tragedy, comedy, imagination and reality placed by Pirandello in bizarre situations. They are full of sorrows and sighs, placed in a kind of comedy which affects the audience and makes the latter sometimes adore them, sometimes laugh at them and sympathize with them, and sometimes shocked and worried. The characters reveal their secrets for the audience, hoping that they can make the audience watch their miserable lives. Pirandello tries to show that not only the reality of characters is deeper than that of the actors but also it is deeper than the reality of the real people. In this way he places reality against illusion and objectivity against subjectivity. It is this contrast between mind and reality which has created the structure of the drama, i.e., theatre in theatre. According to Pirandello’s idea about comedy which affects both the character and the structure, our laughter is because of the contrast between intent and appearance. Roger Oliver writes about Pirandello: “this struggle between external appearance and internal truth forms both Pirandello’s dramatic technique and subject” ( Noldz, 2006, 21).

3. The Structure of Modern Drama in Pinter’s Betrayal A prominent dramatist who is considered a pioneer in modern drama is Harold Pinter. In fact in his

dramas “there is no centre. In his plays anarchy is the only thing which persists in the world. The dominating theatrical form [in Pinter’s works] related to Existentialism, is called “Theatre of Absurd”. His play, Betrayal, is also considered a modern drama basically because of its reverse narrative style and structure, i.e., the drama begins from the final scene. It is through this reverse structure that ideas, motivations, and deep layers of characters’ behaviors and multiple meanings of actions are determined. The structure of Pinter’s drama does not follow conventions of classics, and such elements like time and language are new and different in the drama. In his works, dialogue is that of the daily and common people. He creates his own language. His poetic talent and attention to words, music, meaning, pause, silence and their values have created a new style called Pinteresque. In his works, dialogues are in the form of prose. Pinter’s power in reproducing dialogue is outstanding and this has made his dialogues more realistic. Pinter’s plays move from reality to the Absurd, which is in contrast with the nonrealistic text of events. It turns out to be more absurd than when it is shown in another way. Steven Gale believes: “this fact that the characters speak in a way as if they have promised to keep their daily conversations, among these terrible events, makes no doubt that his dramas are endowed with unnatural aspects. This is one of the basic functions of Pinter’s realistic dialogues” (Gale, 2008, 200).

Besides using prototype words and repetition, Pause and silence are also two important characteristics of Pinter’s drama. It can be said that silence is an expression of internal and final texts of Pinter. There are two kinds of silences in his works. The first one is the silence in which no words are exchanged, and the second one is the silence produced due to the inbreak of words. In what we hear helps us think about what we are unable to hear. For Pinter, dialogue serves as a device for covering nakedness. He himself states: “it is in silence that the characters of the drama strengthen their presence … if we keep our ears away from the old theatrical dialogues and listen to the real talking of people, we will be able to understand that most part of their dialogue consists of silence” (Pinter, 2005, 7).

Another critic, Manfred Fister believes that it was in the modern drama that for the first time pause was introduces. He considers it a sort of innovation. These pauses, whether in a dialogue or in between the

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dialogues, or through gestures, indicate a disintegration in relationship, the imprisonment of character in his dramatic monologue, and finally inability to establish relationship with others are even to speak. The Bavarian dramatist Frantz Iksafer Krutz points out to the importance of silence and states: “I would like to cut my relationship with this theatrical convention which is non-realistic: one of the most outstanding characteristic of my characters is silence, because their talking is not useful any more…their problems are so old and complicated that they can no more express them through words” (Manfred Fister, 2008, 191). Likewise, Pinter’s Betrayal is also filled with pauses and silences. Whenever they appear, the text finds new direction. The pauses present at the beginning of the play between Emma and Jerry shows Pinter’s ability in discovering the mystery of his characters. These pauses are indicative of the internal conflict in these characters, especially Robert; it seems to be a sort of defense against the new challenges. These pauses and silences show the fears and hopelessness of characters on one hand, and as a reminder of past memories, on the other hand. It seems that silence does not only serve as a gap between the two dialogues but also it serves as a space, giving the characters opportunity to display the world and the changes taking place around them. Whenever Pinter decides to produce a doubt in dialogue, he uses pause. Even when he decides to change the subject, he uses silence. Nothing happens physically, but it is in sentences and language exchanged between characters that disasters occur. Whatever happens, happens in the dialogues made by the characters which refer to the evils of their past. Pinter himself emphasizes the priority given to language over the actions; he has arrived at the reality of the emptiness and absurdity of actions, behaviors and dialogues. He states: “I don’t intend to focus on the inability of man in establishing relationship. Indeed, relationship between men is so horrible that we are taking distance from it day after day. Instead of talking about the main reasons for our relationship, we talk nonsense” (Quoted in James H. McTeague, 2006, 58).

These modern characters are left alone in their search for identity, and cannot rely on others. They even turn to empty characters that have lost the ability to establish relationship, and the only way is to face a psychological or physical death. These characters, like those of Betrayal, cannot make relationship with others, characters who wear masks which keeps them isolated from the rest of the world. Therefore Pinter has established a new attitude toward using language in a modern structure.

4. Conclusion Such elements like language, time and place do not follow the coherent rules of classical period in the

modern drama. The modern drama is a kind of drama written based on language, and the way language, and in particular dramatic dialogue, is used differently. In Six Characters in Search of an Author, such elements like time, place and language are different from those used in the classical dramas. This play is a combination of tragedy, comedy, imaginary and real, with a bizarre situation which is new in itself. Pirandello wants the reader to accept the reality of the play, and to think that it is a real play, and at the same time realize that it is a comedy. This is the way he has devised to evade this misunderstanding that the play is unreal. Pirandello emphasizes reality and illusion, form and life, understanding and lack of understanding. He shows characters wearing masks in order to escape from reality, and when these masks are removed the latter would go mad and commit suicide. Six Characters in Search of an Author has a confusing and incoherent narrative without any time sequence.

Pinter’s play, Betrayal, is also a modern drama with a different structure. The text of this play has a reverse structure. It is based on flashbacks which keep the reader updated about the events taken place in the past. In this play time has lost its conventional meaning. The language used by Pinter is filled by silences and pauses. A kind of language which makes us aware that the reality we are to face is disastrous and is accompanied by fear and humiliation. The characters of Pinter are lost in silences, pauses, repetition, doubt, darkness and meaningless sentences. This skill of Pinter in depicting a reverse narrative does not show itself in the form and context, but in depicting the lives of men. Man encounters man, and the result is pause, silence, loneliness and terror. Both Pirandello and Pinter believe that although the ordinary events and minor details might look unimportant, but with the help of comedy these details can be given proper artistic structure. The struggle between external appearance and internal reality, or the presence of multi featured characters which form the subject and dramatic technique of Pirandello, is true for Pinter too, with the exception that Pinter uses certain ways to cover the nakedness of his characters. Pirandello’s characters wear

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masks in appearance, but Pinter’s characters do not wear masks apparently but in reality, they have masks on their faces which keep them away from the rest of the world. The important issue is that the characters in both the plays keep on disturbing each other.

5. References [1] Abrams M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Harcourt Bruce College.

[2] Fister Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. London: Green Wood, 1988.

[3] Gale Steven H. Birthday Party and Other Plays by Pinter London: Monarch press1972.

[4] McTeague James H. The Dramatists and Role Playing: The Role Playing in the Works of Brecht, Unesco, Pinter. London: Greenwood, 1994.

[5] Noldz Ronald. The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter. Cambridge University, 2001, pp 57-72.

[6] Pirandello L. Six Characters in Search of an Author, trans. F. May. London: Heinemann 1954.

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