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Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University Unit 28: The Birthday Party: Detailed Analysis of the Text

Unit 28: The Birthday Party: Detailed Analysis of the Text Notes

CONTENTS

Objectives
Introduction

28.1 Act I

28.2 Act II
28.3 Act III

28.4 Summary
28.5 Keywords

28.6 Review Questions
28.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Describe the summary of all the Acts;
• Illustrate the analysis of all the Acts;
• Analyse in detail the text of Act I to Act III.

Introduction

Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, was the playwright’s first commercially-produced, full-length
play. He began writing the work after acting in a theatrical tour, during which, in Eastbourne,
England, he had lived in filthy insane digs. The flophouse became the model for the rundown
boarding house of the play and the woman and her tenant the models, respectively, for the characters
of Meg Boles and Stanley Webber. The play was heavily criticized by the reviewers, some of which
very negative. The nearly unanimous negative reviews that assaulted the 1958 London premier of
Pinter’s The Birthday Party baffled the young playwright but never dampened his spirits. Those
early reviewers, with the exception of Harold Hobson, found Pinter’s play unfunny, obscure, and
derivative. In the Evening Standard, Milton Shulman, scoffed that the work would be best enjoyed
by those who believe that obscurity is its own reward and further complained that the play was not
very funny, in part because the fun to be derived out of the futility of language. This unit elaborates
the text of the play in detail from from Act I to Act III. More emphasis is given on the detailed
analysis of the text in all the Acts.

28.1 Act I

The Birthday Party opens in the living-dining area of a seedy rooming house at an unnamed seaside
resort in England. Petey and Meg Boles, the proprietors, converse while she prepares his breakfast

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