Harold Pinter's Dramatic Situational Research

Harold Pinter is a master in the history of British theatre that links the past with the future. He is also a pioneer in drama that has made significant innovations and remarkable contributions with his uniqueness in the world theatre community. During his career which stretched across two centuries, he has broken away the conventions of traditional drama, creating a flowing and uncertain situation of play. Pinter has also seen his works as a way to represent real situations and hidden feelings in human condition, guiding the audience to seek the truth of life on a theatre stage that blends the distinction of true from false.As one of the elements that constitute a play, “situation” has been discussed by many people from the pioneer Diderot in the 18 th century, to foreign celebrities Hegel,Sartre and Stanislavsky, and to Chinese scholar Tan Peisheng et al. Based on their viewpoints, this paper studies Pinter's plays and related opinions and thereby discovers the interaction between uncertainty of situation of play, plot of play,dramatic conflicts and interpersonal relationships of Pinter's plays as well as the essence of Pinter's plays.Current domestic research on Pinter's plays focuses on the dimension of linguistics and political power, with less attention paid to the situation of play. In fact,Pinter's situations of play show an uncertain trend overall, which is closely related to his style of writing. The paper therefore chooses Pinter's situations of play as the starting point and his masterpieces in different stages of creation as the subject of study, explores the causes, pattern, aesthetic effects and basic characteristics of Pinter's situations of play by integrated use of various theories of drama, and reveals the uniqueness of Pinter's situations of play by comparing Pinter and other playwrights including Chekhov, Beckett and Osborne.Pinter's ideas about situation of play come from a writer's unique views on dramatic reality. And there are three factors responsible for the formation of suchideas. First, his ideas about situation can be traced back to the 20 th century when Western postmodernism had influences and impacts on Pinter. Second, Pinter as a Jew had his own psychological experience of the harsh living environment and tension between people before and after World War II. Third, his long-term Shakespearean plays-performing experience inspired him to display the objective diversity and reality of the world in his creative process.The basic pattern for Pinter's situations of play can be summarized as depressing,closed environment for activities, occasional events, and tension between the characters. On this basis, Pinter gives flexible interpretations of the various elements of this pattern so that his situations of play are always in the state of development and uncertainty, thereby giving the audience alienative feelings and aesthetic experiences of dramatic suspense.With an overall uncertain trend, Pinter's situations of play can extend five basic characteristics: equivocal ambiguity, complex blend of reality and fantasy, symbolism that predicts the plot and sudden turn of relationship between the characters, freely changing game-play, and lyric poetic atmosphere. And thanks to these characteristics,Pinter has developed a school of his own in the situation of play of the 20 th century.Pinter's plays not only exhibit endless dramatic tension but also fully arouse the interest and thoughts among the audience by virtue of organic interaction between certainty and uncertainty. It is such charming dramatic aesthetics that makes Pinter a master in British dramatic history and even the world stage.