重新思考哈洛‧品特的「威脅喜劇」－－「食物升降機」

Rethinking Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter as a Comedy of Menace

This paper aims to rethink Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter as a 'Comedy of Menace.' For many years critics' analyses of this drama tend to be lopsided in that they address the menace portion much more than the comedy part. In fact, Pinter expertly and evenly applies his dramaturgy in mixing the comical (recalling the music hall comedy) and the mysterious (recalling the whodunit) . Pinter started playwriting in 1957 amid a host of 'Angry Young Men,' including John Braine, John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe, etc. Though the works of all of them had little in common with each other, they generally expressed anti-Establishment sentiments. Compared with Pinter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, however, these contemporaries have paled into limited significance chiefly due to the inadequacy of their technique. What makes Pinter outshine them consists mainly in his 'Pinteresque' style, a label that has long passed into common use as a byword and a technique that makes the what (content) and the how (technique) of this play as inseparable as two sides of a coin.本論文重新思考哈洛‧品特的「威脅喜劇」─《食物升降機》。多年來批評家在討論這齣戲時，多半偏頗地強調「威脅」的主題而將「喜劇」成份視為陪襯。事實上，品特將神秘氣氛及喜感技巧地融入本劇。品特在「憤怒年輕作家」崛起的1950年代開始寫作。如今，這些同時代的作家已逐漸被淡忘。相形之下，品特卻能在2005年贏得諾貝爾文學獎的殊榮。這主要得歸功於他獨特的「品特風格」才能使內容（「威脅」主題）和技巧（「喜劇」成份）相輔相成，密不可分，有如銅板的兩面。