Pinter's Betrayal and the Comedy of Manners

Pinter's Betrayal and the Comedy of Manners ELlN F. DIAMOND In Act I, scene i of The Country Wife, Mr. Pinchwife, newly come to town, is greeted by Mr. Horner: HORNER I heard thou wert married. PINCHWIFE What then? HORNER Why. the next thing that is to be heard is, thou'rt a cuckold. I From the Restoration comedies of manners through drawing room comedy of the twentieth century, marriage is the joke whose punch line is adultery. In the dance d deux, atrois, even aquarre. marriage represents society's rules and property arrangements, to which even the most ardent lovers become bound and from which adultery is the symbolic release, the expression of free will. I say symbolic because, while mocking marriage, Restoration manners comedy gave no satisfying answers about the conduct of long-term adultery. Pinter's newest play, Betrayal, may be his contribution to the English comedy of manners tradition. It concerns marriage and betrayal among the professional literati of contemporary London. Robert, a book publisher, is married to Emma, who, for sevenyears, betrays him with his bestfriend, Jerry, a literary agent. However, the play is titled Betrayal, not "The" Betrayal of one couple's adultery. Emma and Jerry betray Robert, but Robert betrays Jerry in concealing that he knows about the affair, and Emma betrays Jerry by concealing Robert's knowledge. Moreover, Robert has betrayed Emma for years, and Emma, finished with Jerry, betrays Robert with Casey, a writer whom Jerry discovered and Robert publishes. Such is the way of the world. These quasiincestuous relationships teem just under the surface ofdaily life, rising to public notice when they begin, or end, or are betrayed. Betrayal has nine scenes, spanning nine years. We learn about the obvious treacheries in the first two scenes, which take place in 1977, and follow in chronological order. Then, surprisingly, the play jogs back in time, passing Pinter's Betrayal and Comedy of Manners 239 through the end ofJerry and Emma's affair in 1975, through their happy days in 1971; the play ends on a scene in 1968, at the beginning of their affair, when a drunk Jerry makes his first declaration of love to Emma in Robert and Emma's bedroom. The middle three scenes of the play follow sequentially in order to clarify the crucial betrayals. In Scene 5, Robert discovers the affair while on vacation with Emma in Venice; in Scene 6, Emma meets Jerry in their rented fiat and conspicuously says nothing of Robert's discovery; and in Scene 7, Robert meets Jerry for lunch, and, even more conspicuously, says nothing about his discovery. These chronological shifts simplify our understanding of events and betray Pinter's usual preference for an unverifiable past. In the text, each scene is clearly labeled as to year and season, and in the theatre each scene-change was punctuated by one revolution of a composite set. Involving us in the machinery of time and place. the ages, occupations, and past histories of his characters, Pinter puts us in the dubious position of his James in The Collection: we collect information about an adultery but verify nothing about the motives of the characters. Yet there is a certain Hogarthian quality to these revolving panels, a sort of Rake's Progress in reverse; as we watch Jerry and Emma grow younger and happier, we make comparisons with our first view of them - in abar, older. communicating with difficulty. By stripping away so much of the density and mystery that we associate with his work (the surreal reversals, the barely articulate Ruths and Berts, the crushingly verbal Lennys and Spooners), Pinter gives us new mysteries to contemplate: the behavior ofpeople not in their rooms but in the world. In Betrayal, Pinter comes close to expressing what he feels about the manners of the times, holding up an artifact of the 1970'S to the society of the 1970'S. Is this a new Pinter or an old Pinter in a new form? In earlier Pinter plays, The Collection, The Lover, and The Homecoming, adultery is the major subject, and in nine other plays, marital betrayal figures significantly in the behavior ofthe characters. In The...