Introduction

Abstract

Pinter once remarked that his plays ‘are what the titles are about’.¹ An understatement perhaps, but even a cursory glance at those titles reveals a feature of Pinter’s work that has received scant attention from his critics, namely his unusual preoccupation with time and occasion.² From the very outset of his career as a writer, he has been deeply concerned with time and timing at both a philosophical and dramaturgical level.³ This concern goes beyond his obvious fascination with the erratic convolutions of memory and into the very substance of his dramatic imagery and the world he represents on stage.