MÓNICA PANADERO SAYAS

Teatro Inglés Siglos XIX y XX

Grupo B

BETRAYAL

 

AUTHOR: Harold Pinter

PUBLISHING: Faber and Faber

AGE AND PLACE OF PUBLICATION: 1978, London

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

Jerry: he is 40 years old, married and has two children.

Emma: is  Robert’s wife, she is between  30 – 40 years old. She is very pretty and has two children.

Robert: is Emma’s husband and he already is 40 years old

PLOT: the play is developed by means of a series of flashback.  At the beginning makes reference to the present and later to the past.  Everything begins when Emma is with Jerry after many years and with which she had a loving adventure while she was married.  Emma tells Jerry that her husband knows it but that he does not give the smaller importance.  In a flashback we are backing down to past being able to see how history finishes of lovers, how the husband finds out and his reaction, until at the end we can see how everything began, it was in a party in the house of the marriage in which Jerry confesses his love to Emma.

SPACE: the space is changing constantly during the play.  The characters appear in a pub, in Jerry's study, the apartment where Emma and Jerry met, the house of Robert and Emma, the room of a hotel and in a restaurant

TIME:  the play is going back in time and goes from the years 1977 – 1968

 

LITERARY RESOURCES: the play as we have said before is counted by means of a series of flashbacks and are scenes that name or remember what it will happen later therefore there is a repetition

PERSONAL OPINION:  in spite of being a full play of flashbacks which can take confuse I have it liked much because it is very funny.  The doubt that we can have is to know who betrays who. As the title indicates, "Betrayal", everything is a series of treasons; who betrays, Jerry and Emma to Robert to have had the loving adventure, or Robert his best friend to never say to him that he knew of that relation?  I think that it is a chain of treasons, more serious than others but everything is treasons