As well as being one of the most popular, The Homecoming (1965) has proved to be among the most controversial of Harold Pinter\'s plays, at least as far as newspaper critics and academic commentators are concerned. There is no doubt that the action on stage continues to draw and hold audiences, as the play is frequently revived. The Homecoming shares a number of characteristics with Pinter\'s earlier comedies of menace. It is set in a dingy interior; there is throughout the play a sense of (largely) suppressed violence; the exchanges between the characters seem to be composed substantially of non sequiturs; the words that the characters actually say are divorced from what they mean (the meaning being discernible only by pie

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Published 14 February 2003

Citation: Wyllie, Andrew. "The Homecoming". The Literary Encyclopedia. 14 February 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=580, accessed 20 November 2009.]