The History of Production of the Works of Harold Pinter
The Lover (1963)
Harold Pinter
Play script
English
The Lover is a one-act play by Harold Pinter, originally written for television in 1962, but subsequently amended slightly to be performed on stage. Pinter leads the audience to believe that there are three characters in the play: the wife, the husband and the lover. But the lover who comes to call in the afternoons is revealed to be the husband adopting a role. As the play goes on the man (first as the lover and then as the husband) expresses a wish to stop the pretend adultery, to the dismay of the woman. Finally, the husband suddenly switches back to the role of the lover.
Browse productions of The Lover in the database
Date of Composition: 1963 Confidence Level
Linked Works
The Lover [tv script]
Linked Places
Windsor (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))
Sarah and Richard in The Lover live 'near Windsor', placing them outside that already small town and therefore in a small village or countryside south of the M4 (or A4, as it was at that point); 'so far away from the main road, so secure' as Sarah describes it. This serves to locate them in a wealthy, conservative and polite society.
Fairmead Court, Taylor Avenue, Kew (Type of place: Place of composition)
Fairmead Court, Taylor Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Greater London TW9 4EA, England
Pinter moved here with his wife and son in the summer of 1960, following the success of The Caretaker. They lived here until 1963.
Publishers
Methuen on (1963)
Characters
Sarah (Age: Not specified, Female)
Richard (The Lover) (Age: Not specified, Male)
John (The Lover) (Age: Not specified, Male)
Resources
Full text on Drama Online (URL)
Type: Script
External Link: https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/the-lover-iid-129773
Subscription required
British Library Manuscript Collections. Pinter Archive. 'The Lover'; [1963] - Add MS 88880/1/34 (Paper-based)
Type: Archival holding
External Link: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb58-addms88880/addms88880/1/34
The British Library holds Pinter's manuscript work on the stage version of The Lover, dated 1963. This is the basis of the published text, which nonetheless retains the date of 1962 for its original composition.
Sources
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lover_(play)#cite_note-2
URL
Summary adapted from this entry.