First draft of Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature

Stockholm. Evening. Harold Pinter is introduced to the Swedish Academy. He enters from stage left. He wears a loose-fitting tuxedo.

PINTER: Your Majesty. Members of the Academy. Ladies and Gentlemen.

(beat)

PINTER: Thank you for this honour.

(pause)

Pinter removes a pistol from his tuxedo jacket and places it on the podium.

PINTER: When I began writing, I had no such aspirations, but I can see the logic of your choice. And yet . . . it seems as though this took too long for you to realize it. Do you see?

(pause)

PINTER: We live in an age of menace. Of dangers both spoken . . . and left to our impoverished imaginations, assaulted as they are by technology, faith and above all, politics. We live in an age of menace.

(beat)

PINTER: I do thank you for this honour . . .

Pinter places his hand next to the pistol on the podium.

(pause)

PINTER: But I am uncertain about how to respond to the tribute, tardy as it is …

(beat)

Pinter taps his fingers next to the pistol.

PINTER: Yes, we live in an age of menace. Of evil that is banal. Civilization itself, it seems, is a thin pretense. Language is used to obscure and distort reality. Because we fear it?

(pause)

PINTER: And so, tonight, I would have you all think about that.

(pause)

(pause)

Pinter taps fingers again.

(pause)

Alltop and humor-blogs.com love the theatre of menace. More about the plays of Harold Pinter. Originally published, October 2005.