The Collection and The Lover.

The Collection and The Lover (1963) gathers two of Harold Pinter's most celebrated short dramatic works alongside the prose piece "The Examination," and represents the first published collection of the plays that established his reputation as the preeminent British playwright of the postwar era alongside his longer works The Birthday Party (1957) and The Caretaker (1960). Pinter (1930-2008), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 in recognition of a writing career spanning more than five decades and who was described by the Swedish Academy as a writer who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms, brought to both plays the signature qualities of what critics came to call "Pinteresque" drama: the menacing subtext beneath mundane conversation, the evasion of direct truth, the unspoken threat lurking beneath bourgeois social surfaces. The Collection develops the themes of menace and lack of communication through its exploration of two London couples linked by sexual tension and an unanswerable question about infidelity, while The Lover, originally written for television and premiering on ITV on March 28, 1963, contrasts bourgeois domesticity with sexual yearning through a husband and wife who conduct an elaborate erotic role-play that progressively destabilizes every assumption about their relationship. The Collection was hailed by Laurence Olivier as one of the outstanding plays of the twentieth century, and both works have been regularly revived in major productions, most notably in the 2018 Pinter at the Pinter season at the Harold Pinter Theatre directed by Jamie Lloyd.