PINTER, Harold.

£1,300 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Slight Ache. Carbon typescript of the author's first radio play, later staged in 1961. This is one of Pinter's early works and not apparently present in the author's archive at the British Library. There are many textual differences between the radio script and the play text as published in A Slight Ache and Other Plays in 1961.Discussing the Pinter Archive at the British Library, Baker and Ross explain "some composition documents for the earliest plays had been left in the house in Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, which Pinter had shared with his first wife... and although he later returned to look for them, he could not find them. No materials survive for The Room, The Dumb Waiter, The Birthday Party (as a play), A Slight Ache, A Night Out, or for most of the early sketches" (Baker and Ross, p. xviii).The radio play was commissioned by the BBC in July 1958 and broadcast on 29 July 1959. The Radio Times lists the role of Barnabas as being played by David Baron (Pinter's stage name) although the role is an entirely mute character. The text was first published in 1960 in the fourth and final issue of Tomorrow, a periodical started by Ian Hamilton (1938-2001), the poet and critic.The present copy is originally from the collection of BBC radio producer Robert Pocock, with his handwritten note "Typescript by Harold Pinter" on the first page.

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