By the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, Harold Pinter was recognized as one of the most widely-performed and influential contemporary playwrights. Born to a Jewish family in the Hackney area of East London in 1930, Pinter lived through the Blitz bombing during World War II. According to Pinter's biographer, Michael Billington, the "life-and-death intensity of daily experience" during the War profoundly impacted the young Pinter and left a lasting imprint on his literary career.
Pinter began writing at an early age, and began publishing poetry during his teenage years. In 1948, he began attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but left before graduating. Another stint at the Central School of Speech and Drama proved equally unsuccessful. After gaining experience as an actor throughout the 1950s, Pinter published his first play, The Room, in 1957. The following decade was a period of incredible productivity for Pinter, and he published a number of works for the stage and screen. According to scholar Graham Saunders, Pinter's plays "The Caretaker (1960) and later The Homecoming (1965) had made him one of the most influential dramatists of the 1960s."
By the time Betrayal was published and staged in 1978, Pinter's reputation had only grown. In many ways, the play is a work characteristic of Pinter's style: it features restrained, muted dialogue and focuses on the mundane interactions between characters. The play, however, utilizes the unique structure of reverse chronology. Beginning in 1977, the play tracks back in time in order to depict the extra-marital affair of Jerry and Emma – and the fallout with Emma's husband, Robert – from end to beginning. In the words of scholar William McEvoy, this reverse chronology "completely transforms our role as readers and spectators" as we move through the play armed with information that is not available to the characters in each scene.
As is typical of Pinter's work, the play is tense and fraught with regret, rage, and disappointment. It features characters who are believable – if not likable – and does not shy away from depicting their flaws. In this sense, Betrayal is a work of committed realism endeavoring to represent the human experience, at its brightest but also its bleakest.
Betrayal was a critical and commercial success. In 1983, it was adapted into a film starring Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley. Like the play, the film was a success and Pinter received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Over 40 years after its original production, Betrayal continues to be performed on stages around the world.
