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A Slight Ache
User Rating: 3.4 (2 votes)Author(s):
Harold Pinter
Flora and Edward sit at the breakfast table chatting of flowers and wasps and of the slight ache which Edward feels in his eyes. Their conversation, which seems so simple and is yet so strangely revealing, then shifts to the mysterious matchseller who has been standing by their back gate for many weeks. Somehow his presence intimidates them, particularly Edward, whose ache becomes aggravated as they discuss who the matchseller may really be, and they resolve to call him in for a direct confrontation. Flora goes out to invite him to come into the house, and when he appears he proves to be an old man, dressed in rags, and so feeble that it is doubtful whether he can see or hear. Seating him in a chair Edward speaks to him in an unnaturally jovial and somehow terrifying manner and soon Edward, without a word of reply from the matchseller, is so unstrung that he cannot go on. Flora takes over the interrogation, and again the old man's silence spurs the spilling out of buried frustrations and fears. Edward returns, and this time there is a note of desperation in his attempts to break through and understand the meaning of the matchseller. But it is Flora who leads the old man off at last, as a young girl might take her lover to the garden. As she goes she hands his tray of matches to Edward. He has lost the struggle, the nameless competition in which he has been engaged, and now it is he who has become the matchseller.
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| Genre(s): | Drama
| | Time Period(s): | Not Available | | Play Type: | Play | | Runtime: | Not Available | | Acts: | Not Available | | Set Complexity: | Not Available | | Set Information: | Not Available | | Year First Published: | Not Available | | Total Characters: | 3 | | Male Characters: | 2 | | Female Characters: | 1 | | Androgynous Characters: | Not Available | | Minimum Cast: | Not Available | | Maximum Cast: | Not Available | | Cost: | FEE: $25 per performance
Royalty/cost information prone to change.
Please check with the publisher for the most accurate information. | | Publisher: | Dramatists Play Service
Click on the publisher's name above for additional information, including updated prices. | | ISBN: | Not Available |
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