Eliot, speaking of Jonson, said that poetry dealing with the surface of life requires great deliberateness and simplicity of effect. Pinter is a poet of the surface. His manipulation of performance conventions suggests the “comedy of manners” in its dependence on standard theatrical devices and tightly constructed exploitation of speech and gesture patterns, disabused of conscious causality and motivation data. He differs radically from most comic theatre in two important respects: his plays do not aim (or pretend) to reflect or represent society in a typical, satiric, or parodic way; and he effectively eliminates plot as even a structural element (which is one of his similarities to Beckett).