Setting and Characters
Pinter has confirmed that his visit, in the summer of 1955, to the "broken-down room" of Quentin Crisp, located in Chelsea's Beaufort Street (now renovated and part of a "smart building"), inspired his writing The Room, "set in 'a snug, stuffy rather down-at-heel bedsit with a gas fire and cooking facilities'." The bedsit is located in an equally rundown rooming house which, like that of Pinter's next play, The Birthday Party, becomes the scene of a visitation by apparent strangers. Though the single-dwelling two-story house in the later play is in an unidentified "seaside town", and it is purportedly a bed and breakfast-type rooming house run by a childless middle-aged married couple, the building in which Rose and Bert Hudd inhabit their "room" is a multi-dwelling rooming house of more than two stories, and, while Rose accepts being addressed as "Mrs. Hudd", Bert Hudd and she may not actually be legally married to each other, which may be a factor leading to her defensiveness throughout the play.
Read more about this topic: The Room (play)
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