of so-called family values and the "meaning" of "love" among family members. Occasionally, one finds critics of the play, aware of Pinter's reputation for ambiguity, questioning even Teddy's and Ruth's references to the fact of their "being married"; e.g., Harold Hobson, as cited by Merritt: "Hobson's interpretation of Teddy as merely pretending to be Ruth's husband and a professor of philosophy enables him to rationalize the man's behavior toward his wife." Basing her viewpoint on a personal interview with Hobson, Susan Hollis Merritt considers Hobson's review of the first production of the play, entitled "Pinter Minus the Moral", concluding: "although Hobson still describes The Homecoming as Pinter's 'cleverest play,' his judgment against the play's 'moral vacuum,' like his denial of Teddy and Ruth's marriage, suggests his personal distress at the portrayal of marriage and what Pinter has called the characters' misdirected 'love.' " To deny that Teddy and Ruth are really married is a common refrain in responses to the play. Aside from their behaviour in the play as well as that of Teddy's family, nothing in the text contradicts the ostensible and putative reality that they are legally married and have three sons. The more outrageous, even horrifying, for the play's original audiences, the words and actions taken by Ruth, Max, and Lenny, the more Teddy protests that they are married, leading some critics to believe that the man doth protest too much. A perceptive reader and viewer of the play would wonder why Teddy would have brought his wife and the mother of his children into such a grotesque menagerie in the first place. Continuing denial of the facts of Teddy's and Ruth's marriage and children may serve critics as a means of expressing their own rejection of what occurs in the play. Knowing Ruth as she slowly reveals herself, it is easier, and likely more comforting, to dismiss the proposition that she had ever been a housewife, much less the mother of three children born during a six-year span whom she appears to have no intention of ever seeing again. The notion of a mother willingly, indeed facilely, abandoning her husband, and, especially, her children, to become a prostitute, must have been, especially at that time, almost unprecedented in "respectable" drama and literature and on the "legitimate" stage up to that time. Alluding indirectly to this critical pattern, Brantley observes, however, that, in time, the play may