Discuss The Caretaker as "a comedy of menace".

The initial review of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker generally followed a pattern: the brilliance of the actors was celebrated and the questions of influence, primarily Beckett's, were linked to discussions of the relationship between the comic and serious elements in the play. Interpretations of the 'meaning' varied from the literal to the fully allegorical, by way of generalized abstract tags.