THREE PLAY: Six Characters in Search of an Author - Henry IV

by Luigi Pirandello, Arthur Livingston, Edward Storer

Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original hardcover edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)


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The three plays of Pirandello, here offered in translations that do not hope to be adequate, are famous specimens of the "new" theatre in Italy. The term "new" is much contested, not only in Italy but abroad. In using the word here it is not necessary to claim that this young, impulsive, fascinatingly boisterous after-the-war Italy is doing things that no one else ever thought of doing. We remain on safe ground if we assert that(Pirandello and his associates have broken the bounds set to the old fashioned "sentimental" Latin play?)

The motivations of the "old" theatre were largely ethical in character, developing spiritual crises from the conflict of impulses with a rigid framework of law and convention. Dramatic art was, so to speak, a department of geometry, dealing with this or that projection or modification of the triangle. Husbands tearing their hair as wives proved unfaithful; disappointed lovers pining in eternal fidelity to mates beyond their social sphere; cuckolds heroically sheathing the stiletto in deference to a higher law of respectability; widows sending second-hand aspirants to suicide that the sacrament of marriage might remain —such were the themes.
And there is no doubt, besides, that this "old" theatre produced works of great beauty and intenseness; since the will in conflict with impulse and triumphing over impulse always presents a subject entrancing in human interest and noble in moral implications.

But the potentialities of drama are more numerous than the permutations of three. The "new" theatre in Italy is "new" in this discovery at least.

All of Pirandello's plays are built for acting, and only incidentally for reading. We make this observation with "Right You Are" especially in mind, since that play, above all, is a test for the actor. It is typical of Pirandello for its rapidity, its harshness and its violence—the skill with which the tense tableau is drawn out of pure dialectic, pure "conversation." Moreover, it states a fundamental preoccupation of Pirandello in peculiarly lucid and striking fashion. Perhaps a better rendering of the title Cost e (se vi pare) will occur to many. Ludwig Lewisohn (happily, I thought) suggested "As You Like It," no less. A possibility, quite in the spirit of Pirandello's title in general, would have been another Shakespearean ". . . and Thinking Makes It So." We have kept something approximating the literal, which would "So it is (if you think so)."
The text of the "Six Characters" is that of the translation designated by the author and which was used in the sensational productions of the play given in London and New York.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Literature, Drama

Nook

First published June 1, 1969

About the author

Luigi Pirandello; Agrigento (28 June 1867 – Rome 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays.

He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art"

Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Reviews

[Daniel Polansky]

Three plays examining the nature of theater, personhood, madness and truth. Very clever, like if Borges wrote for the stage. I read a novel by Pirandello a few years back and didn't really appreciate it, but after picking this up I've got a better idea of what all the fuss is about.

[Mary Overton]

Six lost, unfinished characters interrupt a play rehearsal and beseech the theater manager to complete and perform their story.

MANAGER: [astonished and irritated, turning to his ACTORS]. If this fellow here hasn't got a nerve! A man who calls himself a character comes and asks me who I am!

FATHER: [with dignity, but not offended] A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always "somebody." But a man - I'm not speaking of you now - may very well be "nobody."

MANAGER: Yes, but you are asking these questions of me, the boss, the manager! Do you understand?

FATHER: But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you - as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that - I won't say these boards - but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today - all this present reality of yours - is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?

MANAGER: [without having understood much, but astonished by the specious argument]. Well, well! And where does all this take us anyway?

FATHER: Oh nowhere! It's only to show you that if we [indicating the CHARACTERS.] have no other reality beyond the illusion, you too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

MANAGER: [determining to make fun of him]. Ah, excellent! Then you'll be saying next that you, with this comedy of yours that you brought here to act, are truer and more real than I am.

FATHER: [with the greatest seriousness]. But of course; without doubt .... If your reality can change from one day to another ...

MANAGER: But everyone knows it can change. It is always changing, the same as anyone else's.

FATHER: [with a cry.] No, sir, not ours! Look here! that is the very difference! Our reality doesn't change: it can't change! It can't be other than what it is, because it is already fixed for ever. It's terrible. Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow, according to the conditions, according to your will, your sentiments, which in turn are controlled by an intellect that shows them to you today in one manner and tomorrow ... who knows how? ...Illusions of reality represented in this fatuous comedy of life that never ends, nor can ever end! Because if tomorrow it were to end ... then why, all would be finished.

MANAGER: Oh for God's sake, will you at least finish with this philosophizing and let us try and shape this comedy...?

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nobel Prize 🏆 in Literature 1934.
Three plays by Luigi Pirandello (who was an off-and-on supporter of Mussolini's fascist regime). The plays are all mostly about identity and the (in-)ability to know the truth. The first two (Six Characters and Henry IV) drag quite a bit. The last play (Right you are) I found much more entertaining.

[Gill]

It was a bad plan starting this, because I just don't have the time to read it. I can appreciate that it must have seemed shocking at the time it was first performed; it seems dated to me now.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good but utterly bizarre, so much so that reading them and following what is happening can become a little tedious. I particularly enjoyed ‘Enrico IV’, but the best was certainly ‘La Giara’, which is about a man who gets stuck in a jar (shame that it’s the only one of the three I don’t get to study).

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pirandello is the stage precursor of Charlie Kaufman. Interesting and smart, and playing with all the questions about performance and authenticity, reason and madness, etc.

The only drawback is I never really liked any of the characters. Is that my fault, or does Pirandello have a brilliant mind and an underdeveloped heart?

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in the late 70's when chemical assistance was routine. Wacky!