Three Plays: By Luigi Pirandello - Illustrated

by Luigi Pirandello, Arthur Livingston (Translator)

Don't buy cheap paperbacks just to save a few dollars. Most of them use low-quality papers & binding. Their pages fall off easily. Some of them even use very small font size of 6 or less to increase their profit margin. It makes their books completely unreadable. Contains Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV.; and Right You Are (If You Think So). Pirandello, Italian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. Pirandello's plays are often seen as forerunners for theater of the absurd. Right You Are (If You Think So) marked Pirandello's interest in the examination of the relativity of truth. The story was about a woman whose identity remains hidden and who could be one of the two very different people. Six Characters in Search of An Author created a scandal when it was first performed in Rome, but was hailed as a masterpiece in Paris. Henry IV received much better reception in Italy. It told about a man who believes he is the German emperor Henry IV. To accommodate his illness his wealthy sister has placed him in a medieval castle surrounded by actors dressed as eleventh-century courtiers. Luigi Pirandello 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 almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre." 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. Pirandello was born into an upper-class family in a village with the curious name of u Càvusu (Chaos), a poor suburb of Girgenti (Agrigento, a town in southern Sicily). His father, Stefano, belonged to a wealthy family involved in the sulphur industry, and his mother, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, was also of a well-to-do background, descending from a family of the bourgeois professional class of Agrigento. Both families, the Pirandellos and the Ricci Gramittos, were ferociously anti-Bourbon and actively participated in the struggle for unification and democracy ("Il Risorgimento"). Stefano participated in the famous Expedition of the Thousand, later following Garibaldi all the way to the battle of Aspromonte, and Caterina, who had hardly reached the age of thirteen, was forced to accompany her father to Malta, where he had been sent into exile by the Bourbon monarchy. But the open participation in the Garibaldian cause and the strong sense of idealism of those early years were quickly transformed, above all in Caterina, into an angry and bitter disappointment with the new reality created by the unification. Pirandello would eventually assimilate this sense of betrayal and resentment and express it in several of his poems and in his novel The Old and the Young. It is also probable that this climate of disillusion inculcated in the young Luigi the sense of disproportion between ideals and reality which is recognizable in his essay on humorism (L'Umorismo).

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Literature, Drama

140 pages, Paperback

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!