Status Updates From Three Plays: Six Characters...

'BELCREDI. This is the illusion: that we leave this life by a door that lies ahead of us. It's not true. If you start dying as soon as you're born, the one who started first is the furthest ahead. And the youngest of all is Old Father Adam.' p.100 Henry IV

Writer's instructions to the director:
'LADY MATILDA SPINA is about forty-five, still beautiful and with a good figure, though she repairs the inevitable ravages of age rather too obviously with a heavy but skilful make-up that gives her the proud air of a Walkyrie. This make-up provides a sharp and disturbing contrast with the lovely sorrowful mouth.' p.71, Henry IV

'DIRECTOR [jumping up in a fury]. Ridiculous! Ridiculous! What can I do about it if we don't get any more good plays from France, so that we're reduced to putting on stuff by Pirandello that you have to be super-clever to understand, plays that seem cut out to please nobody - not the actors, not the critics, not the public? [The ACTORS laugh]' p.6

"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.'"