sᴛᴏᴘᴘᴀʀᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘɪʀᴀɴᴅᴇʟʟᴏ

                27 - 28

Luigi Pirandello - Italian playwright, pioneer of metafiction

winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1934

17 major dramatic works

14 novels

collection of short stories

7 volumes of poetry

Six Characters in Search of an Author

Henry IV (Enrico IV) adapted for stage by Stoppard in 2004

╓═══════☆═══════╖

               Enrico IV

╙═══════☆═══════╜

Italian aristocrat falls off horse in costume, thinks he is

English King Henry IV

family and friends nurture his belief, redecorate villa in style

of 14c king

goes on for 20 years

Henry's madness only lasted a year or two, fully aware

that he isn't Henry IV, but preferred simulated world over 20c

family and friend discover deception, he kills one of his friends in

anger, resumes life as Italian aristocrat

similar to Hamlet feigning own madness

only way Ros and Guil can imagine events beyond their control

is to play act role of others

take on Hamlet's persona in rehearsal of interrogation

later act as King of England (Henry IV or Lear)

in essay on modern drama, Richard Gilman voice kind 

of questions that motivate Pirandello and Stoppard:

relationship between "act" and movements within nature

relationships between reality and truth, human characters and 

characters of fiction, imagination and actuality

╓═══════☆═══════╖

        Six Characters In

      Search of an Author

╙═══════☆═══════╜

meta theatrical play

group of actors rehearsing play by Pirandello, strange family

arrive (characters from novel abandoned by its author)

the Director tries to dismiss them, but become more intrigued

their story is a kind of classic melodrama: broken family,

mother create new family, father visit daughter with gifts, leaves

town, mother's new husband dies, reduced to sew for a woman

who runs a brothel, who the daughter is forced for work for,

father visits brothel as a customer

Pirandello's main concern is relationship between artifice and

truth, performance and reality

Father argues with Director, say the actors have flexible reality,

while characters' reality are already determined

young boy kills young girl with a gun

Ros and Guil have little information, rely on what other characters

tell them and to give them direction

Pirandello's characters: desperate to be played

Stoppard's characters: desperate to have control