No apology is necessary for offering to American readers a play whichcritics, with singular unanimity, have called one of the most originalproductions seen on the modern stage. In less than a year's time, "SixCharacters in Search of an Author" has won a distinguished place in thedramatic literature of the Western world, attracting audiences andengaging intellects far removed from the particular influences whichmade of it a season's sensation in Italy.
Yet the word "original" is not enough, unless we embrace under thatcharacterization qualities far richer than those normally credited tothe "trick" play. The "Six Characters" is something more than anunusually ingenious variation of the "play within a play." It issomething more than a new twist given to the "dream character" madefamiliar by the contemporary Italian grotesques. It is a dramatizationof the artistic process itself, in relation to the problem of realityand unreality, which has engaged Pirandello in one way or another formore than twenty years.
I venture to insist upon this point as against those observers who havetried to see in the "Six Characters" an ironical satire of thecommercial drama, as we know it today, mixed, more or less artificially,with a rather obvious philosophy of neo-idealism. No such mixtureexists. The blend is organic. The object of Pirandello's bitter irony isnot the stage-manager, nor the theatrical producer, nor even thedramatic critic: it is the dramatist; it is the artist; it is, in theend, life itself.
I suppose the human soul presents no mysteries to those who have beenthoroughly grounded in the science of Freud. But in spite ofpsycho-analysis a few Hamlets still survive. Pirandello is one of them.
What are people really like? In the business of everyday life, nothingis commoner than the categorical judgment sweeping and assured in itsaffirmatives. But as we cut a little deeply into the living matter ofthe spirit, the problem becomes more complicated. Do we ever understandthe whole motivation of an action—not in others only but even inourselves?
Oh, yes, there are people who know.... The State knows, with its lawsand its procedures. And society knows, with its conventions. Andindividuals know, with their formulas for conduct often cannily appliedwith reference to interest.—The ironical element, as everyone hasnoted, is fundamental in Pirandello!
Apart from works in his earlier manner (realistic pictures from SouthernItalian life, including such gems as "Sicilian Limes"), Pirandello'smost distinctive productions have dealt with this general theme. No oneof them, indeed, exhausts it. And how could this be otherwise?Pirandello, approaching the sixties, to be sure, is nevertheless inspirit a man of the younger Italian generation, which, trained by Croceand Gentile, has "learned how to think." But however great his delightin playing with "actual idealism," he knows the difference between adrama and a philosophical dissertation. His plays are situationsembodying conclusions, simple, or indeed "obvious" in theirconvincingness. They must be taken as a whole—if one would look for afull statement of Pirandello's "thought."
A "thought," moreover, which may or may not invite us to profoundreflection. Enough for the lover of the theatre is the fact thatPirandello derives the most interesting dramatic possibilities from it.Sometimes it is the