Pirandello, Luigi

Pirandello, Luigi (1867–1936), Italian dramatist, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. Although well known as a novelist and critic before he turned to the theatre, it is as the playwright who brought Italy, after a period of stagnation, back into the mainstream of European drama that he is chiefly remembered. The success of his plays meant that the Italian straight theatre was once again able to challenge the supremacy of opera. His early plays were dramatizations of some of his own short stories, and it was not until the production of his best-known work Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore in 1921 that he became internationally famous. As Six Characters in Search of an Author, this was produced in London and in New York in 1922, and has several times been revived. The play, which is central to an understanding of Pirandello's work, concerns a group of characters from another play who invade the stage during a rehearsal and become the arbiters of their own destiny. It forms part of a trilogy of which the other sections, less well known in English, are Ciascuno a suo modo (Each in His Own Way, 1924) and Questa sera si recita a soggetto (Tonight We Improvise, 1929). In these, as in all his plays, particularly in his finest tragedy Enrico IV (1922), seen in London in 1925 (NY, 1947) as Henry IV, Pirandello was concerned with the futility of human endeavour and the impossibility of establishing an integrated, objective personality for any human being. With consummate ability he pushed forward the frontiers of drama by bringing to the stage the mental and psychological preoccupations of his own day and becoming the chronicler of an age of decay and fragmentation. Among his other plays, those which have been successfully produced in English are Così è (si vi pare) (Right You Are, if You Think You Are, 1917); Il giuoco delle parti (The Rules of the Game, 1918); Lazzaro (Lazarus, 1929); and Come tu mi vuoi (As You Desire Me, 1930). Of the one-act plays, the best known is probably L'uomo dal fiore in bocca (1923), which as The Man with a Flower in His Mouth (the flower being an inoperable cancer) was produced in London in 1926.

Pirandello had an unhappy life, his wife, whom he married in 1894, becoming mentally ill in 1904. For 15 years he cared for her at home, finding his only consolation in work. After she had been consigned to a mental home he was able to devote more of his time to the theatre and in 1925 established his own company in Rome, proving himself an excellent director with an acute awareness of the technical problems of stagecraft. He toured widely in Europe and America with this company, and became well known as an actor, particularly in his own plays.