Pirandello Three Plays: The Rules of the Game; Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV

Description

Three essential plays by one of Europe's foremost 20th century dramatists The Rules of the Game (1918) is based closely on the author's own unhappy marriage centred around Leone Gala and his wife who are separated, their only contract, a formal visiting procedure; Henry 1V, shows the effect of madness and delusion on the figure of a king (1922); and in Six Characters in Search of an Author six actors are trapped inside a rehearsal for an unwritten play desperately needing a writer to complete their story and release them. Intrigued by their situation, the director and his company of actors listen as the characters begin to describe and argue over the key events of their lives. This, his best known play, caused riots when it was first produced at the Teatro Valle in Rome in 1921.

Luigi Pirandello was born in Sicily in 1867 and died in Rome in 1936, where he had first settled as a professional writer in 1893. The following year he married a woman whose mental health collapsed in 1904 leading finally to her commitment to an asylum in 1919. he was already well-known as a novelist and critic before achieving international recognition as a playwright with Absolutely! (Perhaps) - originally translated as Right You Are! (If You Think You Are) in 1917, The Rules of the Game (1918), Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Henry IV (1922), The Man with the Flower in his Mouth (1923), As You Desire Me (1930), Each in His Own Way (1924) and Tonight We Improvise (1929), the last two forming a trilogy with Six Characters. Of his forty-three plays, over half are adaptations from his own short stories written during the most difficult period of his life (1910-1918). He established and directed his own theatre in Rome, the Teatro D'Arte (1925-1928), and in 1934 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.