Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“The essence of Pirandello is not his intellectuality. It is his conversion of the intellect into passion.” —Eric Bentley

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was born of rich, middle-class parents in Girgenti (Agrigento), Sicily. As a young man he studied at the Universities of Palermo, Rome, and Bonn, where he gained his doctorate in 1891. His first published work, Mal giocondo (1889), was a collection of poems. It was followed by other volumes of poems, critical essays, novels, short stories, and over forty plays. In 1894 he married Antoinetta Portulano, the daughter of his father’s business associate. Financial disaster and a severe illness brought on by the birth of their third child drove his wife to a hysterical form of insanity. Only in 1918, when her presence in the family constituted a real threat to their daughter’s safety did Pirandello agree to have his wife committed to an asylum. The enormous emotional strain he felt at this time is reflected in the intense pessimism found in his work. Pirandello’s first real success in the theatre came about in 1921 when Six Characters in Search of an Author was performed. Henry IV followed the next year and confirmed his position as a playwright. In the following years Pirandello travelled abroad extensively. He embarked on a career as a producer and in 1925 founded his Art Theatre in Rome. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934 and died in Rome.

Mark Musa (1934-2014) was a professor at the Center for Italian Studies at Indiana University. A former Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellow, Musa authored a highly acclaimed translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

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