Background Notes for
Enrico IV
by Luigi Pirandello

In researching our production of Luigi Pirandello's ENRICO IV, I came across Bonnie J. Monte's director's notes from a 2002 production at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. I was so impressed with her insight and perspective that I sought and received permission to reprint it for your enjoyment.

The Grand Delusion
Providing program notes for a Pirandello play is no easy task and I admit I procrastinated as long as possible in devising these few meager pages. Where does one begin a discussion about a playwright who changed the face of modern drama and yet is infamous for his seeming impenetrability? Here is a writer who influenced almost every aspect of twentieth-century literature and yet is so rarely produced himself -- with the exception of one play -- SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR. The complexities and conundrums of the mind and world of Pirandello are profound, mystifying, frustrating and elusive, thus the attempt to construct an articulate discussion of ENRICO IV with brevity boggles the mind. To encapsulate weeks and weeks of research, dialogue, dissection and discovery is a difficult endeavor, and so I can only hope that our production will do for you what it has done for us -- stimulate exciting debate and revelations and provide, as well, the immense pleasure one derives from witnessing a grand "new" drama penned by the master hand and mind of one of the world's greatest dramatists.

Who was Luigi Pirandello? A native of Sicily, born in 1867, his life and philosophies evolved from and were driven by his own personal tragedies and dramas. His marriage was arranged at a young age by his father in order to create a business alliance, and soon after wedding, Pirandello's wife began a long descent into madness. For 25 years, their household was beleaguered by her paranoia, insane jealously and violent rages, and he was finally forced to institutionalize her. His daughter was so affected by the strains of living in such an atmosphere that she attempted suicide. Though his own childhood was relatively uneventful, happy and comfortable, his family's finances collapsed soon after his marriage and he was forced to teach at a girls' school for many years. He had attended universities in Palermo, Rome and Bonn and yet did not find his calling until many years later, when he began to write. The author of hundreds of short stories and poems and several novels, he did not start writing for the theatre until 1915, when he was 48 years old. Ultimately, he wrote 43 plays in Sicilian and Italian, established his own theatre company and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. He died in 1936.

Pirandello was consumed by several basic concerns: the nature of truth and delusion; the fine line between sanity and madness; human motivations and what lies behind them; the importance of dreams; the nature of identity; and the concept of reality as an unknowable factor. His characters, the conveyors of his musings, obsessed him. His intensity verged on mania. The French critic Alfred Mortier said of him, "Pirandello is a haunted man, possessed by his characters; they encroach upon him, control him, compel him to take pen in hand and write. They dominate his mind."

He was addicted to the theatre and was continually lurking backstage. He was famous for talking to himself and with eyes rolling, body shaking and making strange faces, he would stand in the wings, speaking along with the actors on stage, mimicking their gestures and tone of voice. One night, a fireman who was inspecting the theatre assumed Pirandello, who was gesticulating wildly, was talking to him. He approached the playwright and entered gamely into what he thought was a conversation. Pirandello's fourth wall was shattered, and blushing, he ran for the exit.

So here is a man, simultaneously passionate and intellectual, living in a world that is leaving the trappings of romanticism behind -- a world about to enter its most troubled era to date with two world wars on the horizon -- and not only is he living with madness at home, but the whole world seems to be spiraling into a kind of global insanity. Picking up where Chekhov, Maeterlink, Wedekind, Ibsen and Strindberg left off, Pirandello is the link between their new kind of realism and symbolism and the upcoming absurdists of the post World War II era -- Ionesco, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Genet and Pinter. The similarities between Chekhov and Pirandello are striking. Both are men with "hurt" world views, wounded, sad, and both consumed to a fair degree with a philosophical outlook that had not yet been named as such but which emerged as existentialism. Both see human existence as tragicomic. Both create antiheroes. The most profound difference between them, apart from stylistic approach, is this: that Chekhov's characters all begin with exuberant optimism and zeal for the promise of the future, and throughout the course of the plays we witness their descent into failure, hopelessness, confusion, delusion and despair. Pirandello's plays begin where Chekhov's end. With anguish and uncertainty as a leaping off point, there are few places to go other than madness.

All this gloom aside, like Chekhov, Pirandello's comic genius is often shortchanged or overlooked. The great drama critic Eric Bentley deciphers the various reasons for this in his discussion on Pirandello's "comic agony": known as a philosophical writer, there's an automatic assumption that humor is left behind; the tragic inner cores of Pirandello's plays are so powerful they overshadow the comic outer shells in which they are encased; while the plays are often hysterically funny throughout, the last acts of his works typically end with actions or revelations that are so stunning for the characters and audience, that agony prevails over comedy; traditional comedies end with resolutions, Pirandello's end with gaping wounds and unanswered and unanswerable questions.

Philosophies and theories aside, it is important to remember that Pirandello's plays, like all great dramas, are about passions and very real, visceral characters who happen to reside within an intellectual framework. Bursting from it, however, are all their agonies -- their pain, sadness, loneliness, cruelty, humor, tenderness, lust, love, kindness, honesty, delusions, despair and exhausted spirits. He is ultimately a humanist, arguing in his work for the acceptance or tolerance of the inexact, the subjective, the ambiguous -- and therefore the product of those things: illusion. In Mr. Bentley's words, "For Pirandello, illusion is the humanitarian alternative to suffering and the indignities and deprivations of a cruel world. His works grew out of his own torment, and through his genius, they came to speak for all the tormented and potentially tormented, that is, to all men."

The Holy Roman Emperor,
Henry IV, of Germany
Making Pirandello's ENRICO IV even more complex is the fact that its outer, comic plot is constructed around the history of the real-life historical figure of Henry the Fourth of eleventh century Germany. There are entire books devoted to this extraordinary ruler, and most of what one hears in the play is accurate historical fact -- but for one thing. There is no evidence that the real life Henry IV was secretly in love with his enemy, the Marchesa Matilda of Tuscany. What is most important to recognize is that Henry IV essentially began the investiture debate between church and state. He was the first major figure to challenge the papacy, and despite the relative barbarism of the late middle ages, and the treacherous waters he navigated in every moment of his life, he was a forward-thinking, unusually benign ruler, known for his protection of the Jews and other "infidels" fleeing from the "righteous wrath" of the Holy Crusaders. His mortal enemy was Pope Gregory VII, and through the brilliant and famous political ploy of begging for absolution after being excommunicated by Gregory (kneeling in the snow for three days outside the castle of Canossa until Gregory relented and received him), he managed to sustain his hold over an unmanageable and vast area of Europe for many years. Ultimately, however, he was betrayed by almost everyone in his life, including his own mother, Agnes of Poitou, and his son, Conrad. The parallels between Henry IV of Germany and Pirandello's fictional Enrico IV are immense, fascinating, and too numerous to list in these few short pages.

Bonnie J. Monte
Artistic Director, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey

Real. Live. Theater.
Box Office 360-786-0151

Graphic Design - WHITNEY DESIGN • TORSTUDIOS - Photographer