Enrico
IV
By
Luigi Pirandello
Directed by Bonnie J. Monte
Director's
Message
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| Sherman Howard as Enrico IV and
Jenny Gravestein as Frida in ENRICO IV. Photo © Gerry
Goodstein. |
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.
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