Six Characters in Search of an Author (Signet Classics) [Paperback]

Luigi Pirandello (Author), Eric Bentley (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Signet Classics | Publication Date: May 1, 1998

Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece, "Six Characters in Search of an Author", presents the playwright's views about the isolation of the individual from society and from himself. This play within a play chronicles six characters as they seek an author to tell their story, and to present their real lives on stage. But do their realities make better tales than fiction?.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Signet Classics; 5th edition (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451526880
• ISBN-13: 978-0451526885
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > History
  • #11 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Continental European
  • #30 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Continental European

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Innovative, Iconoclastic Masterpiece, July 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Six Characters in Search of an Author (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" premiered in Rome in 1921 to audience shouts of "Maricomio!" ("Madhouse!"). Perhaps few of the theatregoers realized that the "madhouse" they had witnessed was a watershed in the history of drama. While many of the innovations of "Six Characters" may now seem commonplace, Pirandello's innovative, iconoclastic masterpiece marked a break from traditional dramatic structures and stage settings, a break which enabled twentieth century drama to develop along self-reflective imaginative lines much different than its predecessors. As Eric Bentley, the play's translator, notes in his introduction to this edition, "this was the first play ever written in which the boards of the theatre did not symbolize and represent some other place, some other reality."

"Six Characters" is set in a theatre where a director, his stage manager and a group of actors are about to rehearse another of Pirandello's plays, "The Rules of the Game". The curtain is up, the stage is empty of props and background, and the lights illuminate the bare wall at the back of the stage. It is an austere setting, a kind of theatrical analogue to the blank sheet of paper an author faces each day he sits down to write.

Suddenly, this austerity, this mundane theatrical rehearsal, is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of six characters--a father, a mother, a son, a stepdaughter, a boy, and a little girl. They are six characters who have lives, who have stories to tell, but whose dramatic text has not been written. They need an author. As Pirandello says in his 1925 introduction to the play: "Every creature of fantasy and art, in order to exist, must have his drama, that is, a drama in which he may be a character and for which he is a character. This drama is the character's raison d'etre, his vital function, necessary for his existence."

The play proceeds, with the six characters relating fragmentary scenes of incidents in their lives, scenes which are accompanied by commentary, quarrels, dialogue, and interaction among the characters and between the characters and the actors. A kind of theatrical hall of mirrors, the actors who view these characters become, in effect, an audience. The actors are also, however, the actors who will be called upon to play the parts of the six characters in the dramatic text which is being created in their presence. For these actors and these characters, the stage becomes more real than the world.

"Six Characters in Search of an Author" is a remarkable work of imagination, both in its structure and its dialogue. It is comic and absurd, tragic and ponderous. The play is a work of original genius; the text (like its characters) is open to multiple interpretations and meanings. As one character says, in an appropriate Pirandellian bit of dialogue: "[t]herein lies the drama . . . in my awareness that each of us thinks of himself as one but that, well, it's not true, each of us is many, oh so many, according to the possibilities that are in us."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Signet version..., March 16, 2004

By 

JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Six Characters in Search of an Author (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

I highly recommend the Signet Classics edition of this play, translated by Eric Bentley. He provides a wonderful opening essay, as well as Pirandello's own forward.

The plot, I'm sure you know, involves six characters who stumble upon a theater rehearsal. They are not so much looking for an author as a play in which to exist. Pirandello breaks the fourth wall as no other author had before him. It is a very daring and original piece. A must for any serious student of drama.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Playwright that breaks the traditional rules of Theatre, December 10, 1999

By 

Amanda M (Florida, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Six Characters in Search of an Author (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

Pirandello blurs the lines between illision and reality. He questions the traditional mind set of theatre and allows for the "Characters" to become more real with there illisons then the actors. A groundbreaking play that set the example for many other abusurdist in the field. An excellent performance piece.