Although his fame rests mainly on revolutionary plays such as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921; translated as Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922), Enrico IV (1922; translated as Henry IV, 1960), and Cosí è (Se vi pare) (1918;...

The works of the Italian playwright, novelist, and critic Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) generally portray Italian middle-class society. Combining relativistic thinking with a specific Pirandellian brand of humor, he probed the conflict between essence and...

Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello Born in Sicily in 1867, Luigi Pirandello was the son of a prosperous sulfur merchant. The successful merchant initially sent his son to study commerce at the local technical institute, but...

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) is the most famous play of Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello. It premiered in Italy in 1921 and was first published in its definitive form in...

The Wednesday Book AN EXPERT IN MURDER By Nicola Upson FABER & FABER, Pounds 12.99 Order for Pounds 11.69 (free p&p) on 08700 798 897 Elizabeth Mackintosh was a complicated personality. As Josephine Tey, she was the author of brooding crime fiction....

The Book of Other People Edited by Zadie Smith HAMISH HAMILTON Pounds 16.99 (264pp) Pounds 15.29 (free p&p) from 0870 079 8897 As the editor of a charity anthology once described as "uniquely pointless and stupid" by an unkind reviewer, I'm keen...

My problem with Lisa Kron’s autobiographical Well on Broadway is that I didn’t enjoy it. I tried. But the same was regrettably true when I first saw the well-regarded play two years ago at the Public. Ms. Kron’s arty reflections on the nature of fiction,...

My problem with Lisa Kron’s autobiographical Well on Broadway is that I didn’t enjoy it. I tried. But the same was regrettably true when I first saw the well-regarded play two years ago at the Public. Ms. Kron’s arty reflections on the nature of fiction,...

Ragusa is an Italian-born American critic and educator with a special interest in Italian literature. In the following excerpt, she offers a thematic and structural analysis of Six Characters in Search of an Author.

The following is a translation of Pirandello's preface to Six Characters.

An affinity has often been seen between the theater of Pirandello and the surrealist mode because both adhere to such notions as the "absurd," the unconventional, the iconoclastic, and the shocking to stir the receivers of the created work. Let us examine these elements from the angle of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author as well as of the surrealists' position, to determine the nature of affiliations and of differences.