Six Characters in Search of an Author Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 45 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Six Characters in Search of an Author Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 45 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Six Characters in Search of an Author.
This section contains 824 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Six Characters in Search of an Author Study Guide

In this excerpt, Bassnet provides an overview of the play.

This is the play that established Pirandello's international reputation as a playwright. Already well-known in Italy as a prose writer, critic, and poet, he had begun to write for the theatre shortly before World War I, increasing his output rapidly after 1918. Six Characters caused a scandal when it first appeared, and the first night ended with a riot, due to the taboo subject-matter of the play: incestuous desire.

Six Characters is the first of three plays known as the "theatre-in-the-theatre" biology, because the action involves the attempted staging of a play within another play. A rehearsal of a Pirandello play is supposedly taking place in an Italian theatre, but is interrupted by the arrival of six people, who claim to be characters looking for a playwright to tell their story. That story then gradually unfolds, told principally...

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This section contains 824 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Six Characters in Search of an Author Study Guide
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Six Characters in Search of an Author from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.