SOURCE: "Pirandello's Henry IV," in Metqfictional Characters in Modern Drama, Columbia University Press, 1979, pp. 19-34.

In the following essay, Schlueter examines the dual nature of Pirandello's characters in Henry IV, maintaining that the protagonist is the prototype for metaphysical characters in modern drama.

To say that self-conscious modern drama began with Pirandello would be like saying that realism began with Balzac, naturalism with Zola, or surrealism with Breton: all of these are oversimplifications that wrongly imply a literary concept is the pure product of one man's genius rather than the outgrowth of a complex combination of prevailing values and attitudes—and the need to find expression for those values and attitudes—which are the temper and ripeness of a particular era. Pirandello was not alone in his dramatic achievement, nor was he even the first. Indeed, it is ultimately impossible to fix with exactness the first modern dramatic...