Seven Things to Know about Luigi Pirandello

1. He is born into a successful family, who owned sulphur mines in his native Sicily.
2. Although his father hoped he would follow into the family business, like you, Pirandello preferred the study of language and literature.
3. He did accede to one of his father's wishes by agreeing to a marriage to the daughter of another rich sulphur merchant. It was an ill-fated marriage, as she went mad in 1903, a victim of a jealous paranoia so extreme that she even accused her husband and daughter of having an affair, accusations that led to the daughter's attempted suicide. Pirandello never sought to have her institutionalized.
4. Pirandello wrote numerous short works in the verismo style (realism), earning a reputation in Italy equal to that of Guy De Maupassant in France. Even then, there were sometimes grotesque and philosphical moments in his stories.
5. His international and lasting fame came with his theatrical texts that question identity, work well outside of the conventions of theater up until that time, and make great demands on the audience (in return giving a great deal of pleasure).
6. Like Kafka, he has a term, Pirandellism, that refer to his work in general (primarily his later, unconventional work). One thing this term might imply is the inability of language to communicate precisely what needs to be communicated. Even more central to Pirandellism is the term "relativism." Who you are is relative, dependent on a great number of factors. One is--to whom do you present yourself. We might say that who we are at the family dinner table may be different from who we are at party time, who we are on the basketball court, or who we are in our part-time job.
7. It is said by many that only Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen have been more influential on subsequent writers than Pirandello. He has influenced people like Camus, Sartre, Ionesco, Pinter, Stoppard, Beckett, and Genet.
8. In his later years he is associated with pro-Mussolini sentiments. As our anthology delicately puts it, despite his intellectualism, in politics he favored the appeal of a strong leader.

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I. The Frame Narrative

II. The intrusion of "characters" upon the "actors."

--How do we explain the characters? They are literary creations, abandoned by their creator half-way through his composition of them. Yearning to be "born," or "completed" or "enacted" or "fulfilled," they chance upon this theatrical production (which probably does indeed present a kind of void for them to fill).

--We enter as audience into the play on two or three levels. One, with the actors, trying to figure out the bizarre nature of what these characters are doing in the middle of their rehearsal. Two, entranced, as is the Producer (read: director) by the dramatic/melodramatic possibilities of the story in which the characters are enmeshed. Three, as audience to the Father and his kind of philosophical statements about life and artifice and stability of a fictional character.