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Six Characters in Search of an Author

Pirandello deliberately alludes to important trends in the
INTR
INTRODUCTION
ODUCTION history of Italian theater. His most prominent reference is to
the influential, longstanding tradition of commedia dell’arte, in
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF LUIGI PIRANDELLO
which masked actors playing archetypal characters improvised
Born to a wealthy and politically active merchant family near scenes based on rough outlines—indeed, in Six Characters in
the Sicilian city of Girgenti (now called Agrigento), Luigi Search of an Author, the Manager tries to turn the Characters’
Pirandello quickly rejected the idea of following in his father’s drama into a play of his own, and in the second version of his
footsteps and, inspired by the ghost stories told to him by one play, Pirandello suggested the Characters wear masks
of the servants who worked in his house, began writing fiction referencing their dominant emotions.
at a young age. After moving with his family to the Sicilian
capital of Palermo at age 13, he turned to poetry. He
RELATED LITERARY WORKS
definitively turned down the opportunity to join his father’s
business a few years later, choosing instead to study Philology Luigi Pirandello remains best remembered for his plays,
at the Universities of Palermo, Rome, and Bonn (Germany), including Right You Are (if you think so) (1917), about two people
where he finished his degree in 1891 with a dissertation on his who both insist a third person is their relative and believe the
hometown’s Sicilian dialect. At his family’s behest, in 1894 he other person to be insane, and Henry IV (1921), about a mad
married Maria Antonietta Portulano, the daughter of another aristocrat who is convinced that he is the titular emperor.
family of Agrigento sulfur merchants. He returned to Rome, However, Pirandello did not focus primarily on drama until his
where he taught Italian and began writing and publishing 50s, and the majority of his prolific output consisted of novels
fiction, including a number of novellas and his first play. In and (many hundreds of) short stories. These stories are
1903, his and his wife’s families suffered a financial disaster collected in fifteen Italian volumes, each of which covers a year
when an important sulfur mine flooded. Pirandello began from 1922-1937. However, only some of these have been
teaching more lessons to compensate, but the catastrophe’s translated into English—a collection has been published as Tales
most significant legacy was the mental collapse it precipitated of Madness (2014). Of Pirandello’s six novels, the most
in Pirandello’s wife Antoinetta, who never fully recovered and significant are The Late Mattia Pascal (1904), The Old and the
became increasingly violent and jealous over the following Young (1916), and One, None and a Hundred Thousand (1926).
decade. During this period, however, Pirandello first tasted He expressed his artistic philosophy in letters and essays, most
fame with the publication of his novel The Late Mattia Pascal and prominently the early On Humor (L’Umorismo, 1908), and also
his essay L’Umorismo, published in English as On Humor. He wrote extensive collections of poetry, especially in his youth,
published a number of important stories, novellas, and much of which was translated and published in the dual-
especially plays in the 1910s, including Right You Are (if you think language edition Selected Poems (2016). Pirandello’s works
so) and The Rules of the Game. Antoinetta’s mental illness, likely have also been adapted into dozens of films. Other prominent
in part exacerbated by Pirandello’s numerous affairs, is a Italian modernist writers include Italo Svevo, who remains best
recurring influence on Pirandello’s work during this period; in known for the psychological novel Zeno’s Conscience (1923),
1919, she went to a mental asylum that she would ultimately and the equally prolific Sardinian novelist and fellow Nobel
never leave. The public’s reaction to the controversial Six Prize winner Grazia Deledda. Deladda and Pirandello’s
Characters in Search of an Author and the success of Pirandello’s relationship was controversial, particularly because Pirandello
Henry IV launched the author to international renown. He wrote a novel, Her Husband (1911), parodying her life and
briefly affiliated with the ruling Fascist Party during the 1920s, marriage. Deledda’s most important works include The Flower
which got him a position at the helm of the Teatro d’Arte di of Sardinia (1892), After the Divorce (1902) and Reeds in the Wind
Roma, but then publicly rejected the Fascists in 1927, and then (1913). Finally, Pirandello’s work, particularly Six Characters in
seemed to waffle back and forth for the rest of his life. He was Search of an Author, is widely seen as anticipating the post-
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934 “for his bold World War II Theater of the Absurd, an extensive genre whose
and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art,” and he died most prominent practitioners included Jean Genet, Eugène
two years later in Rome. Ionesco, Fernando Arrabal, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Tom
Stoppard, and Edward Albee. Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano (1950)
HISTORICAL CONTEXT and The Chairs (1952), Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) and
Happy Days (1961), and Albee’s The Zoo Story (1958), The
Although the events of Six Characters in Search of an Author
American DrDream
eam (1961), and Who
Who's
's Afr
Afraid
aid of Virginia W
Woolf?
oolf?
conspicuously lack any specific setting in terms of place or time,

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(1962) exemplify the genre’s existential and psychological The Door-Keeper interrupts the rehearsal to announce that
focus. there are visitors, and a “tenuous light” announces the
“fantastic reality” of the six Characters who enter the stage: the
KEY FACTS capricious middle-aged Father, the veiled and mourning
Mother, the audacious and seductive teenaged Step-Daughter,
• Full Title: Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Comedy the distant and surly 22-year-old Son, and a younger son and
in the Making daughter who refuse to speak, the fourteen-year-old “half-
• When Written: 1921 frightened” Boy and the timid four-year-old Child. The Father
• Where Written: Rome, Italy announces that they “have come here in search of an author”
• When Published: May 10, 1921 (first performance) and offers the confused Manager to “bring you a drama, sir.”
They argue about whether the Characters are mad, or the
• Literary Period: Italian Modernism
theater itself is madness—the Father insists that he and his
• Genre: Play, Theater of the Absurd, Metatheater, Tragedy family were simply born Characters, but their author never put
• Setting: A theater, the family garden them to use by putting them in a work of art. The Characters
• Climax: At the very end of the play, the Child drowns, the “carry in us a drama” that they cannot wait to play out—as
Boy commits suicide, and (in some versions) the Step- though to prove the point, the Step-Daughter abruptly begins
Daughter runs out of the theater, fulfilling their predictions acting out. She announces that she has recently been orphaned
and leaving the Actors and the Manager baffled. and shares a “passion” with the Father, before inexplicably
• Antagonist: The author, the Actors, the Manager, Madame singing and dancing a French song and predicting that the
Pace, the Characters’ own drama (or fate) Mother will lose the Child, the Boy will do “the stupidest
• Point of View: Dramatic point of view things,” and she herself will run away. Because the Son is the
Mother and Father’s only legitimate child, she explains, he
EXTRA CREDIT hates the rest of the family. In shock, the Mother faints, and
when she comes to, she begins raving about the Father’s
Reaction, Revision, and Preface. After the first performance of “loathsome” plan.
Six Characters in Search of an Author in Rome, the baffled
audience responded by jeering the actors and playwright, The Father reveals that the Mother’s previous lover—the Clerk
shouting insults including “Madhouse” (which is notable as he used to employ and the real father of the Step-Daughter, the
commentary on the play, during which the Father and the Boy, and the Child—recently died, which is why the Mother and
Manager debate whether theater or reality is really “madness”). Daughter are dressed as though in mourning. He admits that
Pirandello snuck out of the theater to avoid the angry audience he sent the Mother to live with the Clerk because she is “deaf,
and riots broke out in the streets. In order to clarify his ideas, deaf, mentally deaf!” He kept and raised the Son, but eventually
Pirandello revised the play and wrote a lengthy, now-famous regained interest in his old family and began to visit
Preface to it in 1925. In his revised version, he suggested the them—giving the Step-Daughter gifts at school, for
six Characters wear masks representing their essential instance—until the Mother, Clerk, and their children moved
emotions. away for good. The Clerk died two months ago, and to make
ends meet, the Mother and Step-Daughter began working at
the atelier of a woman named Madame Pace: the Mother
PL
PLO
OT SUMMARY sewed dresses, but the Step-Daughter worked as a prostitute.
One fateful day, the Father visited the establishment—and the
Six Characters in Search of an Author begins by defying the Step-Daughter. They disagree about whether he knew who she
conventions of theater: when the audience enters, the curtain was, and whether the Mother managed to pre-empt their
is raised and the stage is “as it usually is during the day time.” liaison or narrowly missed it. The Father explains that he took
Some of the actors, who themselves play theater Actors, hang the family back in and has allowed them to live with him since,
out on stage like they might have during their rehearsals. The but they continue to fight endlessly. Everyone begins to bicker
Manager walks onstage and declares it is in fact time for a with the Son, who refuses to divulge his feelings and insists he
rehearsal—they will be working through the Second Act of a is “an ‘unrealized’ character, dramatically speaking.” The
Luigi Pirandello play, Mixing it Up. (This play is fictional, but in Manager agrees that the Characters have the material for a
the original text, the Actors rehearse the real Pirandello play drama and offers to put them in touch with an author who can
The Rules of the Game.) The Leading Man objects to the write their story. But the Characters insist the Manager must
“ridiculous” chef’s hat he is asked to wear, and the Manager be the author: he shall watch them act out their drama and
declares that the play-within-a-play will turn out to be a “take it down […] scene by scene!” The Manager agrees, and he
“glorious failure.” and the Characters go into his office for 20 minutes, leaving the
Actors confused onstage and providing an intermission before

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Act Two. camouflage his sins and insists that—with the Mother out of
A bell rings to mark the beginning of Act Two, and the Step- the room—she and the Father show what actually happened.
Daughter, Child, and Boy come onstage. The Step-Daughter The Mother breaks down and protests, insisting that “it’s taking
tells the Child, her young sister, that the play is “a horrid place now” and that the two mute, younger children “cling to
comedy,” make-believe for everyone else but real for the little me to keep my torment actual and vivid.” The Manager declares
girl. She begins ranting about a fountain and then starts this moment “the nucleus of the whole first act” and the Step-
berating the boy, who mysteriously has a revolver in his pocket. Daughter recounts sleeping with the Father and feeling
The Father and Manager call her inside and she switches places ashamed of herself, before beginning to act it out on the stage.
with the Son and Mother, who debate which of them ends up The Mother intervenes and the Manager, satisfied, mutters,
suffering worse in the end. The Son bemoans the Father’s “curtain here, curtain,” meaning that he plans to end the First
confidence that “he has got the meaning of it all” and insistence Act of his play here—but the Machinist misinterprets him and
on publicly revealing the Characters’ private drama—their actually lowers the curtain.
failure to truly be a family. Everyone comes out and starts The final act begins with a slightly changed set that resembles a
debating the stage decorations, which the Step-Daughter garden. The Characters sit on one side of the stage, opposite
wants to be exact replicas of Madame Pace’s shop. The the Actors, with the Manager standing in the middle and
Manager tells the Prompter to take down the Characters’ declaring it is time to plan out the Second Act of their play. He
actions in shorthand and the Actors to watch the Characters so and the Step-Daughter argue about whether they can show the
that they can play them later. The Father protests that the events of the Characters’ life happening separately in their true
Characters should play themselves, since they are more real settings, but he insists on combining them and staging them all
than the Actors, but the Manager insists that the Characters in the garden. Then, the Manager and Father argue again about
cannot act, and should leave it to the professionals. The Father Characters and Actors, whether the theater is real or just a
and Step-Daughter laugh at the Actors the Manager assigns to game, and ultimately about whether the Manager is a person at
play them, noting that the Actors do not resemble them, and all—the Characters, the Father argues, are eternal and
then note that they have a problem: Madame Pace is not unchanging, whereas normal people change every day and
present. The Father begins “arranging the stage for her” by constantly look at their past selves like “a mere illusion.” The
hanging up the Actresses’ hats and mantles, and suddenly Manager asks the Father to stop philosophizing and tells him it
Madame Pace herself appears in the theater and walks on is truly ridiculous for him to think he is a Character created by
stage. an author, but the Father insists that he is not philosophizing,
The Father challenges the confused Actors and Managers, but merely “crying aloud the reason of my sufferings,” and that
saying they have a limited conception of truth, while the Step- he and his family truly were “born of an author’s fantasy” and
Daughter and Madame Pace begin the scene, whispering then “denied life by him.” The Manager can “give them their
inaudibly in the corner—they refuse to speak up until the stage life,” and the Step-Daughter warns him against
Father leaves, which he does against the Manager’s protests. “abandon[ing]” the Characters like their author did. (The Father
Madame Pace then begins telling the Step-Daughter about her suggests that the Manager can “modify” some of the
coming client, but everyone breaks out in laughter: the foreign Characters rather than abandon them.)
Pace speaks a comical, broken dialect of “half English, half Ultimately, the Characters and Manager agree that the last
Italian.” Again commenting simultaneously on the play itself and scene will take place in the garden—for which the stage is
the play-within-a-play, the Manager declares that Pace’s speech already set. The Manager starts coaching the Boy on how to
will “put a little comic relief into the crudity of the situation.” act, and the Son tries to leave, but the Step-Daughter stops him
Pace tells the Step-Daughter that an “old signore” is coming to because “he is obliged to stay here, indissolubly bound to the
meet her, and the Mother suddenly jumps at her, yelling, chain.” He refuses to act out a scene with the desperate
“murderess!” The Actors restrain her, and Madame Pace exits: Mother, who insists that this scene did take place. The other
it is now time for the Father to enter. He approaches the coy Characters force to threaten the Son to act, but he accuses the
Step-Daughter, who explains that she is “in mourning.” Father of trying to take their author’s place and even changing
The Manager stops the Characters and orders the Actors to the story for his own convenience. The Manager asks the Son
begin re-enacting the scene. The Father and Step-Daughter what really did happen, and the Son reluctantly begins
laugh as the Leading Lady and Leading Man fumble through narrating the “horrible” events—the Manager looks over and
their parts, and the Step-Daughter interrupts to correct what sees the Child drowned in the fountain, and the Son mentions
really happened—but the Manager refuses to put her and the the Boy’s “eyes like a madman’s.” Suddenly, the revolver goes off
Father’s implied sexual encounter in his version: in the theater, behind some trees, and the Actors drag out the Boy’s body.
he insists, “truth up to a certain point, but no further.” The Step- Shocked, they cannot decide if he is really dead or if “it’s only
Daughter protests that this means helping the Father make believe.” The Father insists it is reality and the Manager

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exclaims, “to hell with it all!” as the curtain falls. he solicits her services at Madame Pace’s brothel. While he
insists he was unaware of her identity, the Step-Daughter
challenges this claim, and she and the other Characters accuse
CHARA
CHARACTERS
CTERS him of plotting with the Manager to act out a version of events
that makes him seem less guilty than he was in reality. He tries
MAJOR CHARACTERS to repent for his error by inviting the Mother and her three
The Manager – The hotheaded and authoritarian director of children to move back in with him, but this leads to the
the theater company that rehearses a Pirandello play until the interpersonal tensions that ultimately precipitate the Child and
arrival of the six Characters. During this brief initial scene, the Boy’s deaths at the end of the play. Throughout the play, the
Manager foreshadows the rest of the play, insisting that “the Father insists that he and his fellow Characters are more real
author plays the fool with us all” in Pirandello’s “ridiculous” than the Manager and Actors because Characters are immortal
work, which will turn out to be a “glorious failure.” When the and unchanging, whereas normal people constantly transform
Characters arrive, they demand the Manager be their author. into new versions of themselves, leaving their old selves
Defending conventional ideas about the difference between behind. Yet this also condemns the attempts to undo the
reality and fiction, the Manager calls the Characters “mad damage he has caused. He philosophizes in an attempt to
people” and initially rejects their proposal, until they convince rationalize his failures, explain the “reason of my sufferings,”
him to direct their drama at the end of Act One. During Act and therefore create meaning out of his meaningless life, but
Two, the Manager becomes the audience as the Characters this inevitably fails—as the Manager and other Characters
play out their drama for him. “On the stage,” the Manager repeatedly remind him. As a quintessentially impotent
argues, the Characters “cannot exist” and must instead be intellectual fighting the absurdity of the human condition and a
played by his Actors. He insists on all these rules to preserve fictional Character insisting that his existence is just as valid as
“the conventions of the theatre,” an art form that requires his audience’s, the Father illustrates the limits of human reason
“truth up to a certain point, but no further.” Throughout Act and the folly of trying to use that reason to draw a sharp line
Three, while the Father repeatedly questions whether the between reality and “illusion.”
Manager is more real than the Characters, the Manager simply The Step-Daughter – Domineering, emotionally unstable, and
rejects his philosophical arguments as “nonsense” that “none of larger-than-life, reputedly the child of the Mother and the
us believes.” Beyond parroting a conventional theory about the Clerk, the roughly 18-year-old Step-Daughter helps precipitate
relationship between the stage and the real world, the the disintegration of the Characters’ family when she has a
Manager also embodies traditional concepts of authorship and sexual encounter with the Father while working as a prostitute
control: he yells at and manipulates his Actors and stage crew, at Madame Pace’s atelier. She implores the Manager to stage
who effectively have no personalities of their own, and insists the Characters’ drama in order to enact revenge on her family
the Characters do everything his way, even as they resist his and contests the Father’s narrative of events throughout,
directions and volunteer their own analyses and explanations. suggesting he was more brutal than he admits, that he knew
Through the Manager’s hilarious failures, Pirandello critiques her identity when he visited her at the brothel, or that he may
these conventional perspectives and reveals authors and even be her real father. Nevertheless, she also suggests she
directors as only partially in control of their own works and may still have feelings for him and remains brutally antagonistic
productions. toward her apparent step-brother, the Son, and her brother,
The Father – An overweight, balding, middle-aged man whose the Boy, whom she also partially blames for the family’s fate. In
“alternatively mellifluous and violent” passions drive the family contrast, she treats the Child with excessive adoration, raising
drama that the Characters present to the Manager and his questions about whether the girl is really her sister (or might
acting company, their decision to bring it to the theater in the actually be her daughter). Like the Father, she cringes when the
first place, and the philosophical debates that run throughout Actors try to perform the Characters’ story and tries to take
the play. A self-declared creative intellectual, the Father blames control over the production from the Manager—specifically, by
“the complicated torments of [his] spirit” for the family’s insisting that the scenes are set exactly as they were in reality.
downfall and believes that his quest to live according to his The Step-Daughter is at once a victim and an opportunist
principles and ideals has proven self-defeating. Early in his hoping to use the theater to air her grievances and win public
marriage, recognizing that the Mother does not share his acclaim. In contrast to the Father’s philosophical monologues,
temperament, he decides to send her away to live his Clerk, the Son’s internalized shame, and the Mother’s private
with whom she is clearly better-matched. Over the years, the suffering, the Step-Daughter’s coping mechanism of
Father begins to miss his family and starts trying to participate performance exemplifies both the power of storytelling and the
in their lives from afar—most notably by visiting the Step- perverse voyeurism of the theater.
Daughter at school. Years later, after losing contact with them The Mother – “Crushed and terrified” by the disintegration of
for decades, the Father reunites with the Step-Daughter when

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her family, the Mother (whose real name is Amalia) is veiled and writing, and suggests that sometimes authors are right to leave
dressed in black throughout the play. She seldom speaks or their creations unfinished—even if their characters fight back.
looks up, and spends most of her time onstage either frozen in Indeed, the Son believes he is “stand[ing] in for the will of our
place or suffering emotional outbursts related to her children’s author” by refusing to act.
suffering. She even declares she does not “know how to talk,” The Bo
Boyy – The fourteen-year-old apparent son of the Mother
and the Father calls her “deaf, deaf, mentally deaf!” Through and the Clerk, who is “timid [and] half-frightened” throughout
seemingly no fault of her own, the Mother sees and must the play and, like his sister the Child, never talks. The Step-
endure the death of her husband (the Clerk), the conversion of Daughter continually berates the Boy, calling him a “fool,”
her daughter (the Step-Daughter) into a prostitute at the hands asking why he does not speak, and predicting his death. At the
of Madame Pace, the Father’s visit to the Step-Daughter as a end of the play, it becomes clear that he will play an important
client, rejection by her Son, the deaths of her younger children part in an important scene, as the Manager coaches him on how
(the Child and Boy), and the reenactment of all these traumatic to act and bickers with the Father and Step-Daughter about
events on the stage. Like the Son but unlike the Step-Daughter where to stage the action. Astonishingly, in the play’s closing
and Father, the Mother never narrates her own version of moments, the Boy stands “with eyes like a madman” next to the
events, and her agony suggests that the reality of the family’s fountain where his sister, the Child, has drowned—possibly at
story—from the arc of her relationship to the Father to the the Boy’s hand, and possibly as a fateful reaction to the family’s
question of who is whose child and who is responsible for turmoil after the Father met the Step-Daughter at Madame
whose death—might be even more devastating than the Pace’s brothel. The Boy immediately goes behind the set’s trees
Father’s version of the narrative suggests. Suffering and shoots himself dead with the revolver, and the curtain falls
meaninglessly and with no end in sight, the Mother exemplifies with the Actors, Manager, and audience unclear whether this is
nature according to Pirandello, while the Father embodies the was part of the Actors’ “real” universe, or only the story told by
mind. the Characters.
The Son – The oldest of the four children, and the only actual The Child – A young, four-year old girl named Rosetta, who is
offspring of the Mother and the Father, who declares himself supposedly the daughter of the Mother and the Clerk (but
to be “an ‘unrealized’ character, dramatically speaking” and could just as easily be the Step-Daughter and Father’s
fulfills his prediction, avoiding everyone else and refusing to daughter), and who moves into the Father’s house with the rest
speak or act for the majority of the play. It initially appears that of the family two months before the Characters show up in the
he disdains his Mother for abandoning him during his childhood Manager’s theater. Dressed in white and beloved by the Step-
to go live with the Clerk, and his three stepsiblings for abruptly Daughter, the Child never speaks throughout the entire play.
moving into his household and demanding to be treated as his Instead, alongside the Boy, her brother, she acts as a passive
equals. Meanwhile, the rest of the family thinks the Son looks observer and “cling[s] to [the Mother] to keep [her] torment
down on them as “vulgar folk” because of his county upbringing actual and vivid.” The Step-Daughter and Father predict that
and elite education. While both of these are true to an extent, the Child and Boy will soon die, which they both do: the Child
at the end of the play, the real motive behind the Son’s avoidant drowns in the fountain, possibly at the hands of the Boy, who
behavior becomes clear: the Son is the one to find the Child’s shoots himself with the revolver.
body in the fountain and see the Boy shoot himself, and he
wants neither to reenact nor to publicly acknowledge these The Clerk – The Step-Daughter’s father and the Mother’s ex-
“horrible” events on stage. Despite his crucial role in the closing lover, who met her while employed in the family’s house
scene, however, the Son fulfills his promise to remain decades ago. Learning of his budding relationship with the
“unrealized.” The Father and the Step-Daughter suggest that Mother, the Father fires the Clerk, but this leaves the Mother
his coldness might have contributed to the Child and Boy’s “like an animal without a master.” Out of pity, spite, disgust, or
deaths, and he refuses to act out a scene with his Mother that perhaps some combination of these, the Father sends the
supposedly takes place immediately before this grim climax. Mother away and allows her to live with the Clerk, which she
The Son’s coping strategy contrasts sharply with those of the does for many years, raising the Step-Daughter in the process.
Father, who philosophizes and seeks forgiveness publicly, the However, two months before the events of the play, the Clerk
Mother, who suffers silently and dutifully obeys orders, and the dies, leaving his family penniless, and the Mother and Step-
Step-Daughter, who acts out dramatically to try and take Daughter begin working at Madame Pace’s atelier (as a
revenge on the other Characters. The Son reminds the dressmaker and prostitute, respectively) to make ends meet.
audience that works of fiction often require hiding characters’ Although he is central to the Characters’ family drama, the
feelings, thoughts, and true selves for their dramatic effect. Clerk never appears in the play.
More importantly, his behavior points to the perversity of Madame P Pace
ace – The owner of an atelier—which is ostensibly a
turning private drama into a public spectacle, as Pirandello fashion house but truly a brothel—who employs the Mother as
does by gesturing to his own family’s disintegration through his a dressmaker and the Step-Daughter as a prostitute after the

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Clerk’s death. In fact, she gives the Mother work as a ploy to of an Author.)
get to the Step-Daughter, and as a result the Mother despises The Scene-Shifters – They never appear on stage, but
her, because it was at her atelier that the Father and Step- Pirandello includes them with the list of characters at the
Daughter reunited, when he sought her sexual services, beginning of the play, even though this would almost never be
possibly in full awareness of her identity. In the second act, the done in an ordinary work of theater. By pointing out the
Father hangs up hats and mantles, “the very articles of her existence of behind-the-scenes crew, Pirandello further blurs
trade,” and the “fat, oldish” Pace suddenly appears in the room, the boundaries between theater and reality.
strutting to the stage with a “comical elegance” and blurring the
lines between the supposedly realistic action of the play and
space of the theater, on the one hand, and the world of
MINOR CHARACTERS
authorial fantasy, on the other. Pace speaks in broken, half- The Property Man – A stage crewman whom the Manager
Italian English (half-Spanish Italian in the original), which the repeatedly orders to fetch things for the set.
Actors and Characters self-consciously admit offers comic The Door-K
Door-Keeper
eeper – A theater staffer who reports the
relief—at once in the play they are planning to stage and the Characters’ arrival and leads them inside the theater at the
play as the audience experiences it. Nevertheless, this comic beginning of the play.
dimension of her persona contrasts sharply with her line of
work and its horrifying effects on the family.
The LLeading
eading Man – Alongside the Leading Lady, the main actor THEMES
in the the Manager’s production of the fictional Pirandello play
In LitCharts literature guides, each theme gets its own color-
“Mixing It Up.” He rehearses his role as the “ridiculous” chef Leo
coded icon. These icons make it easy to track where the themes
Gala until the six Characters show up, asking to be made into a
occur most prominently throughout the work. If you don't have
drama. Proud of his role at the head of the theater company, he
a color printer, you can still use the icons to track themes in
insists on playing the Father, even though the Father believes
black and white.
the Leading Man does not at all resemble him. He and the
Leading Lady grow furious whenever the Characters declare
that their acting does not capture the reality of their story. REALITY, ILLUSION, AND IDENTITY
The LLeading
eading Lady – Besides the Leading Man, the other Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an
principal actor in the Manager’s production of the fictional Author breaks down the ordinarily straightforward
Pirandello play “Mixing It Up.” When the Characters arrive, the boundaries between fantasy and reality, art and
Manager decides to have the Leading Lady play the Step- life, and others and the self. His Characters know they are
Daughter. She is moody toward the Leading Man, to whom she characters and ask what this means for themselves—even
is clearly attracted, and bitter towards the Step-Daughter, who though doing so requires violating the fundamental rules of the
both flirts with the Leading Man and insists that the Leading play’s fictional universe. The lead Character, the Father, even
Lady does not accurately portray her true Character. declares that the Characters are more real than the Actors,
Considering herself and her companions “serious actors” who which sets off a protracted debate about what is real, what is
can be better Characters than the Characters themselves, the illusory, and whether people are themselves at all. Through the
Leading Lady is offended whenever the Father criticizes acting Characters’ confrontation with the Actors as well as the form
as “madness” or “a kind of game.” of the play itself, Pirandello shows what happens when fantasy
and reality collide and suggests they are not so different to
The Prompter – A stage crewman responsible for reading out
begin with. The notions that the world people inhabit is “really
stage directions during rehearsals and “prompting” the
real” and that people have fixed identities, Pirandello suggests,
rehearsing actors with their lines when they forget. After the
are simply subjective and psychologically colored
Manager agrees to turn the Characters’ story into a drama, he
interpretations of a much more complex, but ultimately
asks the Prompter to note down in shorthand the events that
unknowable, reality.
the Characters act out, in order to create the outline of what
will eventually become the script. The central conflict between the Actors and the Characters is
over which of them is “real.” The very formulation of this
The Machinist – One of the stage crew, who (as his name
conflict inverts the usual relationship between reality and
suggests) is responsible for the mechanical aspects of the
fantasy: both sides are trying to prove their reality in order to
scenery. The Manager sends him out for “floral decorations,”
win the right to act out a fantasy. Indeed, the appearance of
and he later mistakenly lowers the stage curtain when the
living, breathing characters challenges this binary from the
Manager triumphantly declares “curtain” at the point in the
start. The Father makes a succinct case for why he is more
action where he plans to end the First Act of his play. (This
“real” than the Actors or Manager: whereas people change
moment in turn ends the Second Act of Six Characters in Search

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every day, characters are eternal and unchanging. As Pirandello “self.” The play also repeatedly shows how people’s multiplicity
puts it in his 1925 Preface to the play, one can read the same gets in the way of recognizing their identities—the Father
scene from literature 100,000 times and the characters will (presumably) does not recognize the Step-Daughter in
always do the same thing. So for the Characters, people are Madame Pace’s brothel, and neither recognizes the Actors as
changing and mortal, while fictional characters are fixed and embodying themselves. In the end, Pirandello does not make a
immortal. Indeed, the Father and Manager are in a sense claim about what is “really real” and what is mere
playing out the ancient philosophical debate about whether illusion—rather, he aims to simply show that reality itself is an
ideas or material objects are the true “reality.” illusion, a framework imposed by individual minds on a world
Pirandello also uses the theater itself to challenge the apparent that does not neatly divide itself into real and unreal.
division between fantasy and reality. Echoing the audience’s Given the play’s declaration that theater is “worthy of madmen”
likely reaction to the play, the Actors and Manager point out and Pirandello’s brazen indifference to theatrical norms, it is no
that they know intuitively that they live in the real world, and surprise that the first production of Six Characters in Search of
the Characters in a fictional one. But the Father argues that the an Author raised a scandal and caused riots in the streets. By
very purpose of the theater is to bring fantasy to life, to shining a light on the long periods of backstage trial and error
challenge people’s concepts of reality. The Characters do this that precede the polished performances actors finally put on
not only by showing up on the same plane of reality as the for the public, Pirandello provocatively reveals his own
Actors, but also by repeatedly breaking the Fourth Wall: the profession as an elaborate magic trick. The Father’s lengthy
Father and Step-Daughter give away the ending of the play and philosophical monologues boldly and directly make this
the Son calls himself “an ‘unrealized’ character, dramatically argument from another direction: “real” people, in the theater
speaking,” analyzing his own role. The Actors, Characters, and most of all, must stop insisting that theirs is the only reality.
stage crew also frequently shift roles, helping show that there Indeed, through their outrage, Pirandello’s audience heeded
are no clear boundaries between the story, the performance, this call, helping further blur the line between art and life: they
and the real lives of everyone involved (including the audience). shouted “Madhouse!” after the Manager and Father’s
For instance, when the Characters begin their drama, the argument about which of their existences is “Madness,” and
Leading Lady remarks, “we are the audience this time,” and the declared the play precisely what the Manager predicts at its
Prompter switches from giving the Actors their lines to copying beginning: a “glorious failure.”
down the Characters’ drama. The different plays-within-the-
play also collapse into each other, making it impossible to tell AUTHORSHIP AND MEANING
what is “truth” and what is “fiction” by the end of the play. At
In his Preface to the 1925 version of Six Characters
one point, the Manager declares “curtain” to mark where he
would end the First Act of his future play, but the Machinist in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello revealed that
misinterprets him and actually drops the curtain. And, at the the six Characters at the heart of the play were his
very end of the play, the Child drowns in the fountain and the own creations, and that he was the author who abandoned
Boy shoots himself. No one can tell if this is the action of the them more than a decade earlier after failing to place them in
play-within-the-play or the play itself, and the curtain falls as an adequate story. But they took on a life of their own and
the Manager voices his confusion, leaving the audience even began to haunt him while he worked on other projects. This
more deeply confused than the people they are watching on process showed him that his creations were not entirely his
stage. own: rather, his characters became independent beings that
lived in his imagination and gradually forced him to write out
Ultimately, for Pirandello, there is no singular reality that can their “drama.” The drama he creates is, in fact, the story of this
be transposed against a fixed realm of fantasy. Rather, through whole process, played out on stage. As the Characters seek
the Father, he argues that these concepts are relative and their author and struggle for control (authorship) of the
interrelated, based on individuals’ various interpretations of narrative they are piecing together with the Actors and
their experience and the world. The Father argues that Manager, the audience or reader learns that authorship is not
everyone has a different picture of the world and only falsely about an otherworldly, ingenious process of creating
believe they are understanding one another when they something out of nothing. According to Pirandello, works of art
communicate through language. The Characters’ conflicting and their meanings spring not from a single, directed
stories about what really happened among them and repeated consciousness but from a collaborative and often conflicted
insistence that the others are lying exemplify this vision of process of cobbling together stories and meaning.
miscommunication, preventing the audience from ever learning
if the story they see is the family’s “true” drama. The Father also The conflict over authorship in this play is fundamentally an
argues that individuals are comprised of different conflicting argument about who controls the meaning of a text, and the
personalities and asks not to be judged exclusively by his worst Characters’ frustrations and attempts to get revenge on their
author demonstrate how they gained their own consciousness

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and became independent of him. The Father announces that the theater. In contrast to the messiness of the Characters’
the Characters were “born of an author’s fantasy” but “denied reality, the Manager’s job is to make reality suitable for the
life by him.” And yet they take life on their own and insist on theater, to “combine and group up all of the facts in one
staging their drama—that is, becoming the authors of their own simultaneous, close-knit, action.” Of course, Pirandello inverts
destiny, controlling the meaning of their existence. The Son’s this traditional rule: whereas “authors, as a rule, hide the labor
doubt shows that the Characters’ authorial impulses extend of their creations” (according to the Father), in this play
beyond seeking the life they were denied and challenges the Pirandello foregrounds it.
other Characters’ assumption that Characters must fully Beyond merely raising the question of what a character really is
express themselves: the Son refuses to act, and instead and how they relate to the author who creates but then loses
declares that he wants to “stand in for the will of our author” by control over them, Pirandello’s play shows that authorship is
grinding the drama to a halt and refusing to turn the family’s actually a complex process out of which a work emerges with
horrific story into a spectacle. The others’ desire for drama no clear or singular impetus. In a sense, the Manager and
overpowers his reluctance, however, and the final tragedy plays Father are both reflections of Pirandello: the former of his
itself out without ever turning into the clean theatrical ending attempts to create meaning as an author, and the latter of his
the Manager desires. As the Characters repeatedly try to own doubts about his existence and decisions. Characters are
demonstrate their personalities and recount their experiences, all reflections of and yet independent of an author; as the
the Manager has to shut them down over and over because Manager puts it, the author is “never satisfied!” no matter how
they threaten to throw the rehearsal (and his future play) out of well their characters (and actors) play their parts. If there is any
balance. From the beginning, even before the Characters’ agent behind the process of creation, in which an author molds
arrival, the Manager is aware of his predicament: referencing and consults with their own characters, it is the “Demon of
the other Pirandello play that his troupe is supposedly Experiment”—the diabolically productive conflict among
rehearsing, he declares that “the author plays the fool with us Characters each trying to express their truth, Actors who must
all.” interpret them, and the Manager who must keep them in
While the Characters and Manager attempt to take over the balance and move the story forward. In a way, the entire play is
role of the author, their efforts inevitably fail, much like the a writer or dramatist’s internal monologue as they work out the
author’s initial attempt to control and put an end to his tensions between the whims of their characters and the
Characters. In the end, although the drama the Manager necessity to create a coherent work.
imagines fails to materialize and the curtain falls after an
abrupt and unexplained tragedy, the play complicates ACTION, FATE, AND ABSURDITY
straightforward notions of unitary authorship. Instead, it
Six Characters in Search of an Author is often cited as
argues that authorship—the creation of a narrative and
an important influence on a whole generation of
determination of its meaning—is a contested and collaborative
post-World War Two playwrights famous for
process.
“Theatre of the Absurd”: plays that cope with the difficulty of
The Characters explicitly ask the Manager to be their author: making meaning out of an apparently meaningless world,
he is the most obvious author-figure in the play because he especially in a modern society where people have lost the fixed
directs how the Characters divulge their drama and how the moral codes previously enforced by religion, just as Pirandello’s
action unfolds throughout the play, for instance by literally characters are “abandoned” by their author. The Characters
calling for the “curtain” that ends the Second Act. In fact, he enter the play existentially stuck, lacking an author but
does not mean to lower the curtain, but the Mechanist somehow full of detailed knowledge about how their story will
misinterprets him and does so, which suggests that the end. Like actors onstage, they dutifully fulfill this fate, which is
Manager’s power over the play does not mean the play always at once completely foreknown and completely shocking to both
obeys him—he is an author but without complete authorial of their audiences—the Actors who are supposed to play them
control. The Step-Daughter and Father complicate this by also and the ticketholders filling the theater. They confront
seeking to become authors: the Step-Daughter wants to circumstances that at once make no sense and cannot possibly
control the stage decorations to make them as realistic as be avoided—in other words, they find themselves powerless
possible and the Father wants to determine the true before fate and nature, which they submit to against and
philosophical meaning of events. Indeed, the other Characters despite their judgment, understanding, and desire to change.
accuse the Father of colluding backstage with the Manager to
The Characters step into an ambiguous world where things
twist the story to his favor. Everyone ignores the Father’s
happen for no reason. The Characters’ mysterious appearance
philosophical speeches, however, and the Manager refuses to
does not only embody this principle; the Characters
heed the Step-Daughter’s calls for detailed changes to the
themselves also espouse it. One of the first things the Father
scenery because it is simply impossible given the constraints of
says is that “life is full of infinite absurdities” that are true

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nevertheless, and he later pontificates that “one is born to life in to life’s absurdity and making sense of his suffering, but it is also
many forms,” including that “one may also be born a character in useless: it does nothing to concretely change his situation or his
a play.” The Characters continue to show off the apparent family’s animosity toward him. They repeatedly tell him this,
absurdity of their existence when the Step-Daughter and the Manager interrupts him over and over by noting that
introduces herself cryptically, by insulting her brother (the Boy) his philosophizing does nothing to advance their immediate
and singing and dancing to a French song. The end of the play is project: putting on a drama. There is no doubt that this
also inexplicable and mechanical—the audience never learns condition is Pirandello’s metaphor for the human condition at
why the Child drowns and the Boy shoots himself, nor whether large: things happen, and people rush to explain them but
the Boy killed the Child or all these events are related to the inevitably fall short—and fall victim to the next inexplicable
rest of the family’s history of conflict and trauma. occurrence that their moral reckoning does little to prevent.
Despite the meaninglessness of their lives and suffering, the
Characters are bound to their fate, of which they themselves THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
are the orchestrators. The Manager and the Actors reference It is telling that the drama embodied by Pirandello’s
this from the very beginning of the play, when they are Characters, which on the surface might seem only
rehearsing “Mixing It Up” and the Manager explains that the tangentially relevant to the point of the play as a
message of the play is the Leading Man’s character “becom[ing] whole, is fundamentally about marriage, family, and gender.
the puppet of [him]self.” More specifically, it concerns the Characters’ continual
The Characters are well aware of what they will do, even attempts—and consistent failures—to establish a functional
though they recognize it as horrible: during the First Act, the household, to fulfill the ideal of the nuclear family that promises
Step-Daughter and Father both explicitly say that they will to resolve their conflicts and restore them to a stable, happy
have a sexual encounter, and then the Child and Boy will die. harmony. In a sense, they do succeed: of the Mother’s three
Indeed, the Father blames “the complicated torments of my illegitimate children, two die tragically and one flees the stage,
spirit” for all his family’s problems: even though they are the leaving the original nuclear family (Mother, Father, Son)
agents of their own destruction and fully aware of this together onstage. In short, while the Characters believe they
throughout the play, the Characters are fully unable to stop it. can resolve their conflicts and create a happy nuclear family, it
The Father repeatedly insists that, although he spent his whole turns out that the very attempt to preserve the integrity of
life trying to achieve “moral sanity” (to live sensibly and their family is the root of their problems, and their tragedy is
benevolently), he ultimately had to admit that “evil […] may inseparable from the restoration of their nuclear family. By
spring from good,” such as how he destroyed his family despite elaborating this conflict, which echoes his own real-life family
his intelligence and best intentions. tragedy, Pirandello challenges the assumption that establishing
The Father’s philosophizing shows the role of thinking, reason, a family is the key to success and happiness, instead suggesting
and art in relation to the meaninglessness of life: these faculties that differences of personality—and the very pursuit of a
and products of mind allow people to make sense of their lives perfect family—can tragically undermine the stability that a
and their lack of control over their fates. But while people try to family is supposed to provide.
make the world and its events rational, ultimately they never The Characters’ family history already suggests that individual
can, and reason only operates in retrospect. The Father insists personality and autonomy are more important contributors to
that his relentless theorizing is his way of “crying aloud the happiness than familial relations. At first, the Characters
reason of [his] sufferings.” The others criticize the Father for appear to be a complete, legitimate family comprised of two
thinking he “has got the meaning of it all,” and he twists this, parents and four children. The Manager assumes this, and is
arguing that he is trying to create “a meaning and a value” in his quite confused when the Step-Daughter and Father begin to
otherwise meaningless life. The Father is fully aware that his explain how the Mother came to have a second family with the
analysis does nothing, and yet he continues performing it: he Clerk. But as they start recounting their story, it becomes clear
believes that a word, phrase, or saying “tells us nothing and yet that the Characters are far from a harmonious family. Indeed,
calms us” in a time of crisis. Even though he knows it is fleeting, their problems stem precisely from their reunification: namely,
he seeks meaning through reason in order to try and comfort the Step-Daughter’s reunification with the Father at Madame
himself in a world that he realizes has no inherent meaning. In Pace’s brothel, and then the Son’s disdain for the others who
contrast to the Father’s philosophical monologues, the Mother move in with him and the Father: the Mother who abandoned
responds to her family’s crisis by suffering acutely and silently. him more than a decade before and the new children he is
Although she is much less of an annoyance to the rest of the supposed to treat as siblings. Their very separation stemmed
people in the theater, she clearly also fares worse than the from earlier problems between the Father, who sees himself as
Father, whose analysis helps alleviate his pain. a creative soul full of “intellectual complications,” and the
The Father’s philosophizing is inevitable, his way of responding simpleminded but deeply loving Mother. Both felt unfulfilled

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because of their differences, and when the Mother began children and the disappearance of another, the original
growing close to the Clerk who worked for the Father, the family—Father, Mother, Son—is reunited and brandishes its
Father saw a chance to win his own independence and give her shame onstage at the end of the play. In other words, the
a more suitable partner in one fell swoop. Accordingly, he sent desired nuclear family emerges only as farce, as evidence that
the Mother to live with the Clerk, and together they had three the Father’s attempt to save his family for family’s sake was
children (the Step-Daughter, Boy, and Child). The Father and pointless and possibly doomed to fail.
Mother’s strained relationship is to some extent a fictionalized The tragic nature of the Characters’ fate is not that they are
version of Pirandello’s poor match and lifelong conflict with his duped by believing in the value of family, but that they wrongly
own long-suffering wife, who descended into a permanent think that the principle of family can and must be more
mental illness after their families’ mining fortunes suddenly important than all their differences and conflicts. Accordingly,
disappeared in a natural disaster. they get the family they wanted—but only at a horrific cost.
The Characters’ tragic drama is fundamentally about the
breakdown of family: the Father and Step-Daughter commit a
kind of incest, violating the quintessential social rule that SYMBOLS
distinguishes relatives from everyone else. The Mother, Father,
and Step-Daughter are all horrified at the Father and Step- Symbols appear in teal text throughout the Summary and
Daughter’s liaison—although they argue over whether or not it Analysis sections of this LitChart.
actually occurred, the very possibility of it is still horrifying
enough, and the Mother cries and screams even when they re- THE CURTAIN
enact it. The fright of the Father and Step-Daughter’s meeting
In most normal plays, the curtain is an
in Madame Pace’s brothel is not just about the taboo,
unremarkable piece of equipment, useful only to
incestuous relationship between a middle-aged man and the
mark the opening and closing of dramatic action to which it is
teenage girl he used to visit at school—it is also about the
irrelevant. The curtain between the audience and the actors
exploitative power differential between them (as evidenced by
clearly demarcates the line between fiction and reality—when it
the Mother’s continual disdain for Madame Pace, who deceived
raises at the beginning of a performance, it invites the audience
her into letting the Step-Daughter become a prostitute). By
into a fantasy world, and when it lowers at a show’s conclusion,
breaking the principal rule of the family, the Father and Step-
it dismisses the audience to return to their lives.
Daughter unmake their family symbolically and precipitate its
inevitable self-destruction once everyone moves in under one But, given his interest in upending dramatic norms and
roof. challenging the conventional division between life and fiction,
Pirandello does away with this normal use of the curtain for
The Father tries to save his family, but fails miserably and tears
staging, and instead turns the curtain into an integral part of
it apart even more horrifically than before. With the elemental
the play itself. The audience can first sense something is awry
rules of family broken, the Father attempts to undo his error by
when they enter the theater and encounter the curtain raised,
bringing the rest into his household—but the family’s tensions
revealing “the stage as it usually is during the day time.” The
only worsen, until they show up at the theater and demand to
world of the audience and the world of the play start out
play them out on stage. They invert another basic rule of family:
merged, and remain that way throughout the show. During the
rather than preserving a nuclear family’s privacy and trust, the
20-minute intermission after the First Act, the curtain also
Characters air their dirty laundry for the public to judge. As the
remains up and the audience’s time merges with the play’s.
Son puts it, his parents show the world their failure to truly
fulfill the roles of “father and mother.” But unlike the rest, to the The curtain becomes even more significant after the Step-
Son ideals of family are irrelevant: he just wants to go on living Daughter and Father act out their sexual liaison at Madame
his life, preferably while avoiding the family’s drama. The deaths Pace’s atelier for the Manager and the Actors. Delighted with
of the Father’s other step-children (the Boy and the Child) at the Characters’ scene, the Manager yells out “curtain here,
the end of the play are clearly tied to the reunited family’s curtain” in order to suggest that the scene would be the end of
shame, which also drives the Step-Daughter to flee the stage his future play’s Act One. But the Machinist misunderstands
(in most but not all versions of the play). the Manager and actually lowers the curtain. This abruptly
ends the Second Act of Six Characters in Search of an Author,
Ultimately, the play inverts the rules of family four times. First,
which flows directly into the third. Here, through the Manager,
the Father and Mother’s apparently happy family is secretly a
Pirandello explicitly points out the conventional use of the
nightmare for both of them. Secondly, the Father rejects his
curtain and then defies it, having the curtain fall in his own
wife to make space for his own personality, and thirdly the
play—and separate the audience’s world from the
family is united by the Father and Step-Daughter’s
drama’s—only by accident. Overall, then, the curtain in Six
unspeakable affront to family. Finally, through the death of two

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Characters represents Pirandello’s exploration of Act 1 Quotes
metatheatrical elements in the play, and his attempts to tear
Ridiculous? Ridiculous? Is it my fault if France won’t send
down the divide between actors and audience, between
us any more good comedies, and we are reduced to putting on
theater and “real life.”
Pirandello’s works, where nobody understands anything, and
where the author plays the fool with us all?
THE REVOLVER
Recalling the Characters’ bizarre entrance, Act Two Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Leading
of Six Characters in Search of an Author begins with a Man
handful of inexplicable and seemingly absurd events. The Step-
Daughter comes to the stage with her two siblings: the Related Themes:
confused Child, whom she comforts, and the anxious Boy,
whom she berates after she notices a revolver in his pocket. Page Number: 2
The revolver at once fulfills and mocks the narrative Explanation and Analysis
conventions of the theater. On the one hand, it literally
At the beginning of Six Characters in Search of an Author, the
references Chekhov’s famous declaration that “if you say in the
Manager leads his group of actors through a rehearsal of a
first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the
fictional Pirandello play called “Mixing it Up.” The Leading
second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” This principle,
Man has to put on a chef’s hat and complains that this is a
commonly known as “Chekhov’s gun”—that everything in a
“ridiculous” prop, but the Manager counters that the entire
story must have and fulfill a specific purpose, that all loose ends
situation of the acting company is what is truly “ridiculous.”
must be tied up—is the essence of the Manager’s quest to
They are being forced to put on a play they do not
convert the Characters’ messy and conflicted family drama into
particularly like by a dramatist they do not particularly
a coherent, neat story. While he wants to remove loose ends by
believe in; despite all their later claims about acting’s
“group[ing] up all the facts in one simultaneous, close-knit,
importance as a serious art form, here they plainly see it as
action,” the Characters want to express themselves individually
an onerous day job.
and present their conflicting versions of events.
Beyond serving to introduce Pirandello’s metatheatrical
On the other hand, while the revolver points to the narrative
themes and shock the audience, which sees a playwright
principle that everything must have a place and purpose, it also
write about a theater company staging his own play, this
foreshadows the utterly inexplicable conclusion of the story,
passage is prophetic: the Manager clearly connects “Mixing
which dismantles this narrative principle. Just before the final
it Up” to the play he and his Actors are participating in, in
curtain, the Child drowns in the fountain and the Boy shoots
which they, the Characters, and (especially) the audience
himself. There is no explanation for why or how this happens,
are thrown into a constant state of confusion and
and the Actors, Characters, and audience never determine
misunderstanding by the clash over competing narratives
whether the Boy and Child are acting out their past
and pictures of truth. “The author” ends up “play[ing] the
experiences or actually dying before the Manager in the
fool with [them] all” in a number of ways. On the one hand,
theater.
he challenges the Manager’s assumptions about what is
The revolver therefore first looks like a red herring: strange, true and false, suggesting that they are naïve and
out of context, and irrelevant to the Characters’ drama, much shortsighted, and therefore “play[s] the fool” by distorting
like the Step-Daughter’s French song and dance in the First the norms of reality (and, of course, the theater). On the
Act. However, it is later revealed as a crucial part of the other hand, the play’s various author figures—the Manager
storyline—but only because it effects a conclusion that makes himself, the Father, and to a lesser extent the Step-
just as little sense as its initial appearance. This narrative Daughter and the Son—are all proven to be fools as they
double-cross allows Pirandello to challenge the apparent attempt in vain to take full control over the play and its
opposition between messy, conflicted, uncertain reality and meanings. Pirandello therefore shows the Manager and
clean, coherent storylines in which everything has a reason and Actor to be fools—and the very profession of the theater to
effects a logical outcome. be a form of “madness”—as well as revealing himself and
every other author to be foolishly impotent in their
attempts to control the works they write and characters
QUO
QUOTES
TES they conceive.
Note: all page numbers for the quotes below refer to the Dover
Thrift Editions edition of Six Characters in Search of an Author
published in 1997.

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“The empty form of reason without the fullness of instinct, A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by
which is blind.”—You stand for reason, your wife is instinct. them—the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
It’s a mixing up of the parts, according to which you who act This light will disappear when they come forward towards the
your own part become the puppet of yourself. Do you actors. They preserve, however, something of the dream
understand? lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this does
not detract from the essential reality of their forms and
expressions.
Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Leading
Lady , The Leading Man
Related Characters: The Manager, The Door-Keeper, The
Related Themes: Child, The Boy, The Son, The Step-Daughter, The Mother,
The Father
Page Number: 2
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis
As they continue to rehearse “Mixing it Up,” the Manager Page Number: 3
tells the Actors about the fundamental meaning of their
parts. Specifically, he tells the Leading Man that he Explanation and Analysis
represents “reason” and the Leading Lady “instinct.” This is a The Manager and Actors’ rehearsal of “Mixing it Up” is
suspiciously accurate description of the Father and the abruptly interrupted when the door opens and the Door-
Mother who soon walk onstage. The Father is adamantly Keeper announces the entrance of the Six Characters.
and annoyingly intellectual, often so caught up in obsessive These are the stage directions that govern how the
philosophizing that he ignores the reactions and emotions Characters walk onstage and approach the Manager: they
of everyone around him and ends up creating an egotistical appear radiating a halo of light, which points to the fact that
spectacle rather than truly making amends for his actions, they are have stepped from fiction onto the stage. They are
as he professes to want to do. On the other hand, the neither completely of this world nor completely alien to
Mother almost never talks and even once insists she is it—and yet, while their origin is uncertain, their existence in
incapable of doing so—instead, she spends the entire play the world is anything but, which is what makes their
suffering, embodying the emotional instincts that the inexplicable appearance onstage so eerie. Their light begins
Father lacks. to fade as they enter the Actors’ space and merge into a
The tragedy of the Mother and Father’s relationship is that, shared reality—they are living people with living bodies and
instead of allowing themselves to act as complements, the yet have not been born and grown with the usual agency,
Father decides that the difference in their temperament indeterminacy, and complexity of normal people. They are
makes them eternally incompatible and decides to send the “almost suspended” in the identities that have been set out
Mother away instead. Of course, the close resemblance for them by their author; they are too impudent and driven
between “Mixing it Up” and the Six Characters, in addition by single emotions and ideas. Although they are people with
to the fact that the Six Characters seriously “mix up” the “essential reality,” there is no question that they lack the
roles of the Manager, Actors, and audience in the theater, trappings of a normal life—which perhaps means that their
suggests that perhaps they are not different at all—and that reality is not so fixed in its essence.
the Six Characters’ arrival and performance might actually
be the content of “Mixing it Up.”
The second part of the Manager’s directions for the Leading The FATHER (coming forward a little, followed by the others
Man is curious because it points to the double character of who seem embarrassed). As a manner of fact… we have
acting in this play—both in the sense of performing on stage come here in search of an author…
and in the sense of taking positive action in life. The Actors The MANAGER (half angry, half amazed). An author? What
are at once audience to the Characters’ drama and author?
supposed to embody it in the future; the Characters The FATHER. Any author, sir.
themselves are both the object of their story and the The MANAGER. But there’s no author here.
subjects who portray it; and as the Characters act out their
drama, they actively choose to fulfill a fate they have not Related Characters: The Manager, The Father (speaker)
chosen, in full awareness that they are both affecting and
being affected by what they do.

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The author who created us alive no longer wished, or was
no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art. And
Related Themes:
this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the luck to be
Page Number: 4 born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The
man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his
Explanation and Analysis creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to
When the Father first makes his appeal for an author (and have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who
explicitly gestures to the play’s title), the Manager is was Sancho Panza? Who was Don Abbondio? Yet they live
understandably confused—the Father’s request is silly and eternally because—live germs as they were—they had the
inexplicable. The theater needs a director to function, not fortune to find a fecundating matrix, a fantasy which could raise
an author. And besides, who needs to search for an author and nourish them: make them live for ever!
when they can simply be their own?
As in so many other moments throughout the play, however, Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager
the Manager’s response here plays double duty: beyond his
literal meaning (that no experienced playwright is in the Related Themes:
theater, including specifically the author of the play they are
rehearsing, Pirandello), he also sets out one of the play’s Page Number: 5-6
principal conflicts—namely, the utter lack of any clear Explanation and Analysis
author figure throughout, even as everyone tries to take
The Father explains how he and his fellow Characters have
authorship over the Characters’ drama. All these attempts
come into being: an author birthed them through an act of
fail, and ultimately the drama drives itself forward without
creative imagination, but then decided never to write them
anyone’s orchestration or authorship.
into any story. At this point, however, the Characters’
existence no longer depended on the will of their author:
once created, they were real entities that could not be
No, excuse me, I meant it for you, sir, who were crying out erased or forgotten. They then take revenge, taunting and
that you had no time to lose with madmen, while no one seducing their author into giving them a story (both in
better than yourself knows that nature uses the instrument of Pirandello’s mind and as they convince the Manager to
human fantasy in order to pursue her high creative purpose. stage their drama in this First Act of the play). Entering a
story (“a fecundating matrix”) allows them to turn from
Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager private into public ideas, ensuring they can continue to
circulate forever and do not die alongside their author (just
Related Themes: as readers and audiences can still experience them now,
long after Pirandello’s death).
Page Number: 5 In this passage, however, the Father is not only explaining
Explanation and Analysis his family’s motive for presenting their story; he is also
offering a philosophical theory about what is real and what
After the Manager dismisses the Father and his family as is fake. While the Manager assumes that normal people who
“mad people” who have wandered into the theater to live outside narratives are more “real” (because they share
disrupt his rehearsal, the Father turns the tables on him and the world with him and his actors), to literary characters,
argues that the Manager and his Actors are, in fact, the such readers and audiences are unimportant bystanders to
“madmen.” The whole point of theater, he argues, is to the true, immortal reality. According to the Father, actors
perform an unreality, to reenact something that never act to access the truth contained in characters, stories, and
happened, and to turn fantasy (or imagination, or madness) archetypes, rather than to lend truth to the parts they play.
into reality. For the Characters to appear in the play is
therefore just like for the Actors to appear as characters
before their audiences—and both are equally noble pursuits
of “high creative purpose.” The very power of art, the Father
argues, lies in its refusal of an intuitive or concrete
distinction between reality and fantasy. Indeed, this is what
lets artists use fantasy to enrich and transform reality.

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The whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of Oh, all these intellectual complications make me sick,
us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us disgust me—all this philosophy that uncovers the beast in
his own special world. And how can we ever come to an man, and then seeks to save him, excuse him… I can’t stand it,
understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value sir. When a man seeks to “simplify” life bestially, throwing aside
of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must every relic of humanity, every chaste aspiration, every pure
inevitably translate them according to the conception of things feeling, all sense of ideality, duty, modesty, shame… then
each one of you has within himself. We think we understand nothing is more revolting and nauseous than a certain kind of
each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman remorse—crocodiles’ tears, that’s what it is.
(indicating the Mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially
ferocious form of cruelty.
Related Characters: The Step-Daughter (speaker), The
Manager, The Father
Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Mother,
The Step-Daughter, The Manager Related Themes:

Related Themes: Page Number: 15

Page Number: 10 Explanation and Analysis

After she, the other Characters, and the Manager are
Explanation and Analysis forced to endure yet another philosophical monologue from
When the Father and Step-Daughter begin recounting their the Father, the Step-Daughter calls him out for analyzing his
versions of the family’s story, it becomes clear to the actions and singing his woes on a public stage only in order
audience that they simply cannot agree on what happened. to hide his actual lack of remorse. His “philosophy […]
Most importantly, the other characters singlehandedly uncovers the beast in man” not only because he makes
blame the Father for what he sees as a combination of bad arguments about the brutality of human nature, but also
luck and lapses in judgment—sending his wife away out of because his tendency to philosophize reveals his own
“pity” and sleeping with the Step-Daughter whose identity egotism and lack of moral values. With her list of his faults,
he claims not to have known. He argues that the others’ she specifically focuses on the latter—although the Father
accusations against him are simply products of their thinks he is searching for meaning and moral values, the
misunderstanding, and that misunderstandings of this sort Step-Daughter sees his search as a convenient way to give
are simply an unavoidable part of human life. Accordingly, up on them.
the Father is at once advancing a philosophical position And yet there is something ironic in the Step-Daughter’s
about communication and translation—which has clear speech here: she, too, is using the public eye to try and save
applications for the theater and the audience, who must herself, to win the legitimacy and platform denied her by her
inevitably come up with their own perspectives on the family. Throughout the play, she acts with histrionic excess,
Father’s actions and ideas—and making an excuse to try and as though she is performing rather than feeling her
avoid taking responsibility for his behavior. His philosophy emotions—just as the Father labels and talks instead of
carries the disturbing implication that it would be feeling. In this way, the character of the Step-Daughter
impossible to condemn him because it would be impossible allows Pirandello to advance a critique of both theater and
to “understand” what he did and why he did it. This in turn philosophy, which can come to replace real life rather than
raises one of the central problems critics see surrounding serving to enhance it.
philosophies like the Father’s: if everyone simply has their
own perspective, is it possible to recognize and condemn
evil?

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For the drama lies all in this—in the conscience that I have, The drama consists finally in this: when that mother re-
that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a enters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we
single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the
and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder
illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its
is unique in all our acts. But it isn’t true. We perceive this when, surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the
tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that
suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one
perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal
an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all desolation which is the revenge, as he (indicating Son) scornfully
our existence were summed up in that one deed. said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in
me.
Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Step-
Daughter Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Boy, The
Child, The Step-Daughter, The Son, The Mother, The
Related Themes: Manager

Page Number: 16 Related Themes:

Explanation and Analysis Page Number: 18
After arguing that people have different and incompatible
perspectives on the world, the Father takes his philosophy Explanation and Analysis
to an even greater extreme: he now also believes that Just before the end of the First Act, the Father offers this
individuals themselves are multiple, with various competing shocking prediction, which outlines exactly what will happen
“conscience[s]” and “personalit[ies]” that determine their in the play’s last scene: the Child (“the little girl”) and the
actions and relations with others. On one level, this is a Boy die, and in most versions of the play the Step-Daughter
serious argument about the nature of human beings, who (“the elder daughter”) runs maniacally out of the theater,
are more complex than they’re usually taken to be and leaving the original but eternally-scarred nuclear family
whose identities are always difficult to precisely pin down. standing alone onstage. This ending makes an important
Indeed, for the Father, any claim about anyone’s identity is commentary about the rigid social expectation that families
dishonest; even the Characters, who he claims “really” exist must be legitimate and nuclear, and the Characters’ ill-fated
because they exist in a fixed version in literature, still attempts to pursue and preserve this kind of family—which
contain multiple identities and competing internal forces. they ultimately achieve at the play’s climax, but only through
This becomes a particularly curious and contradictory suffering a trauma they will probably never overcome.
argument in the second version of Pirandello’s play, in which But, at this stage in the play, the Father’s prediction is more
each of the Characters wears a mask corresponding to an interesting because of what it reveals about his and his
emotion that is supposedly essential and permanent for family’s relationship to their future (and, arguably, their
them (as in the longstanding tradition of commedia dell’arte). inescapable fates). In fact, the Step-Daughter has already
At the same time, there is some sense to the Father’s made this same prediction earlier in the First Act, but both
argument—all concepts of forgiveness rely on the hers and the Father’s predictions are likely to get lost in the
assumption that there is more to people than their worst mix, as both of them pontificate so wildly throughout the
deeds, and the Father is figuring out what it would look like play and make so many statements that are hard to take
to forgive himself in the future. As in every other instance seriously. As a result, audiences are often surprised when
when he questions what is real and what is false, here these exact predictions are fulfilled at the end of the
Pirandello does not resolve the question—rather he realizes play—as in any classical tragedy, the story’s climax is both a
two complementary truths: people are more than one thing, foregone conclusion and a complete shock when it does
but certain things can nevertheless come to define them, happen. And Pirandello’s Characters latch onto this feature
although not necessary absolutely or forever. of their story in order to make a broader argument about
human life and action: people try to create one reality but
inevitably end up fulfilling another—they are bound to their
fates because of their efforts to build the future, not despite
them. This contributes to the sense of meaninglessness and

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futility in which the Father wallows throughout the play: like and dragged down by the family that is supposed to support
in quicksand, his family becomes more deeply trapped in him. His calls for the play to stop, like the author’s, go
their inevitable tragedy the harder they try to avoid it. This unanswered.
might be what the Father means by “the Demon of
Experiment,” a phrase with which he has in fact fulfilled
another prophecy (the Son’s) by mentioning. Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in
the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this
reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic
Act 2 Quotes of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than
And they want to put it on the stage! If there was at least a you, since it is much truer than you—if you don’t mind my saying
reason for it! He thinks he has got at the meaning of it all. Just so? Which is the actress among you who is to play Madame
as if each one of us in every circumstance of life couldn’t find his Pace? Well, here is Madame Pace herself. And you will allow, I
own explanation of it! (Pauses.) He complains he was discovered fancy, that the actress who acts her will be less true than this
in a place where he ought not to have been seen, in a moment woman here, who is herself in person. You see my daughter
of his life which ought to have remained hidden and kept out of recognized her and went over to her at once. Now you’re going
the reach of that convention which he has to maintain for other to witness the scene!
people. And what about my case? Haven’t I had to reveal what
no son ought ever to reveal: how father and mother live and are
Related Characters: The Father (speaker), Madame Pace,
man and wife for themselves quite apart from that idea of
The Step-Daughter
father and mother which we give them?
Related Themes:
Related Characters: The Son (speaker), The Father, The
Mother Page Number: 29

Explanation and Analysis

Related Themes:
When everyone is prepared to reenact the scene in which
Page Number: 23 the Father meets the Step-Daughter in Madame Pace’s
brothel, they realize there is a problem: Madame Pace is not
Explanation and Analysis there. Unfazed, the Father starts hanging up the women
Near the beginning of the Second Act, the Son and the Actors’ clothes, convinced that Madame Pace will show up.
Mother voice their frustrations onstage while the Father, And she does—as though by some magic, she walks into the
Manager, and Step-Daughter collude about their play theater and onstage, ready to perform her scene. The
behind the scenes. The Son is disgusted that the Father, on Manager and Actors are scandalized by this unlikely
top of all his other crimes, now wants to bring the family’s conjuration, but the Father insists that they are in the
shameful history into the theater, making it a public theater, after all—it makes no sense for actors, professional
spectacle. If the Father has destroyed the lives of his family illusionists, to insist on “a vulgar, commonplace sense of
members by continually breaking the fundamental rules of truth” while considering “the magic of the stage” a
family—sending his wife to live with another man and scandalous lie. Of course, their objection is that the Father
sleeping with his Step-Daughter—then now he is doing it so easily does something they strain to do—to make fantasy
again by giving up the privacy that is usually inherent to a appear as reality. Indeed, Madame Pace is inappropriate for
family. (Yet again, the Father’s attempt to fix a problem only the stage precisely because she is the real Madame Pace,
exacerbates it.) Even though the Son seemingly had nothing not an actor. Because they are in a play, Madame Pace is
to do with the Father’s crimes, he is being forced “to reveal allowed to simply show up, and Pirandello writes this in (and
what no son ought to ever reveal,” in part breaking his own the Father, playing the author, brings it about) as though to
part in the family (maintaining trust and confidence). protest the idea that things in the theater must happen in a
Interestingly, even though the Son has had little contact logical progression—for they quite certainly do not in real
with his family for his whole life, he believes firmly in the life.
conventions of family (“that idea of father and mother which
we give them”), at least insofar as they affect his social
status. Against his will, the Son is dragged into the drama

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I never could stand rehearsing with the author present.
He’s never satisfied! the Manager tells the Leading Man to ask the Leading Lady
about whose death she is mourning. The Step-Daughter
interjects and explains that, in reality, the Father reacted to
Related Characters: The Manager (speaker)
her being dressed for mourning by suggesting she “take off
[her] little frock.” Scandalized, the Manager recoils and
Related Themes:
declares that this detail cannot possibly go to the
Page Number: 36 stage—although it uniquely reveals the extent to which the
Father mistreated and violated his family, it would simply
Explanation and Analysis “make a riot in the theater!” The Manager follows with the
The Manager’s joke again points to the contradictions of a above declaration, again drawing a clear line between the
play without an author: both the one the audience is version of reality presented in the theater and the one that
watching, in which the people onstage argue about what has people actually live out. The theater is not supposed to tell
happened to their author, and the one the Manager and real stories—rather, it tells fictional versions of them. The
Characters are trying to put on, over which they constantly Characters will not be able to control how their story is told,
battle for authorial control. The author, for the Manager, is but only provide the raw material, the fundamental truths of
“never satisfied” because no reenactment of a piece can which will be communicated through a distorted narrative.
ever match an author’s mental image of a story—one that no They are the sources, not the authors.
author can ever directly translate onto the page, for (as the Of course, the Manager’s line is also a comment on
Father has already noted) language inevitably leads to Pirandello’s play itself. First, although the Father’s clumsy
miscommunication. As a parallel, the Actors’ reenactment of seduction techniques will not go into the Manager’s play,
the brothel scene looks comically out of balance to the they are plainly revealed in Pirandello’s, and through this
Father and Step-Daughter who lived it. While they claim process Pirandello points to the transgressive nature of his
access to the real experience of the scene, however, their own play, in terms of moral and cultural boundaries as much
version was also far from adequate for the stage (as the as narrative ones. (The audience felt the same way—they
Manager repeatedly notes). And their authorial reacted so strongly at the play’s premiere that Pirandello
presence—and constant insistence that the actors faithfully had to sneak out of the theater and past the angry mob that
perform their reality—actually gets in the way of the formed outside.) But the Manager’s line also references the
rehearsal. whole realm of truths that are too scandalous for even his
The Manager is therefore pointing to the impossibility of intentionally scandalous play, most of all the unspoken
ever performing a story perfectly on two levels, then: on the secrets that remain within the family: did the Mother
surface, the problem of miscommunication through actually catch the Father and Step-Daughter “in time?” Did
interpretation, and more fundamentally, the impossibility of the Father know the Step-Daughter’s identity? Has their
ever determining what a “perfect” interpretation would be, relationship continued? What other distortions color the
since the author (in this play as in any other) does not get to Father’s story? What does the Son refuse to act and
define a work’s meaning any more than the reader, actor, or narrate? And might the relations of parenthood among the
director does. Father, Mother, Clerk, Son, Step-Daughter and two young
children be more complex or incestuous than they already
appear on the surface?

Acting is our business here. Truth up to a certain point, but

no further.

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker)

Related Themes:

Page Number: 37

Explanation and Analysis

When the Actors are rehearsing the scene between the
Step-Daughter and the Father in Madame Pace’s brothel,

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On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too
prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is morally compromise herself by working as a prostitute
to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what when her family needed the money as resolutely worse than
is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own the Father’s decision to visit her. In short, the Manager is
interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the already taking the Father’s side, which lends credibility to
difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary the Step-Daughter’s theory that he is colluding with the
for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, Father to twist the narrative and make the Father look less
and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. culpable than he was in reality.
I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point
of view it would be a fine idea if each character couldtell the
public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour The darned idiot! I said “curtain” to show the act should
lecture (good humoredly). You must restrain yourself, my dear, end there, and he goes and lets it down in earnest (to the
and in our own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this Father, while he pulls the curtain back to go on to the stage again).
exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you Yes, yes, it’s all right. Effect certain! That’s the right ending. I’ll
know. After you have confessed to me that there were others guarantee the first act at any rate.
before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once…

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), Madame Machinist, The Father
Pace, The Father, The Step-Daughter
Related Themes:
Related Themes:
Related Symbols:
Page Number: 37-8

Explanation and Analysis Page Number: 40

Throughout the play’s Second Act, the Father and Step- Explanation and Analysis
Daughter fall more and more out of line: they interrupt each
The Second Act ends with an accident: the Manager,
other with lengthy monologues and repeatedly cut off the
scheming out loud about his plans to monetize the
progress of the scene that they (and later the Actors) are
Characters’ experiences as a stage drama, declares that the
supposed to be performing. The increasingly frustrated
scene between the Father and the Step-Daughter has
Manager finally explodes at the Step-Daughter, reminding
satisfactorily ended, and that the First Act of his future play
him that he is in charge and that stories are not well served
should end there with the “curtain.” Hearing the Manager
by Characters who analyze themselves, spoiling all the fun
yell “curtain,” the Machinist wrongly assumes that the
and secrets for the audience or reader. (Although this play
Manager wants the curtain lowered and does so—the
leaves plenty such secrets open for discovery.)
Manager then utters this line as he steps past the curtain,
The Manager’s rant about creating “a neat little framework” which has just fallen for the first time since the audience
is both a clear description of his job as a theatrical director initially walked into the theater. In fact, the stage crew
and a claim about authorship more broadly—specifically, the actually is working behind the curtains to set up for the
principal rule of authorship that Pirandello has deliberately garden scene at the end of the play, even though this break
broken throughout this play. Rather than a philosophical between the Second and Third Acts is supposedly purely
tract that clearly states its point or a normal work of fiction accidental.
that buries theory in a story, Pirandello’s play repeatedly
The falling of the curtain here performs a leveling function,
puts analysis in the way of narrative, all while refusing to
bringing the play as the audience sees it, the scene the
make the analysis clear enough to unambiguously
Characters are acting out, and the future play the Manager
communicate his point. It is, in some ways, a play as
is planning in his mind all onto the same plane of reality. The
frustrating to watch as the Manager finds it to direct—and
Manager makes the curtain fall because of his future play,
this is the point, the process by which Pirandello exposes
which cuts off the Characters’ rehearsal and the actual play
the true, thorny work of authorship. The Manager, as the
the audience is watching. Rather than acting as a blank
orchestrator and streamliner of the whole production, is
backdrop with no meaning except to open and close the
also not exempt: his final threat to the Step-Daughter
audience’s access to the fantasy world of the stage, the
suggests that he considers her decision to supposedly
curtain becomes a prop in its own right, an essential part of

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The FATHER. Can you tell me who you are?
the play. The MANAGER (perplexed, half smiling). What? Who am I? I
am myself.
The FATHER. And if I were to tell you that that isn’t true,
Act 3 Quotes because you are I…?
The illusion! For Heaven’s sake, don’t say illusion. Please
don’t use that word, which is particularly painful for us. Related Characters: The Manager, The Father (speaker)

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Leading Related Themes:

Man, The Leading Lady , The Manager
Page Number: 43
Related Themes: Explanation and Analysis
Page Number: 42 In their umpteenth argument about reality, illusion, and the
stage, the Father presents this challenge to the Manager. If
Explanation and Analysis the Characters are not “real” because they live only in a
Early in the Third Act, the Step-Daughter, the Manager, and work of art, the Father suggests, then the Manager should
some of the Actors argue about how to stage the next at least be able to explain why he is more “real” than they
portion of the Characters’ drama—will they tell it in multiple are. But he does not have any way of grounding his identity,
scenes with multiple sets, showing it to have occurred in of explaining what he is or why he exists—his identity is
different places at different times, as it actually did? Or will merely his being himself, and unlike the Characters, this is
they combine it all into one scene, which might offer a more not something he ever questions.
dramatic story that better expresses the family’s pain, Beyond questioning whether or not normal people actually
despite distorting the authenticity of the narrative? The have any kind of substantive identity, the Father also draws
Step-Daughter argues for authenticity to the Characters’ an explicit parallel between himself and the Manager. They
history, but the Manager wants to stage everything in one are, in many ways, mirrors of one another: each is the
scene. The Leading Lady and Leading Man suggest two leading figure of one-half of the people on stage, and the
scenes, with one change between them, as a compromise two are primarily responsible for telling the story that the
that will “make the illusion easier.” (Of course, they are also audience (and, the Manager hopes, future paying
referencing the play they are in, which has just seen its one audiences) gets to see. More than anyone else, they are the
and only scene change.) two author figures in the play, and they also clearly
This is the Father’s impassioned and offended response: the represent different dimensions of the author himself, Luigi
Leading Lady should not call the future play an “illusion.” Pirandello: the Father as him in his personal life, struggling
First, this reinforces the apparently mistaken notion that with his decisions and the meaning of his existence, and the
the theater creates “illusions” of a “reality” that exists Manager as him in his professional life, self-assured,
outside of it. Ironically, the Father has made exactly this powerful, and charged with balancing various characters
argument many times before—but here, he begins to insist and ideas in order to sell a coherent story. Their conflict
that there is really no distinction between the stage and life, therefore represents not only the conflict between an
which is fitting in view of the way reality and theatrical author and their characters or a director and their actors or
performance get completely confused in the coming section script, but also the internal conflicts in an author’s
of Act Three. Secondly, the Father seems to be reacting to (specifically, Pirandello’s) mind as they formulate and write a
the way the word “illusion” can be used to imply that the story.
Characters themselves are not “really” real, when in fact
they are living and breathing just like the Actors and
Manager. If you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you
now, of all those things which don’t even seem to you to
exist any more, while once they were for you, don’t you feel
that—I won’t say these boards—but the very earth under your
feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same
way this you as you feel it today—all this present reality of
yours—is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?

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Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager When the fed-up Manager tells the Father once and for all
to shut up and stop “philosophizing,” this is the Father’s
Related Themes: response. What for everyone else looks like a meaningless
game of analysis is, for the Father, a meaningful attempt to
Page Number: 43-4 stake a claim in the world and explain his existence. While
the other Characters see the Father’s “philosophizing” as a
Explanation and Analysis
series of excuses for his behavior (which he should instead
As they continue to debate whether the Characters or the acknowledge and repent for), he believes that he is gaining
Actors and Manager are “real” people, the Father returns to some understanding and creating some conciliatory
his previous claim: that people who live in art and fiction meaning of the randomness and pointlessness of his
have real, essential identities, whereas normal, mortal experiences. For him, then, his analysis performs an
humans are not anything at all. He makes this argument by important existential function, guiding him in the darkness,
citing the classic version of the philosophical problem of if only by helping him understand the path he has already
personal identity: because people constantly change, how taken. Ultimately, there is no real truth of the matter about
can they remain the same people? In extreme cases, one which of these the Father is doing: his speeches certainly
might ask if someone who has entered a permanent coma or help him explain “the reason of [his] sufferings,” but they are
had various organ transplants remains, essentially, the same also vacuous and long-winded enough to perpetually annoy
person—and, if so, what makes them so. For the Father, the the others and detract from the force of his apologies
answer is simple: because normal people like the Actors and (which are weak enough to begin with).
Manager change so much, they are multiple people
throughout their lives, but never one essential or
unchanging thing. The notion that an individual human has
any fixed identity is “a mere illusion”—but the Characters do Authors, as a rule, hide the labour of their creations. When
have fixed identities, since they are limited by the works in the characters are really alive before their author, the
which they are written. Their existences are finite and latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their
bound, and so they can be defined and have real identities, words, in the situations which they suggest to him; and he has
whereas the openness, fluidity, and indeterminacy of to will them the way they will themselves—for there’s trouble if
“normal” human life means that the Manager, not the he doesn’t. When a character is born, he acquires at once such
Father, is the one who does not know who he really is. an independence, even of his own author, that he can be
Curiously, immediately before this passage, the Manager imagined by everybody even in many other situations where
tries to shut up the Father by reminding him that he (the the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires
Manager) is in charge of the theater—this is the Manager’s for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving
identity, not only because it is his role in the play but also him.
likely because it is how he defines himself when he is not
busy directing a rehearsal. As he challenges the Manager’s Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager
identity, the Father also challenges the Manager’s power in
the theater, making “the very earth under [his] feet […] sink Related Themes:
away” in the process.
Page Number: 46

Explanation and Analysis

I’m not philosophizing: I’m crying aloud the reason of my Pirandello breaks the rules he has the Father explain here,
sufferings. precisely by having the Father explain them. He explicitly
tells the audience that authors are supposed to keep silent,
Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager but by writing a whole play about the struggle over
authorship and independence of Characters from their
Related Themes: authors, he is drawing attention to rather than concealing
“the labour of [his] creations.” Indeed, he does this
Page Number: 45 throughout the play, for instance by staging the Characters’
quest for their author in a theater rehearsal, during the long
Explanation and Analysis
process of preparation and polishing that actors and

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directors must work through before offering a completed this one scene out of the public’s view, preserving some
show to the public. semblance of privacy and autonomy, and ensuring that he
But Pirandello does not break all these rules of authorship remains “an ‘unrealized’ character, dramatically speaking.”
simply for the sake of innovation or rebellion. Instead, he The audience also never learns the full extent of his
does so precisely in order to illuminate another important involvement in, or even partial responsibility for, the deaths
truth about authorship: it is not an individual, one- of his two younger step-siblings.
directional process in which an author produces a finished However, despite his profound objection to the Characters
text out of pure imagination. Rather, it is a collaboration playing out their drama onstage, he has no choice but to
between different figments of an author’s mind: their take part in it—he quite literally cannot leave, no matter how
guiding sense of narrative continuity (represented in the much he wants to. He is incarcerated in his story and on the
play by the Manager), their philosophical inclinations and stage; even if he chooses to “act nothing at all,” he has no
desire to relay a message through their work (the Father), choice but to become part of the action. In this sense, he has
their sense of drama and aesthetic taste (the Step- much more in common with his Father than he chooses to
Daughter), their internal censor (the Son), etc. And authors admit—both of them recognize and lament the fact that
do not invent characters and then confine them to the they are trapped in their lives and bound to their
contexts of their invention—rather, they experiment with disagreeable fates. This is also a commentary on the human
different traits and situations for each character, developing condition more broadly: people are stuck in their worlds
a character in dialogue with the story and developing a whether they want to be or not, with no available escape
story in dialogue with each character. Like a good actor, a and no choice except to make the best of their conditions
good author must stay “in character”—they must allow their and hopefully create some meaning in their lives.
characters to act as they would if they were real, living
people, and Pirandello illuminates this principle by taking it
to its logical conclusion in this play. SOME ACTORS. He’s dead! dead!
OTHER ACTORS. No, no, it’s only make believe, it’s only
pretence!
The SON (to Manager who stops him). I’ve got nothing to do The FATHER (with a terrible cry). Pretence? Reality, sir, reality!
with this affair. Let me go please! Let me go! The MANAGER. Pretence? Reality? To Hell with it all! Never in
The MANAGER. What do you mean by saying you’ve got my life has such a thing happened to me. I’ve lost a whole day
nothing to do with this? over these people, a whole day!
The STEP-DAUGHTER (calmly, with irony). Don’t bother to stop Curtain.
him: he won’t go away.
The FATHER. He has to act the terrible scene in the garden
Related Characters: The Manager, The Father (speaker),
with his mother.
The Child, The Boy
The SON (suddenly resolute and with dignity). I shall act nothing
at all. I’ve said so from the very beginning (to the Manager). Let Related Themes:
me go!
Related Symbols:
Related Characters: The Father, The Step-Daughter, The
Manager, The Son (speaker), The Mother Page Number: 52

Explanation and Analysis

Related Themes:
Six Characters in Search of an Author ends without resolution.
Page Number: 49 Although predicted by both the Father and the Step-
Daughter, the ending is left unexplained and the crucial
Explanation and Analysis questions unanswered: does the Boy kill the Child? How
Just before the play’s fateful final scene, the Manager and does the Boy get the revolver? Why does he shoot himself?
Father insist that the Son participate in their drama by Why (in most versions) does the Step-Daughter laugh
acting a supposedly crucial scene with his increasingly- demonically as she runs out of the theater? What really
desperate Mother. The Son refuses, over and over—and happened between the Son and the Mother? And, most
while the play ultimately goes on, he does manage to keep importantly, do the Boy and the Child really die during the

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rehearsal, or are they merely acting out something that “reality,” frontstage and backstage, and acting a part and
already happened in the past? (If so, how are they around to acting of one’s own volition become caught up in one
do it?) another. Pirandello rejects them resolutely, showing the
In short, the play ends as it began, with no clear distinction audience how absurd, unmotivated, and inexplicable events
between the world the audience is made to consider real are what drive life forward, and how one person’s fantasy
(the Manager and Actors’ rehearsal) and the supposedly can easily be another’s reality. Ultimately, he shows the
fictional world of the visitors who present themselves as audience only one thing that can be taken as an
Characters needing to play out their drama. Just like the incontrovertible truth: they have “lost a whole day” (or
audience, the Manager and Actors themselves cannot tell evening) watching this play and probably have little to show
what is and is not true—opposites like “pretence” and for it.

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SUMMARY AND ANAL

ANALYSIS
YSIS
The color-coded icons under each analysis entry make it easy to track where the themes occur most prominently throughout the
work. Each icon corresponds to one of the themes explained in the Themes section of this LitChart.

ACT 1
The stage directions begin by noting that “the Comedy is Through his initial directions, Luigi Pirandello immediately throws
without acts or scenes,” even though the text is divided into away the conventions of theatrical form. The raised curtain
three acts, separated by natural pauses in the texts. The indicates that, rather than waiting for a fictional world to reveal
curtain is raised from the beginning, with “the stage as it itself, the audience walks into a theater that has been waiting for
usually is during the day time.” At the beginning of the play, the them—without the curtain, nothing clearly separates the audience’s
Actors walk onstage and wait for the Manager so they can lives from the world of the stage. And the setting—a theater
begin rehearsing Luigi Pirandello’s play “Mixing it Up.” The rehearsal of a different Pirandello play—raises questions about how
Manager then arrives, looks through his mail, orders the an author can exist in a fictional world of their own creation,
Property Man to set up the lights, and orders the Actors to whether the play is supposed to be in a fictional world at all, and
begin rehearsing the second act of their play. who the people onstage truly are: actors playing a part, actors
playing actors playing a part, or perhaps merely themselves.

The Prompter reads the stage directions for the Second Act of “Mixing it Up,” whose title refers to the role changes and inversions
“Mixing it Up,” and the Manager tells the Property Man to among actors, authors, characters, and the audience throughout
prepare the set. The play requires the Leading Man to wear a this work, is not a real play (although other versions of this work
chef’s hat and he objects that this is “ridiculous.” The Manager have the Manager and Actors rehearse a real Pirandello play). The
declares that what is really “ridiculous” is having to stage Manager’s ironic disdain for Pirandello—penned, of course, by
Pirandello’s incomprehensible play, in which “the author plays Pirandello himself—foreshadows this play’s absurd twists and
the fool with us all.” He screams that the Leading Man must “glorious failure” to meet genre standards, and also shows how the
follow directions, and that “Mixing it Up” is about him (who Manager and Actors (both the people onstage and the characters
represents reason) “becom[ing] the puppet of [him]self.” The they embody) are caught in a kind of absurd existential bind, forced
Manager and Leading Man agree that neither of them to perform roles they neither chose nor necessarily enjoy. If acting
understand this, and the Manager predicts their production merely means being one’s own puppet-master—turning oneself into
will be a “glorious failure” before yelling again at the Leading what one is not and thereby imprisoning oneself in a prewritten
Man to follow instructions. role—then the validity of the whole enterprise falls into doubt.

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Suddenly, the Door-Keeper and Six Characters enter, Pirandello’s stage directions calling for “a tenuous light” are an
surrounded by “a tenuous light […] the faint breath of their explicit attempt to create ambiguity about whether the Characters
fantastic reality,” which fades when they approach the other are real, illusionary, both, or somewhere in between. Although the
Actors. The first of the Characters, the chubby, roughly audience knows nothing about them, the six newcomers’
50-year-old Father, has thinning red hair and a thick dispositions suggest that they are a family and that there are
moustache, and “is alternatively mellifluous and violent.” The protracted tensions among them. While most literature starts with
second, the Mother, “seems crushed and terrified.” She wears an innocuous status quo and then hurls its protagonists toward a
black and covers her “wax-like face” with a veil. The “beautiful” climax, Pirandello’s Characters seem to have already reached their
teenaged Step-Daughter is also dressed for mourning, and literary climax—the Manager and Actors’ play-within-a-play is
seems to hate the “timid [and] half-frightened” Boy but love the rivalled by the drama that seems to have already taken place among
Child, her young sister of about four, who is clad in white. The the Characters. It notable that, in his revised version of the play,
22-year-old Son hates the Father and does not care about the Pirandello recommends that the Characters wear masks
Mother. throughout the performance, permanently sticking each of them
with a particular emotion.

The Door-Keeper reports that “these people are asking for” the As the audience is likely to do, the Manager—who now stands in for
Manager, who furiously replies that his rehearsals are closed to this audience to some extent—initially takes the Characters literally
visitors, and asks the Characters who they are and why they and thinks they are looking for Pirandello (the author of “Mixing it
have come. The Father shyly reports that “we have come here Up”) or someone to help them fulfill some collective literary
in search of an author,” and the Manager is confused—they are aspiration. Already, the conventional direction of authorship is
rehearsing an old play, whose author is not present. The Step- inverted: rather than an author imagining a world into being, which
Daughter delightedly offers that the Characters can “be your is then actually created onstage, here the Characters appear to be
new piece,” but the Father objects that they need an author demanding that their reality be turned into fiction.
before offering the suspicious Manager to “bring you a drama,
sir.”

The Manager tries to send the Characters away, calling them The Father’s argument takes Pirandello’s meta-theater to another
“mad people,” but the Father insists that “life is full of infinite level: rather than just challenging the line between reality and
absurdities” that apparently lack logic, and that theater is true illusion, Pirandello is now openly denouncing it onstage, forcing the
madness, the opposite of this: “creat[ing] credible situations, in actors performing Six Characters in Search of an Author to
order that they may appear true.” The Actors are offended and publicly discredit themselves and ridicule their profession for an
the Managers asks if the Father really thinks theater is a audience that has come to watch them work. The notion that “life is
“profession […] worthy of madmen.” The Manager insists he and full of infinite absurdities” suggests that audiences and readers
his Actors “are proud to have given life to immortal works,” and might never get a good, concrete explanation for why and how the
the Father agrees that fictional characters are “less real Characters showed up onstage: rather, the audience must simply
perhaps, but truer” than living beings. The Manager therefore cope with the brute fact of the Characters’ existence, no matter how
derides “madmen” at the same time as he admits his job relies absurd, just as the Characters must deal with their author’s
on “the instrument of human fantasy.” abandonment and the Manager must now deal with the impossible-
yet-undeniably-real Characters before him.

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The Father means only to show the Manager “that one is born The Manager’s conventional view of life as real and art as fictional
to life in many forms,” and that “one may also be born a clashes with the Characters’ insistence that, although they started
character in a play,” like himself and the others who have out as ideas in someone’s mind, they are just as real as normal
entered the theater. The Characters “carry in [them] a drama,” people or things. In fact, the Father’s insistence that characters “live
but the Manager has no interest in it, and the Father objects eternally” suggests that, in some way, characters are more real than
that the Manager only does not see them as Characters normal people, more deeply embedded in the universe than humans
because they are alive, rather than from a book. The Step- who change, die, and disappear. The fact that characters outlive
Daughter insists they “are really six more interesting their authors shows that authors never have full control over their
characters,” and the Father explains that their author created creations—not only do their characters have minds and “drama” of
them but never inserted them into a work. He jokes that he and their own, but their work gets interpreted and re-signified
his fellow Characters are lucky to “live eternally” while their throughout the ages, by audiences and actors alike. Turning to the
creator dies. And they have come “to live […] for a moment […] Actors, the Father raises the question of whether an actor inhabits a
in you,” the Actors and the Manager. They are eager to release character or a character inhabits an actor—which is the vessel, and
the drama they contain. which is the substance?

The Step-Daughter begins, yelling about her “passion for him! The Step-Daughter puts on a spectacle, acting out in a way that
[the Father],” declaring that she is “a two months’ orphan,” and seems inappropriately juvenile for an eighteen-year-old—especially
singing and dancing to a brief French tune. The Father declares one who proclaims her sexual “passion.” Although her declarations
her “worse than mad,” and she insists that God will “take this about the family look like senseless ramblings now, they later end up
dear little child away from that poor mother there,” the Boy will making sense. This is the opposite of dramatic irony, with the
do “the stupidest things, like the fool he is,” and she will herself Characters knowing something that their audiences—the Manager
run away because of “what has taken place between him [the and his Actors, and the audience in the theater—do not. In fact, they
Father] and me.” She declares that the Son hates her, the Boy, directly tell these audiences what they do not know. This is thus also
the Child, and the Mother because he is her only legitimate the opposite of verbal irony: the Step-Daughter directly says what
offspring. The Mother faints and the Actors care for her and will happen, giving away the mystery of the family’s pain and the
bring her a chair. The Father lifts her veil, against her climax of the play, but because of the extraordinary circumstances
objections, which leads her to cover her face using her hands of her and the other Characters’ arrival in the theater, no one takes
and protest about the Father’s “loathsome” plan. her at face value and everyone assumes she cannot be telling the
truth. She appears to be an unreliable narrator but ultimately
proves the opposite: she is merely declaring the family’s horrible but
unavoidable fate.

Confused, the Manager asks if the Father and Mother are The confused Manager has to unthink his expectations about the
married—they are—and then why the Mother is dressed like a Characters, whom he—and likely the audience—initially believed
widow. Her old lover (the Clerk) died two months before, the were a conventional nuclear family (married cohabitating opposite-
Step-Daughter explains, but the Father insists the man is not gender parents and their “legitimate” biological children). As
dead—he is merely not present, because the real drama is throughout the play, appearances are deceiving: the existence of the
about the Mother’s children, not her lovers. The Mother cries family is actually predicated on the undermining of the foundational
out that the Father “forced [her] to go away with” the other norms of family and marriage—not only the Mother’s infidelity, but
lover, but the Step-Daughter denies it, claiming she only uses the Father’s complicity in it. The Leading Lady directly announces
this story to make the Son, whom she abandoned as an infant, what everyone already knows: the theater has turned on its head.
feel better. The Step-Daughter forces the Mother to admit that The Actors have become an audience, the Characters have become
she enjoyed her time with her lover, the Step-Daughter’s actors, and the author and director seem to have given up their
father, and then yells at the Boy, asking him why he does not power.
talk. The Father admits that he sent the Mother. The Actors
respond with interest, and the Leading Lady proclaims that “we
are the audience this time.”

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The Son declares that the Father will now bring up “the Demon The Son’s predictions (which later, like all the predictions in this play,
of Experiment.” The Father replies that the Son is a “cynical prove true) again show that the audience receives the drama in
imbecile” and always jokes about this phrase—he believes a reverse, trying to understand what has already happened among
phrase “tells us nothing and yet calms us” in the face of the Characters that makes them act like they do. His insistence that
difficulties and hardships. The Step-Daughter brings up “the the Father will inevitably and annoyingly talk about “the Demon of
case of remorse” and accuses the Father of offering her money, the Experiment” and the Father’s own cynicism about the use of
presumably for sex, in a room whose furniture she recalls in language both suggest that people’s efforts to control and improve
detail. The Manager professes his confusion, and the Father the world always fall short—people can think or talk endlessly and
tries to clarify that all words create misunderstandings because not change the fundamentally random nature of life and inevitable
everyone has their own picture of the world, and so people are nature of fate. As the Father himself points out, his phrase is
always translating between them by means of words. He ambiguous—it “tells us nothing.” It can mean almost anything: a
repeats that he did not reject the Mother, who claims she does vision of life as a grand experiment with no fixed answers and no
not “know how to talk,” and that he loves her humility—but then clear truths to guide human action, the Father’s specific remorse
begins berating her, calling her “deaf, deaf, mentally deaf!” The about the ill-fated “experiments” he performed on his family, the
Step-Daughter says the Father’s intelligence is worthless, and way the family’s events resulted from complex circumstances, or
the Father admits that sometimes “evil […] may spring from even the way creating works of art is a constantly experimental
good.” process, based in cooperation and conflict among various forces
(characters, events, actors, writers, and audiences). Finally, the Step-
Sister directly points to the other event at the heart of the family’s
conflict: the taboo, incestuous liaison between her and the father.

“Biting her lips with rage at seeing the Leading Man flirting with The apparently budding love triangle among the Leading Lady,
the Step-Daughter,” the Leading Lady proposes they continue Leading Man, and Step-Daughter again shows how, in the theater,
the rehearsal, but the Manager and other Actors reject her reality easily blurs into fiction (in which the Leading Lady and the
appeal and ask the Father for his full story. He explains that his Leading Man are a romantic pair, and in which the Step-Daughter is
old clerk became close friends with the Mother, and they actually supposed to live).
turned against him. He fired the clerk, but the Mother grew
depressed, “like an animal without a master.”

The Father admits that he took away the Son “so that he should While the Mother and Father were clearly a poor match from the
grow up healthy and strong by living in the country,” and while beginning of their marriage, the audience never learns what really
he agrees with the Step-Daughter that the Son is now anything happened and has to decide whether or not to trust the Father’s
but, he blames the wet nurse he hired for him (and then version of events. Indeed, the Father’s propensity to blame the
married). He considers this a mistake along the noble quest for woman who nursed his Son for the young man’s relative weakness
“moral sanity,” and while the Step-Daughter sees his visits to (rather than recent circumstances or his own parenting, for
“certain ateliers like that of Madame Pace” as evidence to the example) gives the audience a good reason to believe the Father is
contrary, he insists that “this seeming contradiction” is proof of far from a reliable storyteller when it comes to remembering his own
his masculinity. He admits that, bored with the Mother, he “sent past. While he is doing all the explaining, it is also clear that he is
her to that man” (the Clerk), but “more for her sake than mine,” telling this story—becoming his own author, in a way—in order to
because of his “pure interest” in her well-being. hide the truth, not reveal it. He wants to avoid remorse rather than
express it.

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The Step-Daughter claims that the Father did care, enough to While the Step-Daughter makes it sound like the Father had a
visit her school and watch her from a distance during her perverse, pedophilic, and possibly vengeful obsession with her from
childhood. He is mortally offended but explains himself: with early childhood, the Father portrays his behavior as an attempt to
his house empty, he started obsessing over the Mother’s family, reunite the family, and in fact also an early attempt at repentance
and prove that she was “fortunate and happy because [she was] (to make amends for the sin of sending his wife away). Again, the
far away from the complicated torments of my spirit.” The Step- boundaries of sexual desire and family love are contorted beyond
Daughter remembers being confused, and the Mother keeping recognition, and it is impossible to tell whether the Father’s actions
her out of school, whenever the Father visited (and “came close are forming or destroying the normal domestic family he claims to
to” and “caressed” her). want.

In an aside, the Manager, Father, and Step-Daughter agree that The mini-deliberation about how to turn the Characters’
these events cannot be turned into drama, but the Father supposedly-lived “drama” into a stage drama again merges the three
promises that “the drama is coming.” When the Clerk died two levels of theatrical and temporal action: the audience watching
months ago, the Father heard from the family abruptly, after a events onstage (who learn that the best is yet to come), the
long time—they had moved away and left “no trace” many years Manager hunting for a successful future play, and the Characters
before. The Father laments his age, which is “not old enough to reenacting their drama in the past. Life is evaluated according to its
do without women, and not young enough to go and look for fitness for being turned into fiction, at the same time as the people
one without shame.” He reveals that he indulged his who claim to have lived that life also claim to be fictional beings.
“temptation,” something he thinks most men would do in Rejecting the confidence usually associated with the family in
private but refuse to admit openly—women, he argues, willingly exchange for the public forum of a stage, the Father seems at once
blind themselves to such truths. The Step-Daughter disagrees, brave and dishonest: he announces his (and humankind’s)
saying that women are not blind to men’s lack of love, and the imperfection, but uses that as an excuse to avoid responsibility.
way they use “all these intellectual complications” and
philosophy to try and cover it up.

After the Clerk’s death, the Father explains, the Mother After the Clerk’s death and the destabilization of his and the
became a modiste (dressmaker) at Madame Pace’s atelier—a Mother’s family (including the three children who are supposedly
high-class one, the Step-Daughter insists, but the Mother theirs, the Step-Daughter, Boy, and Child), the family falls into
regrets never knowing that “the old hag [Madame Pace] financial ruin and Madame Pace takes advantage of their
offered me work because she had her eye on my daughter.” vulnerability. This turn of fate was not uncommon in the early 20th
One day, the Father visited Pace’s brothel and met the Step- century, because men were essentially supposed to make incomes
Daughter, before the Mother intervened—“almost in time!” on which their wives and families would be completely dependent.
declares the Step-Daughter, but the Father protests, “in time! (Divorce was not even legal in Italy at the time.) This helps explain
In time!” why Pirandello’s Characters (especially the Father) remain viscerally
committed to the idea of the nuclear family, even while destroying it
over and over again. The Father’s actions are ambiguous again: it is
possible that he was fulfilling a secret and sinister plan to sleep with
the Step-Daughter, out of perversion and/or revenge, and it is also
possible that he merely got unlucky. In short, it is impossible to
distinguish his innocence or guilt, just as it is impossible to decide
whether he or the Step-Daughter is telling the truth about whether
they ultimately had sex in Pace’s atelier.

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The Father took the rest back as his family, but explains that Given the damage he had already caused by sleeping with (or
they all continue to struggle with their conscience, which is the almost sleeping with) his Step-Daughter, the Father’s attempts to
root of their drama. He argues that people have various make amends by supporting his now destitute former family
consciences and personalities, and should not be judged by the actually worsened the situation. His theory about the multiplicity of
thoughts and actions of their worst ones—which is what the identity, which is effectively a way of questioning if there is one
Step-Daughter is doing to him. “real” self that can be opposed to “fake” or “illusory” selves, allows
him to dodge culpability for his actions by claiming that he has
changed or is more complex than his worst actions. But his family
and the play that defines his being as a Character nevertheless
fixate on this singular, most evil of his selves, thereby denying him
the freedom to move on and remake himself.

The Father changes the subject to the Son, who insists he is not While the Step-Daughter and the Father drive the action (and the
involved in the drama. The Step-Daughter declares that the Boy and the Child never talk), the Son and the Mother actively resist
Son thinks he is better than the rest of them, like a “fine the conversion of their collective agony into a public spectacle,
gentleman” surrounded by “vulgar folk,” and has mistreated and perhaps much like the author who abandoned them all. If the play
rejected them—including his own Mother—in the house they means overcoming the past for the Father and gaining revenge on
now share. In a refined and theatrical tone, the Son blames the the Father for the Step-Daughter, for the Son it means bringing
Step-Daughter for brusquely dropping into his house, undeserved public shame upon himself. In this sense, he points to
“treat[ing] his father in an equivocal and confidential manner,” the grotesque aspect of the theater, which invites the public to
and demanding money. The Father thinks he owes it to the partake in stories of private suffering. While the Father seems to
family, but the Son has never known this family and determines believe blood relatives owe one another support, the Son could not
he would “rather not say what I feel and think about” their care less who does and does not share his parentage—rather, he
sudden return. looks at the rest as outsiders. (But the audience later learns that he
has another reason for holding back.)

The Son tells the Manager he is “an ‘unrealized’ character, In commenting on—and predicting—his own development as a
dramatically speaking.” But the Father replies that the Son is in character, the Son explicitly breaks the “fourth wall,” showing the
fact “the hinge of the whole action,” pointing to his effect on the audience that the boundaries between the world of the play and the
frightened Boy, whom the Father says reminds him of one outside it remain porous for Pirandello. The Father’s response
himself—but the Manager promises to “cut him out” because suggests that this lack of development in the Son’s character adds
boys are “a nuisance […] on the stage.” The Father promises that yet another layer of distortion between the “real” events of the
the Boy and the Child do not make it: when the family moves in Characters’ past and the versions they recount and act out for the
together, the drama “ends with the death of the little girl, the Manager, Actors, and audience. Beyond making the same prediction
tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter [Step- about the end of the drama as the Step-Daughter did earlier in this
Daughter],” leaving only the Father, Mother, and Son. The section, the Father also completes the Son’s earlier prediction that
“atmosphere of mortal desolation” they suffer is “the revenge he would mention “the Demon of Experiment,” a concept that
[…] of the Demon of Experiment.” Without faith, the Father remains ambiguous but that he links to the Characters’ meaningless
comments, people believe in their own versions of reality, lose suffering, which cannot necessarily be blamed on one actor or
their humility, and can no longer “create certain states of act—one author, as it were.
happiness.”

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The Manager admits that “there’s the stuff for a drama in all Although just a few minutes before he insisted that the Characters
this,” and the Father promises that the Characters are “born for were “mad” and could not possibly be fictional, now the Manager
the stage […] act[ing] that rôle for which we have been cast.” agrees to be the author—although he receives the story from outside
The Manager offers to connect them with an author, but the himself, rather than conjuring it up from within. As he promises to
Father insists the Manager is the author. The Manager says he turn the Characters’ lives into a text during the next section of the
has no experience, but the Father declares that the Manager play, Pirandello’s Manager sets up a direct window into the process
need not write the drama out, but merely “take it down” as they and failures of authorship. The intermission merges the time of the
“play it, scene by scene!” The Manager agrees and takes the six play (during which the Manager and Father deliberate) and that of
Characters offstage to his office. Meanwhile, the confused the audience (who gets 20 minutes to make sense of what has
Actors decide that this must all be some kind of “madness” or happened so far).
“joke.” They leave, and the curtain remains up for a 20-minute
intermission.

ACT 2
After a bell resumes the action, the Step-Daughter declares The Second Act abruptly begins with a series of metatheatrical
that she is “not going to mix [her]self up in this mess” and runs references from the Step-Daughter. She brings up the title of the
onstage with the Child, who seems confused about where they fictional Pirandello play from the First Act—“Mixing it Up”—and
are. “The stage,” the Step-Daughter explains, is “where people contrasts the “serious[ness]” of theater with the “comedy” of her life,
play at being serious.” She and the Child are in “a horrid but also implies that (by coming onstage) she and the Child are in a
comedy,” where “it’s all make-believe.” But this can be better, “make-believe” world rather than the a “real” one. Her reference to
like having “a make-believe fountain [rather] than a real one” for the fountain and the revolver in the Boy’s pocket make no sense yet,
the Child. The Step-Daughter insists that the Mother does not but make it clear that something sinister is in the works. The Step-
love the Child because of the Boy, who has cautiously come out Daughter’s extraordinary attention to the Child and disdain for her
on stage. The Step-Daughter grabs him, notices a revolver in brother, the Boy, raises the question of whether the young Child
his pocket, and declares that he should kill the Father and/or might actually be the Step-Daughter’s (and not the Mother’s)
the Son. daughter.

The Father and Manager walk onstage and tell the Step- The Son’s sense of entrapment in the Father’s self-serving public
Daughter that they are ready, and just need her for some final spectacle suggests a parallel between Characters’ entrapment in a
business. She reluctantly follows them inside, and the Son and story and Actors’ entrapment in a script, on the one hand, and
Mother exit the office and come onstage. The Son laments that individuals’ entrapment in the world and powerlessness before their
he “can’t even get away” and refuses to acknowledge the fates, on the other. It becomes clear that the Son cares about the
Mother, who complains that her “punishment [is] the worst of family violating normative roles and scripts insofar as it affects
all” and calls her Son “so cruel.” Facing the other way, the Son public appearances and others’ attitudes toward him, while he does
laments the Father’s insistence that their drama can become a not much care about if his parents actually fulfill their supposed
play: the Father seems to believe “he has got the meaning of it roles. Indeed, he actively refuses to engage with them, which is a
all,” and that what happened revealed a side of himself that was central reason for the Mother’s continued agony. In caring more
supposed to be private. But the Son declares that he has been about the appearance of a normal family than actually having one,
forced to publicly reveal his parents’ shameful selfishness and the Son reveals the way that (for Pirandello) these appearances and
failure to truly fulfill the roles of “father and mother.” expectations are deceptive.

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Everyone comes back on stage—the Actors, Property Man, By showing how the Manager and Characters negotiate to create a
Prompter, Father, Step-Daughter, and the Manager, who tells more-or-less realistic set for the scene they are about to reenact,
the Machinist to prepare “floral decorations” and the Property Pirandello again highlights the backstage trickery that is necessary
Man to find the yellow sofa (which does not exist). Against the for the stage to produce its magic. The Step-Daughter’s insistence
Step-Daughter’s protests, the Manager agrees to use the green on finding the right furniture suggests that she is committed to
sofa. He calls for a “shop window—long and narrowish” and a strictly representing the reality of her experience, or else trying to
small table. The Father asks for a mirror and the Step-Daughter wrest control of the narrative from the Father and the Manager
for a screen. The Manager sends the Property Man to find all of (which she fails to do). The decorations she and the Father
the above items, plus “some clothes pegs.” request—the mirror and screen—both overtly refer to vision,
perspective, and identity. The mirror points to how the Characters
gain a kind of self-awareness by putting on their show in front of the
public and how the Actors and Manager see their own profession
reflected in the Characters. The screen points to how the Step-
Daughter’s identity is hidden from the Father during their hidden
sexual encounter.

The Manager sits the Prompter down with “an outline of the The Prompter’s usual role is inverted: he goes from reading the script
scenes, act by act,” and asks him to bring paper and take down to writing it, just as the Manager transforms from director to
the action that is about to unfold in shorthand. He tells the audience. The Manager’s insistence that the Actors play the
Actors to clear the stage and “watch and listen” what transpires Characters points to the contradiction at the heart of the theater, a
among the Characters, and wait to be given their parts. The profession that believes truth is better reached through
Father is confused about the Manager’s plan, which is to have reenactments and distortions of reality than through reality itself.
the Characters rehearse for the Actors, since “the characters Now, with the Characters immediately available and able to author
don’t act” but are “in the ‘book’ […] when there is a ‘book’!” The their own story, the tables are turned and acting becomes no longer
Father protests that “the actors aren’t the characters,” and are necessary. But this kind of direct truth is incompatible with the
in fact lucky enough to “have us [the Characters] alive before Manager’s job.
them.” The Manager asks if the Characters will “come before
the public yourselves,” which would be “a magnificent
spectacle,” but declares that they should not “pretend that
[they] can act.”

The Manager begins giving out the parts: the Second Lady Lead The Father’s loss of confidence in the meaning of his own words
will be the Mother—her name is Amalia, the Father explains, points explicitly to how the Characters’ arrival confuses fiction and
but the Manager says they “don’t want to call her by her real reality for everyone (but perhaps most of all the audience). Although
name,” and the Father grows “more and more confused” before earlier the Manager appeared as the defender of “reality” against
saying that his “own words sound false” to him. The Manager the Characters’ bizarre fiction, now the Father champions “reality”:
agrees to call the Mother “Amalia.” He has the Juvenile Lead that of his and his family’s real lives over the distortions the
play the Son and, “naturally,” the Leading Lady play the Step- Manager is planning for the stage. This question is left unresolved: it
Daughter, who bursts out in laughter and, offending the others, is unclear if actors need to share characters’ “temperaments [and]
declare that she “can’t see [herself] at all in you [the Leading souls,” and there is no way for the audience (or the Manager or his
Lady].” The Father agrees, implying that the actors do not share Actors) to ever access the real “reality” behind the Characters’
“our temperaments, our souls,” but the Manager rejects the experience. Rather, just as the Characters are themselves played by
idea that “the spirit of the piece is in you [the Characters].” The actors on stage, the story is only communicated through layers of
Actors will “give body and form” to their “soul[s] or whatever testimony and retelling. As the story is contested by all the
you like to call it.” Characters, it is up to the audience to decide whom to trust.

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The Father continues to protest, declaring that the Actors do Bringing up the will of the Characters’ author, the Father at once
not represent them. The Manager promises that “the make-up recognizes and throws out the ordinary theory that an author
will remedy all that” and explains that “on the stage, you as controls the meaning of the stories they write. The Manager’s
yourself, cannot exist.” The Father complies: the Characters’ comments show how in stories—whether on the page or on the
author “didn’t want to put us on the stage,” he admits, but he stage—Characters’ fundamental identities are disguised and only
does not know who should play him. The Leading Man ever revealed partially. The point of literature and performance is
interrupts that it should be him, but he and the Father agree not to directly state what characters “feel [themselves] to be,” but
that “it will be difficult” for the Leading Man’s performance to rather to offer a window into their identities through their actions,
resemble what the Father says he “inside of [him]self feel[s] decisions, and interactions. The Father openly defies this norm by
[him]self to be.” insisting on defining himself and his story.

The Manager cuts off the subject and asks the Step-Daughter if Although the Father’s objection is never resolved, the Manager steps
the scene of Madame Pace’s atelier is right. The Step-Daughter in to do what he does best: to continue moving the performance
“do[es]n’t recognize the scene” but the Father agrees it is close forward and decide when the Characters’ and Actors’ feelings are
enough. The Manager sends the Property Man to find an and are not worth the time and energy. In other words, he balances
envelope to give to the Father. out the action onstage, and partially obscures the Characters’ true
identities in the process.

The Manager declares it is time for the “First scene—the Young It becomes clear that the Manager is preparing to stage the
Lady.” The Leading Lady volunteers herself, but the Manager encounter between the Father and Step-Daughter, adding another
means the Step-Daughter, who prepares to act out the scene. metatheatrical layer by having the Characters from the story-
He realizes Madame Pace is not present, and asks “what the within-a-play stage a performance of their own past (a play-within-
devil’s to be done” about her absence. a-theater-within-a-play).

The Father interrupts and asks for the Actresses’ hats and one Madame Pace’s inexplicable appearance defies all the laws of
of their mantles, which he hangs on the pegs that have been put storytelling, which is the point: indeed, her appearance is
up on the stage. He declares that, “by arranging the stage for Pirandello’s way of pointing out that the theater is founded on
her,” they can make Madame Pace appear—and she does. The illusions. The Actors are offended because they work so hard to
“fat, oldish” Madame Pace walks down from the theater’s make stories come to life, when the Characters do it so easily. The
entrance, made-up and “dressed with a comical elegance in Father also curiously points out that “the magic of the stage” is more
black silk.” The Step-Daughter declares that it is really her, the real than the actors who create it, a sum greater than its parts or a
Father proudly agrees, and the Manager and Actors are first truth expressed by means of illusion. At the same time as the Father
surprised and then offended by the Characters’ “vulgar trick.” lampoons the Actors for being mere imitators, Madame Pace herself
The Father yells over them, asking why they prefer their looks like a caricature of a madam (brothel manager), so concerned
“vulgar, commonplace sense of truth” over “this reality which with her appearance and dedicated to “elegance” that she appears
comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage “comical.” And by calling her into existence, the Father proves his
itself,” and which is “much truer than” all the actors anyway. capacity to act as an author, creating something out of nothing.
Whoever acts out Madame Pace will be “less true than” the real
Madame Pace.

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The Father announces that it is finally time for “the scene” to Just as soon as he has authored Madame Pace’s existence, the
begin, but the stage directions note that “the scene between Father loses authorial control—and as soon as she has been
the Step-Daughter and Madame Pace has already begun […] in conjured for the stage, Madame Pace violates its rules, acting
a manner impossible for the stage,” with Madame Pace holding “impossibl[y]” by insisting on privacy, talking so quietly that she
the Step-Daughter’s chin and muttering quietly. This arouses cannot be heard by the audience (who never learns what she and
the Actors’ ire, but the Step-Daughter tells them that “these the Step-Daughter are actually saying).
aren’t matters which can be shouted.” The Manager asks them
“to pretend to be alone” but the Step-Daughter wags her finger
at him, warning that “someone” cannot hear Madame Pace’s
words.

The Father explains that he is this “someone,” and that he has to The Manager struggles to square the Characters’ desire for privacy
wait outside. The Manager rejects this as against “the with the theater’s demand to make everything public—even though
conventions of the theatre,” which requires “the scene between the Step-Daughter is in fact trying to bring the scene closer to the
[the Step-Daughter] and [Madame Pace]” first. The Step- reality of what took place between her, Madame Pace, and the
Daughter hastily explains that Madame Pace has been Father.
complaining about the Mother’s repairs to the Step-Daughter’s
dress and explaining “that if I want her to continue to help us in
our misery I must be patient.”

In broken English—“half Italian, half Spanish” in the original Madame Pace’s manipulative exploitation of the Mother and Step-
Italian script but “half English, half Italian” here—Madame Pace Daughter contrasts with her “most comical” accent, which offers “a
declares she “no wanta take advantage of” the Step-Daughter, little comic relief” in Six Characters in Search of an Author as well
who begins laughing along with the actors at Pace’s “most as the future play the Manager is planning. Nevertheless, this is an
comical” accent. Pace protests that she “trya best speaka utterly inappropriate and borderline cruel time for comic relief,
English” and the Manager agrees to let her continue, which will because it is precisely when the audience is about to watch the
“put a little comic relief into the crudity of the situation.” The horrific incest between the Father and Step-Daughter, which they
Step-Daughter agrees: Pace’s commands feel like jokes, like already know brings the family together by destroying all of their
when she asks the Step-Daughter to meet “an ‘old signore.’” lives in unison.

Suddenly, the furious Mother lunges at Madame Pace—the Although the Characters are supposedly only reenacting previous
Actors restrain her while she calls Pace an “old devil” and events, the Mother reacts to Madame Pace with an understandable
“murderess!” The Father and Step-Daughter try to calm the rage—in fact, it seems that actors are better suited for the theater
Mother down and protest that she and Madame Pace cannot because they lack the emotions of real characters, not because they
be in the same room. The Manager says it “doesn’t matter” can better embody them. (The Characters’ emotions lead them to
because they are just “sketch[ing]” the scene. He sits the pursue personal agendas over the collective task of their
Mother down, and the Step-Daughter and Madame Pace performance, which they frequently throw off-track as a result.) For
continue their conversation. Madame Pace refuses to “do the Manager and the Actors, then, the Characters are only offering
anything witha your mother present” but the Step-Daughter a “sketch” of his play-in-the-making, while for the Characters this
insists on meeting “this ‘old signore’ who wants to talk nicely to “sketch” means reliving their trauma (and for the audience it means
me.” She sends Madame Pace away—Pace walks offstage looking behind rather than ahead, getting a “sketch” of the
“furious”—and directs the Father to make his entry and say Characters’ backstory).
“‘Good morning, Miss’ in that peculiar tone, that special tone…”
The Manager protests that the Step-Daughter is usurping his
role, but orders the Father to do what she asked.

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The Father begins acting his part, approaching the Step- The audience can’t experience this excruciating scene as fresh or
Daughter, who hides her face behind her hat. He asks if she has suspenseful, given the information they already have from the
“been here before” (she has), and then if he can remove her hat Father and the Step-Daughter, as well as the Mother’s extreme
(she does herself). Meanwhile, the Mother watches “with reactions. Indeed, while the Mother’s reactions give life to the
varying expressions of sorrow, indignation, anxiety, and horror,” emotional toll of the Father and Step-Daughter’s sexual encounter,
sometimes crying into her hands and yelling “my God!” The the Father and Step-Daughter themselves seem emotionless, having
Father offers the Step-Daughter “a smarter hat” from among clearly lost the sexual interest and sense of mourning (respectively)
the Actors’ hats (one of them protests, but the Manager shuts that they are trying to reenact. This suggests that perhaps the
her down and orders the action to resume). The Step-Daughter Actors really could do better at making the scene come to life in a
refuses the hat but the Father insists—she gestures to her way that shows the audience its future emotional toll on the family.
black dress and he realizes that she is “in mourning.” He
apologizes but she tells him not to.

The Manager interrupts the Step-Daughter and Father, telling The Manager’s intervention further spoils the scene for the
the Prompter to “cut out that last bit” and stopping the action. audience, and the Leading Lady and Leading Man’s reenactment
Although the Step-Daughter protests that “the best’s coming both forces the Characters to hold a mirror to their own actions and
now,” the Manager asks the Leading Man and Leading Lady to directly shows how the stage distorts reality. The Father cuts off the
re-enact the scene so far, which they begin to do, although the Actors just as the Manager cuts off the Characters, which furthers
stage-directions note that the reenactment is “quite a different the parallels between these two figures (who act as, in a way, the
thing, though it has not in any way the air of a parody.” When primary “authors” of the Characters’ story throughout the play).
the Leading Man enters, the Father yells “No! no!” and the
Step-Daughter erupts in laughter. They both complain about
“the manner, the tone.”

The Manager restarts the scene and directs the Leading Lady Playing the same role, the Step-Daughter and the Leading Lady
and Leading Man on how to act out the first encounter clash over which of them embodies it legitimately. Interestingly,
between the Father and the Step-Daughter, who laughs from while the Step-Daughter’s frustrations are based on the Leading
the sidelines the whole way through. This infuriates the Lady’s acting, the Leading Lady complains about the Step-
Leading Lady and Leading Man, and the Manager yells at the Daughter’s inability to behave herself like a proper audience
apologetic Step-Daughter, insisting that she doesn’t have “any member. The Step-Daughter denies the Leading Lady legitimate
manners” and is “absolutely disgusting.” The Father interjects, access to the truth, while the Leading Lady denies the Step-
defending the Step-Daughter by repeating that the actors “are Daughter legitimate access to the theater.
certainly not us.”

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The Manager again tries to continue the action, declaring that The Manager’s comment about the author—who is considered, in
he “could never stand rehearsing with the author present,” the time and place of this play, to be always a “he”—points to the
because “he’s never satisfied!” The Step-Daughter promises to interpretive work of the stage, which never simply reflects a written
stop laughing. The Manager asks the Leading Man to tell the “story” but always modifies and translates it to a particular
Leading Lady (playing the Step-Daughter) that he performance context. This is not proof that actors do not do justice
“understand[s]” her mourning and ask whom she is mourning to a work, but rather that a work is not bound to the wishes and
for, but the Step-Daughter interrupts to declare that what desires of its author—just as the Characters, to their dismay, find
really happened was the Father told her to “take off this little their story neither told nor interpreted the way they want it to be.
frock.” The Manager declares that this would “make a riot in the Given the Father’s persistent philosophizing, it is reasonable to
theatre!” but the Step-Daughter protests that “it’s the truth!” think this also extends to the way people can never control the
The Manager explains that this does not matter: for the consequences of their actions in general. Beyond questioning the
theater, “truth up to a certain point, but no further.” truth of the stage, here Pirandello questions the value of truth in the
first place—and also gestures to the way social norms constrain and
inform what he is capable of revealing in his plays (here, the level of
detail he can show about the Father and Step-Daughter’s
relationship).

The furious Step-Daughter declares that she refuses to let the The Father, Step-Daughter, and Manager all fight to determine the
Manager “piece together a little romantic sentimental scene meaning of their story: the Father wants to appear as sympathetic
out of [her] disgust” by letting the Leading Lady explain that her as possible and make a public apology (or series of excuses), the
(the Step-Daughter’s) father (the Clerk) just died. Rather, the Step-Daughter wants to expose the Father’s horrific behavior and
Leading Lady must do what she really did: take the Father her own resultant trauma, and the Manager simply wants the story
“behind that screen, and with these fingers tingling with to be riveting and scandalous—but not so scandalous as to break
shame…” social norms—so that people will buy theater tickets.

The Manager interrupts again, explaining that “you can’t have Now, the Father, Step-Daughter, and Manager make their conflict
this kind of thing on the stage,” even if it is true. The Step- over authorship explicit and the Manager explains why stories must
Daughter threatens to leave and accuses the Manager of gesture at rather than directly express the truths they hope to get
having “fixed it all up” with the Father, so that the Father’s across—as an author, he rejects truth for the sake of balance. Yet
“cerebral drama” gets to play itself out, but not the Step- despite claiming to occupy a neutral position, the Manager also
Daughter’s part. The Manager protests that this risks the Step- seems to defend the Father, especially when he threatens to
Daughter’s character “becoming too prominent and retaliate against the Step-Daughter for her apparent moral deficits
overshadowing all the others.” Rather, the play must “pack them (even though she was cheated into being a prostitute and took the
all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable.” It work to provide for her family). This supports the Step-Daughter’s
must “hint at the unrevealed interior life of each” character, suspicions that the Father and Manager are working together, using
instead of having them each “tell the public all [their] troubles theater to hide the truth about and make excuses for the Father’s
in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture.” The actions.
Manager threatens that the Step-Daughter might “make a bad
impression,” having “confessed to me that there were others
before him at Madame Pace’s.”

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The Step-Daughter declares that “he who was responsible for The Step-Daughter points out the ironic contradiction in the
the first fault is responsible for all that follow” which means all Father’s attempt to make amends by publicly re-committing his
of her faults are the Father’s responsibility. She declares that, crime. At the same time, she clearly goes too far by blaming him for
on the stage, the Father’s character cannot face his “noble “all [the faults] that follow[ed]” his crime—although she might also
remorses” unless he sleeps with the Step-Daughter and asks be making a veiled reference to an earlier, incestuous crime that set
her the question that he really asked her while lying in her their relationship in motion.
arms. The Mother “breaks out into a fit of crying” for a long
time.

After the pause, the Step-Daughter asks the Manager if he Again, the Mother reacts to the Father and Step-Daughter as
wants to see what really happened. He says he does, and the though they are really doing what they profess to be only re-
Step-Daughter tells him to “ask that Mother there to leave us.” enacting, and the lines between reality and performance grow even
The Mother yells out, “No! No! Don’t permit it, sir, don’t permit blurrier. While the Manager thinks in terms of his narrative, in which
it!” and explains that she “can’t bear it.” The Manager protests the climax “has happened already,” the Mother remains firmly
that the crucial moment “has happened already,” but the rooted in her lived reality and cannot separate the Father and Step-
Mother declares that “it’s taking place now. It happens all the Daughter’s “acting” from their real actions. Disturbingly, her
time.” And this, she explains, is why the two children (the Boy exasperated declaration that “it happens all the time” suggests that
and the Child) do not talk—they cannot, and “they cling to me to the Father and Step-Daughter’s sexual relationship might not have
keep my torment actual and vivid for me.” They have ceased to ended with this initial encounter, which means that they are both
exist, she insists, and the Step-Daughter “has run away, and has lying throughout the play (and, indeed, might be intentionally
left me, and is lost.” working together and casting blame on each other to distract from
their ongoing relationship). The Mother comments on the dramatic
function of the Boy and Child, whose muteness reflects the way
they are denied identity by the Father and Step-Daughter’s
dominating role in the drama and violation of the foundational
family taboo (as well as by the deaths that the other Characters
have already predicted).

The Father announces that it is time for the Step-Daughter to The Father seems to believe the play will give him the opportunity to
castigate him “for that one fleeting and shameful moment of my perform remorse (even though he does not seem to actually feel it,
life”—the Manager agrees, declaring that this event will be “the but rather only rationalizes and excuses his errors away). In fact,
nucleus of the whole first act,” until the scene in which the this never happens: instead, he and the Step-Daughter merely show
Mother discovers what happened. The Father remarks that the off their incestuous relationship even more grotesquely. The Father
Mother’s “final cry” is his “punishment,” and the Step-Daughter interprets the Mother’s pain as his own, and both re-traumatizes
insists that “it’s driven men mad, that cry!” She remembers her and fails to recognize how he is again making her suffer for his
leaning on the Father’s chest, noticing one of the veins in her own personal gain. For the Manager, too, the Mother’s suffering is a
arm, feeling disgusted, and “let[ting her] head sink on his mere plot device—caught up in the illusions of the stage, everyone
breast.” She acts this out and yells at the Mother to “Cry out as seems unable to see the Mother’s real agony.
you did then!” The Mother pulls the Step-Daughter off the
Father and calls the Manager a “brute!”

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Pleased, the Manager calls the scene “damned good” and For the first time the curtain falls, although it is emptied of its usual
declares “curtain here, curtain,” meaning that he would stop meaning—there is no break in the action or real transition in the
the action in his play at this point. The Machinist is confused play’s theme, unlike between the First and Second Acts. The
and actually lowers the stage curtain, which covers everyone Machinist’s error again collapses the different layers of drama into
except the Manager and Father. The Manager comments that one: the Characters’ play-within-a-play, the future play-within-a-
the Machinist is a “darned idiot” and explains the man’s mistake play that the Manager is planning, and the play that the audience is
to the Father and the audience, before noting that at least he watching all merge for a moment, with the Manager’s imagination
has found “the right ending” for the First Act of his play. suddenly slipping out of his control and transforming into reality.

ACT 3
The curtain goes back up and reveals a changed stage, with “a Although very little time has passed between the end of the last Act
drop, with some trees, and one or two wings” at the back and “a and the beginning of this one, suddenly the play shifts into a more
portion of a fountain basin.” The Characters are seated on the self-consciously theatrical tone, with the arrangement of people
right side: the Mother is with the Boy and the Child, the surly staging a symbolic conflict between the Characters and the Actors
Son avoids the others and looks “bored, angry, and full of seeking to represent them, with the conflict and action balanced by
shame,” and the Father and Step-Daughter are in front. The the Manager. It is unclear whether the stage decorations are integral
Actors are on the left side, also seated, and the Manager “is to the plot or simply red herrings—the Step-Daughter mentioned a
standing up in the middle of the stage, with his hand closed fountain at the beginning of Act Two, but still has not given any
over his mouth in the act of meditating.” context.

The Manager declares it is time to plan “the second act!” and The Mother’s brief line gives the audience some insight into her
promises “it’ll go fine!” The Step-Daughter explains that they mindset and (given her distress at watching the Father and Step-
will cover the family moving back into the Father’s house, Daughter together) her level of desperation when they decided to
despite the Son’s objections—and her own. The Mother move in with the Father. It becomes clear that this recent move only
declares that this was for the better, and that she “did try in gave the family time and space for their conflicts to fester—leading
every way…” The Step-Daughter interrupts—the Mother tried them ultimately to seek resolution, catharsis, and justice through
“to dissuade [her] from spiting [the Father],” but she continues the stage.
to hate him and “enjoy[s] it immensely.”

The Step-Daughter agrees to stop talking, after one final The Step-Daughter again tries to take authorial control over the
comment: the Second Act cannot all be set in the garden, for Manager’s play to ensure it resembles the reality of the family’s past
the Son “is always shut up alone in his room” and the scene events as closely as possible. The Manager’s response comments on
about the Boy “takes place indoors.” The Manager complains the play the audience is watching as much as the play he is
that this many scene changes would be impossible, but the planning—in both of them, which are now increasingly
Leading Man suggests one scene change (like “they used to” indistinguishable, the action must be condensed because of the
do), and the Leading Lady says “it makes the illusion easier.” This theater’s practical constraints as a storytelling method. The Father's
offends the Father, who objects to the word “illusion.” He says objection to the term “illusion” both reaffirms his insistence that the
the word “is particularly painful,” it is “cruel, really cruel,” and Characters (more so than the Actors) really exist and foreshadows
the Manager “ought to understand.” The Manager and Leading the way illusion and reality get completely “mixed up” with one
Man clarify that they are talking about “the illusion of a reality” another in the rest of this scene.
that acting creates.

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The Father apologizes and remarks that this is merely “a kind of Again, the two mirrored sets of players, the Characters standing on
game” for the Manager and Actors. The Leading Lady is the right half of the stage and the Actors on the left, mutually insist
offended: “we are serious actors,” she objects. The Father on their own realness and deny that of their counterparts. These
explains that he is talking about “the game, or play, of your art, parallels get tighter throughout the play: here, the Father insults the
which has to give […] a perfect illusion of reality.” The Manager Leading Lady by miscommunicating precisely the same idea that
is satisfied with this explanation, but the Father declares that the Manager has just miscommunicated to him. Asking the
he and the five other Characters “have no other reality outside Manager about his identity, the Father furthers the parallel between
of this illusion.” The Manager and Actors are surprised. The them—as the play’s two authorial figures, they both represent
Father continues: “that which is a game of art for you is our sole different parts of Pirandello and different forces inherent in any
reality.” And “not only for us,” but (he implies) also for the process of authorship (with the Father as the impulse to explain,
Actors. He asks the Manager who he is—the Manager, elaborate, and divulge, and the Manager as the streamlining process
“perplexed, half smiling,” says that he is himself, and the Father that prevents characters and storylines from falling out of balance).
wonders if “that isn’t true, because you are I…?”

The Manager laughs and calls the Father mad. The Father The professional actors playing Pirandello’s script onstage again
agrees, “because we are all making believe here.” “Only for a publicly ridicule their own profession and, speaking both on the level
joke” can the Leading Man play the Father, who is really himself. of the play-within-the-play and directly to the audience, insist that
The Father declares he has “caught you in a trap!” The Manager people “seriously” confront the fundamental emptiness of human
asks if they have to go through this whole conversation again, identity and existence. Characters’ confinement to art is also what
but the Father says no—rather, he tells the Manager “to gives them identity—whereas people themselves can be many
abandon this game of art” and “seriously” ask himself the things, including many characters, and therefore lack an essence.
question: “who are you?” The Manager declares that the Father This relates to the reputation of actors as unknowable and
has “a nerve”—he “calls himself a character […] and asks me who potentially deceitful people, with no core identity (which allows
I am!” The Father replies that “a character, sir, may always ask a them to easily take on so many others onstage). But the Father is
man who he is.” A character has “especial characteristics,” and arguing that everyone is constantly acting and only ever pretending
so “is always ‘somebody.’” “A man,” conversely, “may very well be to have a real “self.”
‘nobody.’”

The Manager declares that he is the manager and should not be Lacking thoughtful responses to the Father’s probing questions, the
questioned, but the Father continues: he wants to know if the Manager simply tries to close the matter by asserting his
Manager can see his past self, “with all the illusions that were authority—but, for the first time, his authority (the basis of his job
yours then […] that mean nothing to you now.” Does the and identity) begins “sinking away.” It is usurped by the Father, who
Manager “feel that […] the very earth under [his] feet is sinking at once tells and demonstrates for the Manager that human identity
away” when realizing that who he is today will “seem a mere is more of an “illusion” than that of characters. Essentially, he raises
illusion to you tomorrow?” The Manager asks what the point of the classic philosophical question of personal identity through time:
this is, and the Father explains that the Characters admit they people constantly change, and because they are not the same from
“have no other reality beyond the illusion,” while the Manager one day to the next, how can they insist they are the same people
does not see that today’s reality will “prove an illusion for [him] throughout their lives—or, even more obstinately, that they have
tomorrow.” specific defining characteristics that are inherent to their identities?

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The Manager jokes that the Father will next declare his Just as the Manager’s reality is the Father’s illusion and vice versa,
“comedy” to be “truer and more real than I am,” and the Father the Manager’s joke is the Father’s serious belief. Rather than arguing
agrees, declaring that he “thought you’d understand that from that Characters are better or more fortunate than normal people
the beginning.” The Manager’s reality changes, he says, but the because they have identities and lack mortal bodies, the Father
Characters’ does not. The Characters’ reality “is already fixed actually sees it as a kind of eternal condemnation, a life sentence in
for ever,” the Father says, which is “terrible” and “should make the prison of an author or character’s own making. (The Father,
you shudder” because it should make the Manager realize that specifically, will be eternally bound to remember and cope with his
his “reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion,” changing own moral errors.) However, the Father also thinks that normal
based on his emotions and intellect. People receive “illusions of people are no better off because they have to deal with being, at
reality” in the “fatuous comedy of life,” which cannot end, or core, nothingness. If people are constantly performing their
else “all would be finished.” The Manager pleads that the Father identities and “selves” in the “fatuous comedy of life,” then the
“at least finish with this philosophizing” and get back to the play. Father is not ultimately arguing that fiction is better or worse, more
or less genuine than reality: rather, he is arguing that the two
cannot be clearly separated.

The Manager looks the Father up and down and recalls that the The Manager implies as clearly as possible that the Father is a foil
Father declared himself “a ‘character,’ created by an author who for Pirandello, the original author who abandoned the Characters
did not afterward care to make a drama of his own creations.” (but has nevertheless made an eternal imprint of them, and has
The Father replies that this is true, but the Manager calls it brought them to life precisely by letting them lament their own
“nonsense” that “none of us believes” and the Father cannot abandonment). While it may go too far to say the Father’s beliefs
even “believe seriously.” In fact, this “nonsense” reminds the about reality and illusion are all Pirandello’s own, there is a clear
Manager of “a certain author” his company had just begun overlap between the Father and the play’s refusal to draw a firm line
rehearsing. between reality and illusion, and it is interesting to consider the
many parallels between the Father’s life and Pirandello’s own. (Most
notably, just as the Father sent the Mother away years before
because their temperaments were unmatched, Pirandello sent his
mentally ill wife—who could not distinguish between reality and
fantasy—to a mental asylum a few years before writing this play.)

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The Father does not know who this author is, but says he is The Father’s reference to “those who do not think what they can
expressing his own feelings and “philosophizing only for those feel” recalls the very beginning of the play, when the Manager tells
who do not think what they feel” and “blind themselves with the Leading Man that his husband role represents the intellect, and
their own sentiment.” He considers this inhuman, because (for the Leading Lady that, as the wife, she represents nature. The
him) humans are special in their capacity to analyze and think Father and Mother clearly fit this bill, which further supports the
rationally about their suffering. He is “not philosophizing,” he theory that the Characters are actually performing—or
promises the Manager, but “crying aloud the reason of my rehearsing—“Mixing it Up” all along. While the others see him as
sufferings.” inhuman because he philosophizes instead of genuinely facing the
consequences of his actions, the Father seems to consider the
Mother inhuman because she is dominated by feeling. They, too, are
irreconcilable mirrors of each other. The Manager calls the Father’s
monologues “philosophizing” because (as the Father admitted in the
First Act) they serve no purpose except self-gratification and
distraction, whereas the Father thinks that he is somehow making
amends by speaking. His coping mechanism suggests another
interesting reading of this play: as a study of how men use intellect
(the Father), power (the Manager), and the respect they demand to
cover up and distract from their abusive behavior.

The Manager asks if any other character has ever left its role to Pirandello expressly breaks the rule of the theater, repeatedly
monologue like the Father—the Father promises that this has reaching out to show “the labor of [his] creations” and the backstage
never happened “because authors, as a rule, hide the labour of labor that makes theater possible. As though to taunt his critics, he
their creations.” Authors make their characters independent has the Father explicitly point this out here, breaking conventions
and follow them as they go—this is why people can imagine precisely by directly saying that he breaks conventions. Ironically,
what characters would do out of context, in situations they Pirandello also speaks directly through the Father in order to argue
never face in the works they inhabit. that authors lose control of their characters—which is, of course,
how the Characters ended up in the theater.

This is also the curse of the play’s Characters, the Father Although the Manager has just accused the Father of being
explains: they are “born of an author’s fantasy” but “denied life Pirandello, the Characters now call the Manager their author, not
by him.” They have all tried to make the Manager “give them only the gatekeeper to their “stage life” but also, apparently, the
their stage life”—the Step-Daughter agrees, explaining how she original author who abandoned them. Since the Father, Step-
and the other Characters often “sought to tempt” the Manager Daughter, and Manager all represent different authorial impulses
in his room at night. The Father suggests her attempts might (the Father the impulse to explain, the Step-Daughter the impulse to
have been “too insistent, too troublesome,” but the Step- shock, and the Manager the impulse to preserve order), it is also
Daughter blames the Manager who “made [her] so himself” but possible to read this entire play as the internal monologue of an
“abandoned us [Characters] in a fit of depression, of disgust for author struggling with the process of composition. Rather than try
the ordinary theatre.” The Father suggests the Manager to resolve these forces into a balanced work, Pirandello exacerbates
“modify” the Step-Daughter and Son, who “do too much” and each of them to shed light on their conflict.
“won’t do anything at all,” respectively.

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The Manager protests that the Father, too, does too much: he The Father violates the primary rule of writing that most students
is always “trying to make us believe you are a character” by learn in primary school: instead of showing, he tells. Of course,
philosophizing. The Father protests that he is only philosophy is supposed to do the opposite and speak directly. The
“representing the torment of [his] spirit,” and trying “to give [his Father’s argument about the value of philosophy shows directly why
life] a meaning and a value” like any other human being. This is this play is often considered a foundational text or precursor to
why he refuses to agree with the Step-Daughter’s picture of existentialism: the Father sees that philosophy is an attempt to
things—it is his “raison d’être.” But he agrees to adapt to “the make meaning out of meaninglessness, but also that he has no
parts you [the Manager] assign us,” and the Manager explains choice but to engage in it, lest he submit and allow himself to suffer
that he simply “can’t go on arguing” because “drama is action, meaninglessly (like the Mother).
sir, and not confounded philosophy.”

The Step-Daughter suggests that, with all the scene changes The Manager shows again how the theater portrays truth by
that would be required, there is in fact “too much action” distorting reality: it turns the messiness of life and subjective
planned for the drama. But the Manager explains that they experience into cleanly-packaged stories digestible from an external
have to “combine and group up all the facts in one perspective that is never available in day-to-day life. For the first
simultaneous, close-kinit, action,” rather than have the Boy time in the play, the Child and Boy act—but it is altogether unclear
“wandering like a ghost from room to room” and the Child what for. The Step-Daughter’s affection for the Child again calls into
“playing in the garden,” as the Step-Daughter wants. (The Child question whose child the little girl really is, and the Step-Daughter
must play “in the sun,” the Step-Daughter insists—she loves directly cites the stain of taboo and illegitimacy when she says that
watching the Child being “happy and careless” after having to she has been “vile[ly] contaminated” by her relationship with the
sleep next to her own “vile contaminated body.”) Father.

The Manager agrees to have the last scene in this garden, turns At once, after a long deliberation, the authors of the play—the
around, and realizes that the stage is already set. He calls over Father and Step-Daughter who both try to determine its meaning,
the silent Boy and coaches him on how to act “as if you were and the Manager who sets it in motion—find that, completely
looking for someone.” He asks the Step-Daughter if he can give unbeknownst to them, the scene has set itself. The play hurls
the Boy a line, but she says he will not speak—unless the Son forward with no clear author. The Son’s refusal to act sets in stone
leaves. Delighted, the Son begins to walk off, but the Manager his status as an “unrealized character”—the audience never learns if
blocks him on his way out, and the Mom raises her arms, he played a part in the coming “terrible” scene or if this scene is in
“alarmed and terrified at the thought that [the Son] is really fact the reason for his refusal to honor the spectacle of the theater
about to go away.” The Son insists he has “nothing to do with to begin with.
this affair,” but the Step-Daughter and Father insist he will stay
to “act the terrible scene in the garden with his mother.” The
Son refuses: “I shall act nothing at all.”

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The Step-Daughter tests the Son: she gets the Manager to stop The Son, fully aware that he is in a play, sees that his own will can
blocking his way and tells him he is free to go. But he does not, only go so far—he is ultimately bound to his fate and the unhappy
and she insists that “he is obliged to stay here, indissolubly family that has imposed itself on him. He and the Mother are not
bound to the chain.” In fact, even she will leave when it is acting at all—although she does not even seem to understand or
time—but it is not yet. The Mother approaches the Son, and the respond to the context of the stage, but merely acts out the
Step-Daughter comments that the Mother is doing this despite affection and concern for her children that would likely guide her
“how little she wants to show these actors of yours what she behavior in any context. The Son’s dilemma also takes on a double
really feels.” The Mother “opens her arms” but the Son insists meaning: he and the Father are not only arguing over acting on a
he “can’t go away” and will “act nothing!” The Father tells the stage, but also acting as in implementing a decision, taking a step
Manager that he can force the Son to act, and the Step- forward, and overcoming resistance and uncertainty. The Son is not
Daughter brings the Child to the fountain. only being compelled to act in a performance; he is also being forced
to fulfill the collective family fate that he did not choose but cannot
avoid.

The Manager cryptically agrees that “both [should happen] at The Manager’s strange direction reminds the audience that
the same time.” (Meanwhile, the Second Lady Lead and Juvenile everyone already knows what is about to happen. While the Mother
Lead watch the Mother and Son, who are their assigned and Son treat their time onstage as a reality, the Actors continue
characters, respectively.) The Son asks the Manager what he thinking of it as a script. The Son’s exasperation about “liv[ing] in
means and insists that he shared “no scene” with the Mother, front of a mirror” points to the double consciousness required in the
who disagrees: this scene happened in the Son’s room (not in theater, where actors are both the subject controlling the narratives
the garden, the Son notes). They notice the Actors watching and the objects under control, both author and material. This recalls
and imitating them, and the Son declares that it is impossible not only the Father and Step-Daughter’s multiple roles, but also the
“to live in front of a mirror” like this. The Manager agrees and Manager’s line to the Leading Man at the very start of the play,
sends the Actors away. while rehearsing “Mixing it Up”: he is to “become the puppet of
[him]self.”

Next, the Manager asks the Mother what happened in the The Son’s final stand is both a success and a failure: he successfully
Son’s room. “Nothing happened!” insists the Son, but the refuses to participate and show the world his experience of events,
Manager wants it acted out. The Mother agrees and the Father but he fails to stop the show altogether. Just before the final climax,
violently insists that the Son comply, but the distraught Son he again calls attention to the unreliability of all the Characters as
demands they stop, “or else…” The Son asks what the Father’s narrators, not to mention the Manager who liberally adapts their
“madness” means, and why he “insist[s] on showing everyone story for the stage. While they all give competing versions, the Son
our shame.” “Stand[ing] in for the will of our author,” the Son insists on leaving a blank for the reader or audience to fill in and
refuses to stage the story, which was all the Father’s idea from defends the author for trying to put a stop to the Characters’ drama.
the beginning. In fact, the Son insists, the Father has narrated With this, he turns into the play’s final author figure: like the author
“things that have never happened at all.” The Manager asks who abandoned the Characters, the Son is about to have his will
what actually did transpire. overruled.

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The Son explains that he silently left his room and went to the The meaning of the Son’s silence has completely transformed: it is
garden. He trails off “with [an] expression of gloom” and the now clear that he refused to speak because he did not want to
Manager pushes him. He declares that what happened was publicly reenact this horrible trauma. He was silent because of his
“horrible.” Crying, the Mother glances toward the fountain, and pain, not his hatred for or indifference toward the other Characters.
the Manager realizes: the Child has drowned in the fountain. The Boy’s “madman” glare suggests he may have had something to
The Son tries to save her but is terrified to see the Boy do with the Child’s death, but this question is never resolved.
“standing stock still, with eyes like a madman’s.”

Suddenly, there is a revolver shot from behind the trees The end of the play fulfills the predictions the Step-Daughter and
onstage, and all the Characters and Actors cry out and run Father made in Act One, even though the audience might have lost
behind them. The Mother cries for help and the Actors bring track of these a long time before this final scene. As in so many
the Boy’s body to the stage. Some think he is really dead, others ancient tragedies, although the characters and audience alike all
that “it’s only make believe, it’s only pretence!” The Father know the dark prophecy that will be fulfilled, everyone is surprised
declares that it is “reality,” and the Manager replies, “Pretence? when it actually happens. The revolver that the Boy mysteriously
Reality? To hell with it all!” The Manager laments that he has produced at the beginning of the Second Act finally finds a purpose,
“lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!” and the even if its existence remains unexplained throughout, just like the
curtain falls, ending the play. motives and context behind the deaths of the Boy and Child, which
seem to happen for no reason at all—and yet represent a kind of
symbolic response to the family’s trauma. Namely, their deaths at
once show the deep impacts of the Father’s actions on the children
(whose muteness the audience can now come to understand) and
undo the illegitimacy of the family, restoring it to the original
form—Father, Mother, Son. However, this far-from-happy nuclear
family arises only as a curse and a farce, just as the Father’s
attempts to create an ideal family continuously backfire. Curiously
absent from this English edition of the text is the final stage
direction obeyed in nearly all performances of this play, in which the
Step-Daughter runs offstage and out of the theater, screaming
maniacally.

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To cite any of the quotes from Six Characters in Search of an Author

HOW T
TO
O CITE covered in the Quotes section of this LitChart:
To cite this LitChart: MLA
MLA Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of an Author. Dover
Thrift Editions. 1997.
Jennings, Rohan. "Six Characters in Search of an Author." LitCharts.
LitCharts LLC, 29 Jul 2019. Web. 21 Apr 2020. CHICA
CHICAGO
GO MANU
MANUAL
AL
CHICA
CHICAGO
GO MANU
MANUAL
AL Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of an Author. Mineola,
NY: Dover Thrift Editions. 1997.
Jennings, Rohan. "Six Characters in Search of an Author." LitCharts
LLC, July 29, 2019. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/six-characters-in-search-of-an-
author.

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