-----------~~~~--~~------·--------------
California Sta.te University, Northridge
A DRAMATURGICAL APPROACH TO LUIGI PIRANDELLO'S
THF. VISE
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in
Theatre Arts
by
Marlene D. Abramson
May 1987
C2 Lifornin :"t['.te Uni versi t;{,
ii
northr ide;e
Dedic a ted to
Sally Abramson,
Robert Abramson
and
Elden Griswold
iii
Table of Contents
Dedication
iii
Abstract • • •
v
Preface
1
Research Approach
1
Pirandello's Precepts, A Brief Overview
1
Thesis Description
2
Pirandello's Life and Reflections of
His Life in The Vise . . • . . • . .
4
Chapter
1
2
3
Pirandello' s Views on Dramatic Form .
20
Concept of Humor
26
Application to The Vise •
30
Hypothetical Production Concept of
The Vise
. . .
. ••...
39
Production Concept . .
42
Approach to Acting/Directing .
45
Conclusion •
50
Bibliography .
53
iv
ABSTRACT
A DRAMATURGICAL APPROACH TO LUIGI PIRANDELLO'S
THE VISE
by
Marlene D. Abramson
Master of Arts in Theatre Arts
I propose to develop a dramaturgical concept of
Pirandello's one-act play, The Vise.
The scope of this
paper includes the survey of his personal experiences and
philosophical precepts, how they affect his art in general
and a dramaturgy for The Vise, in particular.
Pirandello
viewed life in a manner which was reflected in his work.
In addition there will be a hypothetical production
concept of The Vise.
v
{.l
Preface
Pirandello was concerned with the human condition.
He questioned a one-dimensional life of the human being
and realized that people have many facets that they act
on throughout their life; thus, behavior is based on what
can best suit the individual for a particular objective.
Later, I refer to this concept as "trials of behavior."
Also, Pirandello believed that the human being is multifaceted and functions on different levels of reality.
For example, Pirandello's wife, who had a paranoid
disorder, constantly accused Pirandello of seeing other
women.
She created her own reality, contrary to her
husband's experience.
This is where Pirandello's ideas
can be formulated into one approach to his art.
If people
are multi-faceted, each person functions in a different
reality.
Each person shares common denominators such as
being trapped within the human form, but we all have
different and multi-faceted personalities.
In addition,
Pirandello believed that a person's passion and intellect
are in conflict.
When passion is a predominate emotion,
1
'
2
governing the intellect, the person may have trouble with
a situation with which he or she must deal.
When this
process occurs in one of Pirandello's plays, each of his
characters has a different perception of the situation.
This idea is prevalent in The Vise.
Pirandello, it seems, had a methodical approach to
his plays, and his structural patterns were labeled Life
vs. Form, by Adriano Tilgher, a major contemporary critic.
This is ironic, for Pirandello denied that he approached
a plot with a contrived idea or an Aristolian application.
Pirandello's concentration was on the situation,
and the characters could freely exist in another state of
circumstances.
The structural patterns and philosophical
concepts such as the multi-faceted human being, and the
theatricality of life, seen both in Henry IV and Six
Characters in Search of an Author,
(his two major
successes), are evident early in The Vise, his first
drama tic effort.
Chapter one examines Pirandello's past experiences
by means of his biography.
It also studies Pirandello's
political beliefs and how they are part of his philosophy
of art.
In addition, the first chapter focuses on his
main concerns.
Chapter two explains why Pirandello was
interested in perception, reality and truth.
Also men-
tioned is Pirandello's concept of humor, which is a key
element in his work.
Next is his dramatic theory which
explores the s true ture of his play, particularly
Th_~'{_Ls~.
3
Chapter three approaches Pirandello's theories on acting
and directing.
Chapter three also contains the production
concept of The Vise.
CHAPTER 1
Pirandello's Life and Reflections of
his Life in The Vise
Luigi Pirandello was born to Stefano Pirandello and
Caterina Ricci Gramitto, in Grigenti, Sicily in 1867.
Pirandello had two younger brothers 1 two younger sisters
and one elder sister.
miner.
Pirandello's father was a well-off
It was his father's success that gave Pirandello
the opportunity to study and work where his interest in
literature could be explored.
Pirandello attended the University of Bonn, Germany.
While in his early twenties, he wrote a dissertation in
German about his native Sicilian dialect.
During this
period, Pirandello read the works of poets such as Tasso's
dialogues, Benvenito, and others.
Before his decision to
become a writer, Pirandello had the chance to become a
lawyer and decided against the idea.
focused solely on literature.
While in Rome, he
He worked in journalism
and business, before he began writing short stories.
In
1897, he accepted a position as Professor of Italian
Literature at the Roman Normal College for Homen.
Pi ran-
della's father arranged Pirandello's marriage to the
daughter of his business associate.
After the birth of
two sons and a daughter to Pirandcllo, trouble struck the
4
5
family as a mining disaster bankrupt Pirandello•s father
and partner.
Prior to the tragedy, Pirandello had many
opportunities open to him to write, as finances were
stable.
However, he was then forced to take a position
as a professor which he detested.
His wife became men-
tally ill (after miscarriages), which caused her to
persecute Pirandello with delusions of jealousy.
This
created bitterness and misery in Pirandello•s life.
Thomas Bishop notes that Pirandello 1 s "misery was
reflected in his writings with a pessimistic aura."l
Pirandello was influenced by his wife•s perception
of reality that did not exist.
His wife•s illness
contributed to Pirandello•s own introspection and his
interest in the human soul.
She had inspired him, and
had forced him, "by continual onslaught, to enclose
himself still more in himself."2
Prior to Pirandello•s
wife being institutionalized, he observed her living in
her reality.
Perhaps he saw her illness as just another
way of living, one which had multiple levels of reality,
which did rtot necessarily correspond with the reality
experienced by others.
As it is stated earlier, the
perception of reality must be questioned as it is partially self-evident truth.
During his last years, Pirandello struggled against
the cinema and supported the theatre.
Pirandello died, he wrote:
in my heart .
A year before
"It is enough for me to know
. that I have been a pure instrument in
6
the hands of someone above me and above everybody.
rest is of no importance."3
The
Before Pirandello's death in
1936, he had been recognized by Mussolini for he identified with his politics, and had many literary successes
in both short novels, short stories and plays.
Pirandellc
became ill with heart pains and deterioration in general.
One of Pirandello's large concerns was his interest
in politics, and he met with Mussolini in 1923.
Piran-
dello insisted on keeping his politics separate from his
art form, but did not succeed.
Pirandello was disgusted
with pre-meditated reasoning as a beginning to art forms.
Pirandello's philosophy of art could also be found in his
political views as fascist:
"He was fascinated by the
repeated declarations of Mussolini who claimed the doctrine of the fascist was action and preconceived organic
ideology was to be rejected."4
This ideology is also an
expression of Pirandello's philosophy of art.
Pirandello
wrote a tribute to the Italian dictator:
Mussolini can receive only blessings from somebody
who has always felt the imminent tragedy of life
which .
. requires a form, but senses death in
every form it assumes.
For, since life is subject
to continual change and motion it feels itself
imprisoned by form:
it rages and storms and finally
escapes from it. Mussolini has shown that he is
aware of this double and tragic law of movement and
form and hopes to conciliate the two.
Form must not
be in vain and empty idol.
It must receive life,
pulsating and grieving.
So that it should be
forever recreated . • • 5
7
Pirandello paid tribute to Mussolini.
He related
to Mussolini's ideology in the same manner as he views
his own art:
I have always had the greatest admiration for
Mussolini and I think I am one of the few people
capable of understanding the beauty of his continuous creation of reality:
a stationary and
fascist reality which does not submit itself to
any one else's reality.
Mussolini is one of the
few people who knows that reality exists in man's
power to create it, and that one created it only
through the activity of the mind.6
Pirandello said that he kept politics separate from
his art; however, it seems that Pirandello's philosophies
of art parallel Mussolini's concepts of politics.
Pirandello had a difficult home life as an adult.
Some
of his ideas, which may have been developed in adulthood,
can be traced in his plays and can be noted in the essay,
"Life Versus Form."
When Pirandello speaks of the trag-
edy of life, he is identifying with the pessimism in
his own life and man's fate, death, which is inevitable.
When he speaks of life as being volatile--he is talking
about man's trial of behaviors and multi-faceted aspects
of the personality which human beings endure.
Passion
surfaces and there is a struggle for it to be unleashed
in spite of the intellect, or in spite of the trap of
the human form.
Finally, Pirandello speaks of form
receiving life as if to say that the form is born first
and then it is endowed with life.
8
p •
Summary of The Vise
The Vise, which was Pirandello's first play (1898),
was originally produced in Rome in 1910.
The play con-
cerns a conflict regarding an affair between the wife,
Guilia, and her husband Andrea's business associate,
Antonio.
Guilia and Antonio experience guilt over their
affair because they fear that they are suspected by
Andrea.
Andrea slowly reveals that he knows about the
affair, by telling a story about a man they know who was
beaten by his wife's lover.
Pirandello employs a mir-
roring technique when Andrea tells his wife the story,
while Andrea is in fact reflecting upon his own life.
Guilia pleads with Andrea to kill her, but Andrea responds indifferently.
a gunshot is heard.
Guilia goes into the bedroom and
As the gunshot is heard and the
men argue as to who is responsible,
the question remains
about whether Guilia's death was suicide, or murder.
Torn Dtiver, in The History of the Modern Theatre:
Romantic Quest and Query, notes one of the elements such
as reflecting,
play:
to be found in the typical Pirandello
"The theatrical is man's fate.
it by consciousness."?
He is condemned to
In Pirandello's critical essay,
'Spoken Action,' he called this "The act of living."O
This writer believes that the intellect controls the
mind, and refers to it as the conscious mind.
conscious mind is not active,
When the
the unconscious mind takes
over in order to solve problems.
When the unconscious is
9
at work it can yield to the emotional, rather than the
intellectual
facultie~.
In the Pirandello play, the
situation is more important than the plot.
According to
Pirandcllo, the situation is "the representation of the
passion of human experience, the pathos of existence."9
This is very apparent in :rhe
'{_~_?e.
The relationship
among the throe characters in the play will become turbulent and end in a passionate crime of murder or suicide--depending on how one may perceive the action and
situation.
It is the circumstances in The Vise in which the'
characters reflect upon using the conscious mind.
The
issue is the conscious mind versus the passionate emotion,
or duty versus will, and the situation becomes a process
of management for the character; the characters are
conscious of their circumstances and they are forced to
deal with it as prisoners of their consciousness.
Pirandello addresses the consciousness as separate from
the self, but believes that there are four "souls" causing
conflict:
instinctive, moral, emotional and social.
Any one of these may be dominant at a given time,
and may thus give rise to a spurious interpretation
of ourselves--of our inner being that we know nothing
of, because it never reveals itself in its entirety,
but sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, as
life's events unfold.10
This is the idea of the multi-faceted person who is
unable to be seen in his/her entirety, but rather using
parts of the self to work with external roles and situa-
10
tions--those are the trials of behavior which may or may
not be helpful to the individual.
"The prison of con-
sciousness, once it has been formed in the individual
by the necessities of social life, it is not easily
escaped."ll
Pirandello observed "that in 'real life'
people tend to turn themselves into character stereotypes.
They hope in this way to ensure their respectability, but
the price they pay is self-alienation."12
Pirandello's plays functioned on multiple levels as
he had many ideas about
art~
he was particularly sensitive
to the human condition, believing that personal identity
is shaped by the roles and situations with which we have
to deal, as opposed to being internal or individual.
Here I disagree with Pirandello.
Pirandello did not acknowledge things inherent to
the individual, including temperament, gender and class.
It is the individual who tries to control his environment.
Man responds within a certain predicament in the attempt
to control his environment, therefore, man often traps
himself within a certain predicament and responds to it
internally and individually.
Perception, which is one of
Pirandello's great concerns, also originates internally
or individually, and through the process of cognitive
functioning.
his plays.
These concepts are significant and permeate
Pirandello's work has a standard form seen in
the structural patterns in his plays, which suggests some
premeditated reasoning, to which he is against, particu-
11
larly in tho plot.
In addition, each person has his own
passion, and he or she responds with this emotion for
different reasons.
For example, two people would not
respond with the same intensity of passion, but rather,
the passion originates as part of an internal process,
and it is an individual expression.
Pirandello' s
~1ajor
Concepts
Pirandello was concerned with the clash of multifaceted conditions of humans and the idea of a distinct
identity.
He was pre-occupied with the idea that people
wear masks in order to cope with being multi-faceted.
People try to adapt and adjust to the circumstances they
encounter by engaging in different roles.
traced to infancy.
This can be
Hhen an infant has a certain need, he
or she will test behavior until his or her needs are met.
This type of behavior can be compared with Darwin's theory
of Natural Selectivity, i.e., those that survive chose
the correct trial of behavior;
individual to survive.
the role that allows the
In The Vise, Guilia's guilt over-
whelmed her and she could not successfully play the three
roles of mother, lover and wife.
Pirandello was also
concerned with "the impossibility of determining absolute
truth because of the layers of illusion with which man
protects himself."l3
The mask is a crucial part of the construct of the
inner self:
12
A mask can be a [iction created as part of a
construzionc, of which a person using it is cons-ta-n"tfY-::-1wa-re.
It can also be a fiction that
comes to be believed in by the individual as his
true reality.
A mask can also be a construct that
is forced upon the person by society in order to
protect itself, especially if that person's behavior threatens to endanger the established order.l 4
Among Pirandcllo's other major concepts is the notion
that each person has to deal with intellect and passion,
which arc in conflict.
This idea is present in The Vise.
It can be assumed that both Antonio and Guilia were aware
intellectually of their duties as wife and business
associate: however, it was passion which was in control
of their behavior.
Their conscious, intellectual aware-
ness of their social position and reflection about the
affair created guilt.
Pirandello wrote:
"One of the
novelties that I have given to modern drama consists in
converting the intellect into passion."l5
According to
Walter Starkie, in the Pirandello play, "the intellect is
the fundamental cause of drama."l6
This is manifested
when the characters reflect upon their circumstances and
have an awareness about "the act of living, suffering,
and tormenting themselves."l7
Oliver, in Dreams of Passion, summarizes Pirandello's
interests as:
"1) illusion versus reality, 2)
the
difficulty of establishing one truth, 3) one personality,
or one vision of life, and 4)
the process of perception
that is at the basis of his dramaturgy."l8
I agree with
this assessment and believe that each one of these ideas
13
can be found in The Vise.
I have found that there is a
general consensus regarding the philosophical ideas in
Pirandello's plays.
categories:
1)
I have arranged them in to two
the human situation is the dilemma of
man being trapped in his human form; unlike insects and
other creatures, he cannot function on instinct or the
subconsci.ous in order to survive.
2) Cognitive function-
ing is how man experiences the world and his experiences
arc reduced to empirical factual knowledge;
therefore,
appearance and reality become questionable.
The first category defines the human condition, and
it can be discerned that this is a univeral condition--a
universal dilemma signifying an unescapable plight.
Man
chooses to adapt to this plight with trials of behavior
and with the use of the masks in order to survive.
This
dilemma is inherent in every person, but every person is
uniquely multi-faceted, wearing different masks.
Every
person has multiple layers of illusion, and this is universal, but each person must adhere to his/her empirical
factual knowledge.
Although the dilemma is to be trapped
inside the human form, we are flexible and this is what
gives us the ability to perceive things differently from
each other.
This leads to another problem; it is because
we usc cognitive functioning to perceive the world that
appearance and reality become an issue.
Oliver expresses this in Dreams of Passion:
"Inher-
ent in Pirandello's use of theatrical concepts of 'build-
14
j~~~~~sel~-~·
is the assumption that many of the
'fictions' in which men choose to clothe themselves are
theatrical illusion."l9
Of course the mirror he is using
to communicate this insight is also an illusion, with
actors pretending to be people other than themselves.
People are caught in living in a web of theatricality.
The mask is a key element in Pirandello's work.
mask is a construct of one's personality.
The
"The mask is
used to create an image of a cohesive persona, disguising
multiplicity.
The mask is a projected person created so
that a consistent image is present, one that is effic!ent
or safe to expose at that time."20
Guilia wears a mask
of lover when she is with Antonio.
This mask allows her
to deal in the circumstances of romance, intrigue and
desire.
When discussing the mirror and mask, Roger Oliver
focuses on an integral part of Pirandello's dramaturgy:
By structuring the characters' relationship with each
other through those devices, Pirandello attempts to
present his audience with a vision of itself that
will generate awareness of the presence of these
'theatrical' devices in non-theatrical circumstances;
that is, in every day life.21
Pirandello felt that art is life, and the phrase "nontheatrical circumstances," I believe, is used to mean
life itself.
According to Pirandello: "Art is life, not a reasoning process."22
The layers of illusion become the layers
of reality to the person wearing the mask.
There are
various levels of existence; the actor who is a person
15
creates a character who creates or "builds oneself up"
to the mask that he must wear.
The mask is an object
reflecting reality and that reality becomes life.
Andrea wears a mask projecting the persona of husband.
When Guilia's affair interferes with Andrea's persona,
his reality is disturbed.
Pirandello was interested in human behavior and
perceptions of truth.
According to Pirandello's 'Spoken
Action,' he liked to look into the inner self:
Any fDsition of relativism, based on the suggestion
that an individual personality is multi-faceted and
everchanging, is then presented, not as an abstract
generalization, but as a perception into human
nature dramatized for an audience through
characters. 2 3
Pirandello was impressed with the critical essay of
Tilgher.
His essay contains Pirandello's concepts:
the
masks, multi-faceted personality, and the abberation of
the truth.
Tilgher discusses Pirandello's concept of
the "life form":
The ideas has no value in art until it acquires
feeling, until in entire ~ossession of the spirit,
it becomes strong enough to arouse the images
capable of endowing it with a living expression.
Art is short, is life, not a reasoning process.24
Pirandello meant to display life and look into human
behavior rather than concentrate on form.
Tilgher's
'Life Versus Form' addresses Pirandello's concerns:
First, there is a definition of nature, which alienates
man from other
creatures~
the primary message is that
man feels himself live and he cannot escape this
16
theatricality, while nature does not feel oneself live.
Another concept is what is terms by Tilgher as the "flux"
which means continuing life and while life is a form
that continues onward and the life that know form and
limits, and all living things are condemned to death.
Tilgher speculates about life as if it were energy, and
it is separate from "fixed form" (i.e., tradition,
convention, etc.).
Pirandcllo and Tilghcr shared mutual admiration for
each other, and Pirandello agreed with Tilgher's concepts
of Pirandello's art.
Tilgher sees antithesis as the key
concept into Pirandello's art.
Another concept in the
essay is the "Dualism of life and form."25
Life finds a
way into a form and confines itself to that form.
This
concept reflects human nature and trials of behavior or
consciousness, which Tilgher comments upon:
"the essence
of drama lying in the struggle between life's primal
nakedness and the garments or masks with which men must
by all means insists on clothing it."26
Tilgher also
raises the thought of living life, and believes this to
be impossible.
He considers controlling the construc-
tions, and advocates participating in the forms but not
becoming a mold in any one form.
I believe that Tilgher
has insight into the essence of Pirandello's work and
that in "Life versus Form" has expressed the concepts of
Pirandello' s art.
Tilgher has touched on the dichotomy
of a "life-form system" where the dialectic, the anti-
17
thesis, illusion, feeling oneself live,
theatricality,
masks, and trials of behavior exist throughout Pirandcllo's work.
Next,
these concepts will be discussed
in relationship to dramatic theory.
18
Endnotes - Chapter 1
lThomas Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theatre
(New York:
New York Univers1ty Press, 1964), p. 3.
2Gasparc Guidice, Pirandello:
A Biography (New
Jersey:
Oxford Univers1ty Press, 1975), p. 101.
3Guidice, P• 102.
4Guidice, p. 101.
5Guidice, p. 101.
6Guidice, P· 101.
7Tom Driver, The History of the Modern Theatre:
Modern Quest and Query (New York:
Dell Publishing Co.,
1970), p. 392.
BDriver, p. 392.
9Driver, p. 394.
10Driver, p. 394.
11Driver, p. 403.
12Driver, p. 407.
13susan McQuire, Luigi Pirande1lo (New York:
Press, 1983), p. 72.
Grove
14 ~kQu1re,
.
p. 73 .
15walter Starkle, Luigi Pirandello 1867-1936.
(California:
University of California Press, 1965, p. 33.
16starkie, p. 33.
17 stark ie, p. 3 3.
18Roger Oliver, Dreams of Passion (New York:
York University Press, 1979), p. 20.
19oliver, p. 17.
2 Oo 1 i v e r, p. 12.
New
19
2lolivcr, pp. 12-13.
22 0.1ver,
] .
p. 5.
23 0.1ver,
1'
P· 5.
24Eric Bentley, The Genius of the Italian Theatre
(New York: New American-Llbrary, 1964), p. 145.
25starkie, p. 23.
26 Star k'
.1e,
p. 2 3.
CHAPTER 2
Pirandello's Views on Dramatic Form
Oscar Budel observes:
"Relativism is indeed the
basic, fundamental category which informs all other
dimensions of Pirandello's work."1
"Relativism" is the
equivalent of "perception" in Pirandello's work.
In the
human race perception requires a process known as empirical knowledge and cognition.
involved.
The metaphysical is also
Essentially these three processes can be
considered as self-evident truths.
Empirical knowledge
is an intellectual process which doesn't employ a scientific system.
Cognition involves perceptions or ideas,
which are gained by an intellectual process.
The
meta~
physical involves perception of outside circumstances (as
opposed to inner life) and the perception only relates to
the extent of the problem and its outside circumstances.
Pirandello's work has been described generally as feeling
and reflecting; in the case of the metaphysical, one
reflects upon the manifestations of reality, perceives
and feels.
With these processes everyone functions on
self-evident truths.
In Pirandello, Budel relates Nietzche's concept:
"that what we called the truth was nothing but illusions
and fictions that made human life possible."2
20
Pirandello
21
addresses this statement throughout this work.
It is the
"illusions" and "fictions" what may be termed "masks" and
"trials of behavior."
Self-evident truths (hereafter,
truths will be referred to as perceptions) are the truths
of masks and all views arc equal, which causes the
relativity of truth to become an issue.
Because of the
individual perceptions there can be an abberation of the
truth, and the concept of reality versus appearance
becomes a concern.
The relativity of truth is illustrated in The Vise.
One wonders who is at fault for the death of Guilia.
All
three characters played a part in Guilia's death, and
they share responsibility equally.
escalate Guilia's guilt.
husband and wife.
Andrea helped to
Antonio was the wedge between
All perceptions of the characters are
tempered by disillusionment.
Andrea was disillusioned
over their romance when he first suspected his wife and
Antonio were having an affair.
The relationship between
Guilia and Antonio failed as they were caught in a social
and moral wrong.
The characters were forced to play
multiple roles and this too contributed to their
d isi llus ionmen t.
According to Antonio Illiano, in Pirandello:
On
Humor, "the human soul is troubled, volatile, multiple,
and cannot be lessened to one dimension."3
It is this
fact that causes the plight of humans, and the characters
were obviously going to fail with their relationships.
22
! !10
charac tors did not use reason in order to justify or
solve the problem, but rather, acted out of passion.
Andrea supplied the impetus to Guilia which caused her to
kill herself.
Budel believes, "that human reason is active in
playing the role in developing illusions and fiction."4
This is similar to saying that the illusions arc created
out of the conscious mind, which is what Pirandello
himself contends.
Budel observes Pirandello "unmasking
and destroying these illusions."5
According to Budel,
one character experiences a realization of the "Absolute
relativity of his beliefs."6
In The Vise, Andrea realizes that his wife is not
only a lover to him, but she is also a lover to his
business associate.
It is not evident in the script as
to how this is discovered.
Apparently, before he received
information, he believed that he was under the illusion
that he was the only one in her life.
If he did not find
out the truth he would have carried on the illusion.
It
can be said that Pirandello set out to unmask the illusions.
In The Vise, Pirandello explored the circumstances
and conditions of the characters by trying to get to the
truth.
They were trapped in mul tiplc layers of reality.
Budel observes:
"Their relentless search for the
truth of their proper identity harrasses the characters.
The suspicion of making uncomfortable discoveries lurks
behind every thought."7
This idea is evident in The
p •
23
Q
Vise.
Both Antonio and Guilia did not easily accept the
fact that they were lovers and they were very concerned
with being exposed by Andrea.
When the husband discovers
the truth he uses a story about another couple experiencing disloyalty.
When he tells tho story to Guilia, he
is reflecting upon their own reality, thereby, breaking
the illusions that they have about their identities.
The
mirroring effect occurs when Andrea tells a story of what
is happening in his own life, and attaches the event to
another couple.
Guilia hears of the events in her own
life, while it is reflected to her by the circumstances
of another couple.
This mirroring effect adds another
layer of reality to the play, and the truth is "unmasked."
There is another dimension in the Pirandello plays,
in which the audience becomes part of the process.
They
project a persona onto the characters, and the audience
becomes part of the mask.
In Pirandello Theatre:
The
Recovery, Ann Paolucci notes the elements in Pirandello's
plays
w~th
which the audience has to confront:
"shifting
relationships, juxtapos~tion of roles, and masks."B
Six Characters in Search of an Author contains some
of the same elements found in The Vise, and that Tilgher
once defined.
The audience becomes involved in the
process of theatre; in this case, the "actors" become the
"characters."
The play demands that the characters have
multiple roles:
there is the audience, the "actors," and
the characters.
The "actors" who become the audience
'
24
also have the roles of leading lady, leading man, and
twelve others with theatrical positions as their names.
The Father's comment on life-forms supports
Pirandello' s concern:
"One is born to life in many
forms, in many shapes, as tree or as stone, as water, as
butterfly, or as woman."9
In this play, Pirandello had
the "characters" alive and independent:
"The author who
created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able,
materially to put us into a work of art."lO
The most
significant element of Pirandello's plays are the charac ters, and the Father proclaims:
"The drama is in us,
and we are the drama."ll
In the same speech is another of Pirandello's
interests:
"Passion drives us on to this."12
This idea
is present in The Vise, as it is passion which drives the
characters to ruin.
Another important concept is the
different ways in which people perceive things and this
is made clear by the Father's speech:
Each one of us has within him a whole world of
things, each one of us his own special world, and
how can we ever come to an understanding if I put
in the words I utter the sense and values of
things as I see them: while you who listen to me
must inevitably translate them according to the
conception of things each one of you has within
himself. We think we understand people, but never
really do.l3
The question of perception is an important issue in The
Vise~
one wonders who is responsible for Guilia's death.
Pirandello has the Father discuss multi-faceted
consciences and the trouble one has because we do not
25
have one personality, and because of this dilemma we
should not be judged for one action.
Six Characters
in Search of an Author contains Pirandello's artistic
and philosophical beliefs, which are also found in The
Vise.
Andrea becomes a vicious, jealous husband and he
lures Guilia into her death.
The plot is set so that all
the characters can be considered correct or incorrect in
their views as to who killed Guilia.
The ways in which
people perceive the truth or what they believe to be the
truth differs among individuals.
The truth is relative
to one's perceptions and the audience's resulting feelings are based on metaphysics and the cognitive--the
metaphysical relating only to external nature and extending to the real only as far as that problem is related
to the reflective and cognitive.
"Pirandello destroys
the opposition between the 'reality' of life and the
'illusion' of the stage, each becomes, in turn, the
image and the reflection of the other in a continuous
spiral~ng toward identity."l4
Life being a continuous "flux" of constant moving
energy, the relativity of truth must be as volatile as
life itself, and this becomes a prime issue in Pirandello's work.
in The
Vis~,
At one time in their lives, the couple
must have been happy together.
They had
decent living conditione and children whom they loved.
However, at some later period in time there was a
change.
Life took on a new form for the married couple.
26
Obviously, what was once the truth no longer applied and
there became a new truth that was relevant.
The charac-
ters as well as the audience·relates to the external
nature of the situation and its manifestations.
The
audience and the characters rely on experiences which
can be reduced to empirical factual knowledge.
This is
the metaphysical aspect in the Pirandello play.
One of Pirandello's most significant philosophies is
the nature of identity; he sought interest in the inner
core of the human soul and Paolucci states this reality
as:
We zigzag to the center of being and move through
paradoxes into what is not organic but is fragmented
moments of existence. The Pirandellian dialectic is
not a simple opposition leading to statement but a
kaleidoscopic suggestion of purpose and consistency.
The Pirandellian protagonist is a stratification of
attitudes, emotions, states of being, often
contradictory intentions, not a consistent whole.
Between his appearance on stage and his retreat from
it, he himself, becomes his fellow protagonist on
stage, and most important--the activated audience
must all unlearn what was taken for granted and
trace the internal pattern in that external fragmented mosaic.l5
It is impossible to red~ce an identity to singular form.
The complex and multi-faceted characters become part of
the matters of relativism of truth by providing different
ways of perceiving a situation.
Concept of Humor
Pirandello's "L'urmorismo" is an essay about the
concept of humor which is a key element to his work.
27
This is best explained by Roger Oliver who notes as an
often quoted passage of Pirandello's:
I see an old woman, with her hair dyed, greasy
all over with who knows what kind of horrible
concoxtion, awkwardly made up with rouge and
dressed in youthful clothes. I begin to laugh.
I become aware that this old woman is the opposite
of what a respectable old woman should be.
I can
thus, after this superficial encounter, stop
myself at this comic impression. The comic is
exactly this, an awareness of the opposite. But
now, if reflection intervenes and suggests to me
that this old woman probably does not experience
any pleasure in dressing up this way, like a
parrot, but that perhaps she suffers and does this
only because she is pitifully deceiving herself
that, dressed as she is, hiding her wrinkles and
white hairs, she will succeed in keeping the love
of a husband much younger than herself, then after
realizing this I am no longer able to laugh, as I
did before, because this reflection has worked on
me and made me look more deeply within myself.
From the first awareness of the opposite I have
made myself pass to this sentiment of feeling of
the opposite.l6
The viewer has perceived the old woman in two very
different ways.
The viewer becomes aware of the picture
visually, and on an intellectual level, this causes
laughter.
Secondly, the laughter ceases as thought and
feeling.are combined.
The picture becomes more profound
as the viewer begins to'look beyond the first impression,
and becomes sad about a woman who is trying to hide her
age.
The viewer's perception has changed and the picture
of the old woman is. no longer humorous, but rather,
serious.
The audience does not know beyond that which is
shown on stage and the perceiver often supplies the
details, during reflection, as in the story with the old
woman.
She has created an illusion with the use of make-
28
up and costume.
ress.
She is a character and she is an act-
However, the observer becomes aware of her as
an actress because of the poor make-up job and she is
laughed at.
She has not intended to provoke the laugh-
ter, and felt that the make-up and costume were appropriate for the part.
The audience perceives the make-up
and attire as exaggerated and becomes aware of this
grotesque display.
This is the observer's perception
regardless of the old woman's intentions.
Vis~,
Obviously, The
has the most significant issue of perception as one
element of Pirandello's drama, and this issue is also
crucial to the concept of humor.
In the old woman's
example of humor, the observer's perception remains, regardless of the old woman's intentions.
the method of Pirandello's "L'umorismo":
Oliver explains
"The complexity
of ability to extend beyond one kind of perception to
another perception, reality and appearance, are also part
of his concept of humor."l7
Oliver explains humor as
"feelin9 or sentiment of an opposite, and involves a
comparison of two persohal reactions."l8
According to
Oliver, the audience is confident that the playwright
meant an action or character to be humorous, and the
perceivers break through the comic surface to the pain
that may be beneath the surface.
When the pain is
touched, a compassionate response occurs.
observes:
Oliver further
"Since the feeling of the second response is
built on the previous comic awareness of incongruity,
29
that comic remains important, not only as the catalyst of
Umorismo, but as an integral part of it."l9
The humorous foundation is appearance and more profound realities.
As in the play's motifs there is the
question of the abberation of truth, i.e., appearance
versus reality and self-evident truth.
In the concept of
humor there is also self-evident truth in which the observer perceives first from intellect, then from thought
and feeling combined.
These are the two personal reac-
tions, and obviously the third party included in the
dramatic technique (the audience) also perceives the play
with these personal reactions.
The Vise can be analyzed according to this concept
of humor.
The first idea is that the "comic is based on
the awareness of an opposite.n20
In the beginning of the
play, Antonio and Guilia were afraid that Andrea has
found out about the affair.
in the beginning.
There is no evidence of this
The scene builds as Guilia and Antonio
carry on almost into hysterics.
There are no motivations
or history about why they were carrying on with this relationship.
The awareness of the opposite is the absence
of the husband at this time.
Next, there is a "feeling
of sentiment of an opposite.n21
From the incongruous
scene between Guilia and Antonio, a comic response is
expected, but reflecting more profoundly, there is pain
when feelings of sentiment surface, initial comic response
still remains, and the observer experiences compassion.
..
30
Pirandello's Dramatic Theory and Its
~pplication to The Vise
In consideration of the title of Chapter 2, I have
decided to use a format in comparing Pirandello's
dramatic form to that of the more traditional form of
Aristotle.
This is done in order to show how Pirandello
at times follows such a form, even though he denies he
uses any such form.
In Poetics, Aristotle describes the conventional
elements of a play.
By examining Pirandello's own theory
given to his essay and Aristotle's conventional drama, it
can be seen how Pirandello conforms and deviates in
relation to Poetics.
Aristotle has stated that "The structure of events,
the plot is the goal of tragedy, and the goal is the
greatest thing of all."22
In his critical essay "Spoken
Action," Pirandello disagrees:
Shakespeare, it is true, drew the plots of some of
his plays from Italian novella, but what playwright
has more consistently translated plot into action
without sacrificing anything to those foolish
technical requirements that can only control a
work's surface?23 ·
Pirandello gives his characters priority over plot:
"Characters should detach themselves alive and independent, from the written pages of a play."24
Aristotle
further states that "tragedy is an imitation not of men
but of life, an action,· and they have moral quality in
accordance with their characters but are happy or unhappy
in accordance with their actions."25
0
•
31
In The Vise, there is moral judgment in accordance
with Aristotle's beliefs.
Antonio and Guilia behave as
though they do not want their relationship to be discovered.
This behavior apears to exist because of the
moral beliefs of the characters.
Also, The Vise is not
an imitation of either life or men, but The Vise becomes
life when it is presented.
It is part of reality that
the characters and audience experience.
The characters in The Vise are in accordance with
Aristotle's beliefs of the tragedy--they are unhappy with
their actions.
When they are forced to face their
actions, all of the characters experience guilt.
In The
Vise, Pirandello does not have the plot coincide with
Aristotle's belief; the characters hold the power of the
play and the plot is secondary.
However, The Vise yields to Aristotle's description
of comedy:
11
Comedy is as we said it was, an imitation of
persons who are inferior; not however, going all the way
to
vill~iny,
but imitating the ugly of which the ludi-
crous is one part.n26
1he characters do have some
villain in them as each character has verbally attacked
the other, with the discussion of Guilia and Antonio
over their affair, and with Andrea's story of the other
couple (mirroring the married couple's life).
The play does contain ugliness and the ludicrous;
therefore, it may produce some comedic effects.
The
Vise does not entirely fit into the tragic or comedic
32
categories of Aristotle's system, but it does have the
elements of structure noted by Aristotle.
This is
important as Pirandello professes that he does not have
a systematic way of writing the plot and is against
contrivance in his work.
The Vise possesses elements of Aristotle's tragedy.
1) Plot--the plot is direct and uncomplicated, but
nevertheless it tells a story of characters which are in
a predicament.
2) Character--the characters are most
important to The Vise, and could not exist outside of the
plot.
3)
Thought--the characters relate to one another
and express their feelings.
4) Diction--this may be a
directorial choice, but the play is written in a contemporary manner and it would call for the characters to
speak in an "every day manner."
Music and spectacle for
this contemporary production will be discussed under my
hypothetical production concept.
In Pirandello's essay he discussed his methods for
the
dra~atic
style.
Pirandello believed that the char-
acter's importance dominated the plot.
The characters
speak the dialogue--dialogue that is as Pirandello terms
it "Spoken Action."
Pirandello did not care for the
narrative and the subject matter of novels and short
stories as dramatic works.
According to Pirandello,
the narrative did not belong on the stage.
The charac-
ter's strength allows him/her to live beyond the script.
The characters are adaptable to the script, but the
33
"narrative and descriptive props should be banished from
the stage. "27
Pirandello replaces the narrative with "Spoken
Action"; he refers to characters that are lively enough
to escape the plot and live onward as illustrated in the
following •
Now this artistic miracle can only occur if the
playwright finds words that are spoken action,
living words that move, immediate expressions
inseparable from action, unique phrases that
cannot be changed to any other and belong to a
definite character in a definite situation:
in
short, words, expressions, phrases impossible to
invent but born when the author has identified
himself with his creature to the point of seeing
it only as it sees itself.28
The Vise conforms to this type of dialogue.
The
beginning segment between Antonio and Guilia exemplify
the belief of spoken action.
Antonio and Guilia mani-
fest nervousness, as they are worried about being discovered by Andrea.
During their dialogue they connect
emotionally and detach from each other -v1hile their
feelings are in turmoil.
This dialogue occurs directly
from the immediate position of the two characters.
The
action fits the characters and their multiple roles, and
the words denote movement and actions which occur because
of their guilt--all three of the main characters attach
and detach, connect and disconnect.
Pirandello feels that playwrights who follow the
classical tradition of Aristotle have their faults.
34
Today's playwright, if he has or thinks he has an
original observation on some feeling or event,
believes that a play can be drawn from it.
For him
a play is built like a logical chain of reasoning,
to a few skillfully selected frills can be applied.
Once the situation is established, he turns to the
characters and looks for those most suited to
i 11 us tr a te i t. 2 9
Pirandello is opposed to this process.
Proportionally, the playwright considers stock
characters and distributes the dialogue to the number of
characters in the play.
Pirandello feels that play-
wrights of his day put together a contrived piece of
work, creating a play from something his contemporaries
might have seen, and then developing the dialogue which
suits the characters of the time.
The dialogue is
pressed out to suit the plot.
Pirandello feels that
this approach is superficial.
He also feels that art
ceases to exist when the playwright presses it out of a
mold.
Pirandello's approach is as follows:
So first of all one must have people--free, living,
active people. With them and through them the idea
of· the play will be born, its shape and destiny
enclosed in this first seed; in every seed there
already quivers a living bed, the oak and all its
branches already exist in an acorn.30
It is the characters which endow the new-born play with
life.
Pirandello raises the question of the playwright's
distance from the play.
It is difficult to leave out of
the play the playwright's own personality and personal
expression;
the personality can be found in the methods
35
used to create the play.
During the action, the dialogue
will be executed by the different characters, not the
playwright.
The plays that appear to be written by more
than one playwright because the individual characters are
different from one another, are called "living plays, not
written ones,"31 by Pirandello.
When we recall that
Pirandello believes that the work must be endowed by
living expression, and that the piece flourishes with
this expression, we truly see his art.
He wants the
theatre to be rid of a narrative literary style and
subject matter of short stories or novels.
He wants
"plays for acting not for reading."32
Pirandello finds fault with the methods that some
playwrights use to design a play:
The basic fabric they use to patch together their
dialogue is the slovenly conversational style of
French boulevard theatre; for past glitter they sew
on jokes overheard at parties or on the street,
while some law-court rhetoric provides a bit of
crumpled lace.33
These playwrights adhere to a Scribean form of writing,
and Pirandello is adverse to this contrived method of
writing.
The characters must be free and independent, rather
than identical and from the same mold.
The actions and
ideas of each character are the expressions of a "human
personality."34
"The characters have obstacles without
their freedom and must be able to reach beyond the
playwright's intention and style which they have been so
36
often hampered."35
Pirandello offers the solution, "and
since characters with all their complexity must, after
all, be connected to a plot, it is important that they
possess essential features which will always stand out,
and which drive them to specific actions."36
Pirandello
believes that our actions are a result of our entire
personality.
Pirandello assesses the situation:
The greatest difficulty an author has to overcome is
fusing the subjective individuality of a character
with his function in the plot or finding the word
which expresses the whole of a charactet•s being
while answering the needs of an immediate stage
situation. 3 7
p •
37
Endnotes - Chapter 2
loscar Budel, Luigi Pirandello (London:
Bowes, 1969), p. 35.
Bowes and
2 Bude 1 1 p • 3 5 •
3Antonio Lilliano, Pirandello: On Humor (North
Carolina: University of Carolina Press, 1974) 1 p. 11.
4 Bude 1, p. 3 6 •
5Budel, p. 37.
6Budel, p. 37.
7Budel, p. 37.
8Ann Paolucci, Pirandello's Theatre: The Recovery
of the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art (London:
Peffer and
Simons, Inc., 1974), p. 103.
9Luigi Pirandello, Naked Masks, Eric Bentley, ed.
(New York:
E. F. Dutton & Co., 1922/52), p. 217.
10pirandel1o, p. 218.
1lpirandello, p. 219.
12pirandello, p. 219.
13p~randel1o,
p. 224.
14pao1ucci, p. 103.
15paolucci, p. 104.
16oliver, P• 2.
17oliver, p. 3.
18oliver, P• 3.
19oliver 1 P• 4.
20c.n :iV!'il't', tl• 3"
2loliver, p. 3.
38
22Aristotle, Poetics, Gerald Else, trans. (Michigan:
University of Michigan Press, 1967/76), pp. 26-27.
23Luigi Pirandello, "Spoken Action," Theory of the
Modern Stage, Fabrizio Melano, trans. (Fabrizio Melano,
1968), p. 153.
24pirandello, "Spoken Action."
25Else, pp. 26-27.
26Else, p. 24.
27E1se, p. 154.
28E1se, P· 154.
29Else, p. 154.
30Else, P· 155.
31E1se, P· 155.
32E1se, p. 156.
33E1se, p. 156.
34Else, P• 156.
35E1se, P· 156.
36Else, p. 156.
37E1se, P· 157.
CHAPTER 3
Hypothetical Production Concept of the Vise
The plot of The Vise is contained within itself;
there are no theatrical devices (which Pirandello
detested) and there are no outside complications.
The first part of the plot is simple and selfcontained.
Antonio projects guilt, as he wondered about
a double meaning in Andrea's words.
Antonio had to
remind himself that it was his own fear.
Here the
characters connect through feelings and events.
There
is a connection with the idea of the affair; actually
we find out that all of the characters suffer from
guilt.
Antonio is afraid that his business associate
will find out about the affair.
Based on Pirandello's "Spoken Action," there are
four methods to be found:
1) the characters' intellect
have converted to passion, 2) the characters think about
the events in their lives, 3) the characters are trapped
in the form of their bodies, and must deal in the "trials
of behavior", 4) the dialogue is spoken action related to
the immediacy of the state of the triangle of "lovers."
I do want to note that the universal dilemma is the
experiences of the three characters, and that the freedom
39
40
of the characters is hampered by their own actions.
At
one time Pirandello says that the characters must live
independently from the script, and keep living and endowing the art with life.
Pirandello also advocated that
the characters must have distinctively different personalities, but not those of the author.
The main charac-
ters in The Vise all experience the same thing.
They
have been caught in the universal dilemma, but as free
agents they ironically all respond the same--intellect
versus passion, multiple roles, aware and reflecting
upon the circumstances in a theatrical manner.
So it
must be true that although the characters are in this
position, they are uniformly trapped inside the human
form, and perceive within their inherent limits.
As the play continues, Antonio and Guilia are consumed with guilt, while they exchange about both hatred
and love.
ness.
her
Guilia is convinced that what they did is mad-
It is interesting that Guilia has turned against
mul~iple
role.
It seems she does possess some morals
as she feels profound guilt regarding her present situation.
This is because she is trapped in a form,
human being.
i.e., a
Her intellect was most likely used for
rationalization, however, it was overpowered by passion.
Pirandello advocated that actors remain with the
script and not look for any outside histories.
Within
the "spoken dialogue" there are motives, but the plot's
action requires characters to connect and disconnect, due
41
to their relationships.
guilt, and to reflect.
It allows them to express their
In keeping with the classical
tradition, Pirandello foreshadows Guilia's fate:
"I seem
to see the shadow of my blame fall across their innocent
faces, No! No!
Would he kill me?
I'd do it myself, if
he didn't."l
When the husband appears, the dialogue indicates
that something is wrong between the married couple as
Andrea returns and says he's ill with a headache.
Guilia
does not attempt to nurse him and the scene builds with
tension.
Finally Andrea tells the same story of their
predicament, using a facade that it was another couple's
troubles.
Andrea accuses her of having an affair and she
denies it.
Passion has no logic.
was crazy for what she had done.
Guilia admits that she
Andrea brings up the
children and vows that she will never see them again.
Tho heated argument and the "spoken action" are powerful
and again, the connection between the characters now
becomes a disconnection.
When Guilia does kill herself, one of Pirandello's
greatest philosophies is realized.
All of the characters
perceive the event in different ways; they may all be
correct or (incorrect).
They all had some fault, but
since people perceive things differently while trapped in
their form;
and reality.
there may be a different between appearance
In the case of The Vise, the audience per-
ceives as the characters allow them to perceive; the
42
audience will have different opinions as to who is at
fault.
So as one might discern,
this play is not about
a mere domestic struggle, but rather, a play about an
individual's illusions and the relativity of truth.
Production Concept
The Vise is a significant piece which will address
today's audiences.
The play encompasses issues which
are as fresh in the 1980s as they were when the play was
first produced.
The directorial choices must reflect the
following concerns:
1) intellect vs. passion, 2) trapped
in bodies, 3) trials of behavior, 4) love triangle, 5)
creation of own reality and perception abberation, 6)
multiple roles, and the morals of today and yesterday.
It is not my intention to visually outline each of
Pirandello's philosophies, but rather to put together a
cohesive production in a visual treatment of today's
technological society.
I became convinced that Robert
Wilson and Philip Glass could enhance the playwright's
style with their work in directing by studying their
past productions.
However, there are no set changes as all the main
action takes place in one room.
This poses a concern of
not cluttering the production for the sake of the visual
style.
There'must be a balance between Pirandello's
work, the acting, and the set.
It can be said that I
have mildly applied the visual style of Wilson to the
production.
I have chosen to evoke a production of
43
spectacle through symbolism and a surrealistic quality
on the set.
Elements of symbolism may be incorporated into both
the movement of characters in order to support Pirandello's philosophy and crystallize the play's main action
of connecting and disconnecting between the characters.
This production concept of The Vise will profit with a
three-quarter stage setting, in an intimate house, since
the elements of symbolism are going to be subtle in this
domestic quarrel.
There will be a chess board large enough to accommodate two feet high chess pieces, in order to reflect
the intellect at work.
There will be three chess pieces,
representing the three main characters.
In addition,
there will be a partial set of a bedroom up stage left.
In this corner, there will be a dimly lit room, with a
scrim, and a bed with a red bedspread in order to symbolize "fire and passion."
There will also be a headboard
with a red curtain draped around the bed, but open in the
places that the audience can see.
There will also be dry
ice out of the view of the audience, in order to have fog
coming out of the bedroom.
off the ground.
The bedroom will be slightly
The rest of the lighting on the stage
will be standard.
The characters will be in realistic costume.
Tho
main action of the play is the alteration and disconnection of the characters.
This is made clear by having the
44
characters freeze at various points in the play, e.g.,
Guilia freezes after the lines:
"What can I tell you?
In this kind of situation the most casual remark seems
significant--every look, every movement--the tone of his
voice even."2
This is done is order to emphasize her
guilty feelings.
Finally, all three chess pieces will
stand alone, as they illustrate the misery of the event.
In the beginning of the play, the maid moves two chess
pieces together.
Upon the departure of Antonio, one
chess piece is removed, and the other one is replaced
by the missing one.
During Andrea's story of the other
couple who were cheating on each other Guilia begins to
show her guilt, under the pressure applied by Andrea.
The maid gradually moves their chess pieces apart.
Ultimately, the game of chess "forces" one to lose.
At
the end of the play they are all separate on the stage,
and it becomes apparent that they all lost something.
Each time the chess pieces are moved there will be a drum
roll coming from off stage.
This is done to underscore
the daring connections and disconnections that the characters experience.
There will also be classical music,
Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," at the beinning and
end of the play.
This music will add flavor in support
of the play's origin.
This is done to bridge a gap
between yesterday and today.
The set itself will be slightly distorted as very
often one's perception is also distorted.
The stage
45
floor will be uneven, there will be a large clock with
the round shape impaired.
There will be six large bars
placed arbitrarily about the stage, but not to hinder
the audience's view.
Approach to Acting/Directing
Pirandello saw the actor as an artist, and believed
that "there was ~ sudden fusion of actor and character"3
when performing.
The actor feels and reflects, and he
is aware of the difference between his character's
emotions and his own.
The actor deals with the script
itself and does not invent any outside history.
This
is in opposition with Stanislavski's method.
A breakdown of the characters in terms of his
philosophy will include--1) what the masks are that these
characters wear, 2) the ways in which the characters are
troubled in terms of passion and the intellect, and 3)
how each character perceives his situation and his
reality.
Andrea wears a mas~ of business person, and he is a
father and husband.
Therfore, it can be said that his
role in life is multiple.
To trace his actions in The
Vise will help to see his entrapment in the human form.
Andrea walks in with the immediate knowledge about
the affair while he exclaims he wants the children to
stay at his mother's until he unpacks.
However, the
angry husband is setting up his wife for confrontation.
46
Andrea learns that Antonio came back last night.
Hos-
tility is already breeding in Andrea as he speaks of
getting away to the city.
by tension.
moment.
His entire attitude is marked
In his speech he is very displeased at the
He is both passive and aggressive and tries to
drain Guilia, by creating stories which cause her guilt
to surface.
I think his main objective in the play is to
get Guilia to admit her guilt.
His mask does not only
pertain to his roles of business person, father or husband.
He causes Guilia to keep dwelling upon her guilt,
by saying he wants to get away.
has a headache.
He says he is tired and
He makes it clear to Guilia that he
knows Antonio came back and saw Guilia before he returned
home.
Andrea's main goal in the play is to get revenge
by causing Guilia's guilt to escalate.
When he tells the
story of the other couple with the same predicament, the
story becomes confrontational, and they have an argument.
Guilia tries to wear a mask of innocence and the situation is. reduced to a heated argument where each character
tries to overpower the other character.
Andrea succeeds
in his main objective, to have power over her by telling
her she has to leave.
We have gained knowledge of the character, completely from the script without the character inventing
histories which are not in the script.
We have learned
that besides his multiple masks of father, business
person, and husband, that he was hostile, and even cruel
47
regarding the children.
His main objective was apparent,
the character wanted revenge.
These elements were alive
in the script and I feel that the actor does not need to
look beyond the script.
Guilia wears a mask of mother, wife and lover.
There is no explanation for the affair between Antonio
and Guilia.
They both have moral values, and human
consciousness.
in operation.
Here, both the intellect and passion are
They rationalize about being caught but
the intellect loses to passionate action.
It seems that
Guilia's mask of lover is more powerful than her reasoning and the intellect converts to passion.
Antonio's human conscience and Guilia's conscience
are at work.
They cause themselves to be nervous by
wondering about every movement, sentence, and gesture
among the three of them.
Guilia is actually playing the
good wife as she is worried that Andrea might find out
about the affair.
Antonio wears the mask of multiple
roles of lover and Andrea's business associate.
His main
goal is to keep information away from Andrea regarding
the affair.
These characters are troubled by their reasoning
power and passion •. The intellect and moral values could
not stop the affair; it is the passion stemming from
their mental capacity which wins.
Guilia's current intellectual capacity was diminished when she alluded to the passion.
Andrea became
48
vicious and hostile, learning of the affair.
He forgot
about their home life, or at least wanted to when he
talked about moving away.
Andrea's calming force would
have been his rationalizing capabilities, but again, it
was overpowered by his emotions.
Antonio's reasoning
power and conscious were working full force in order to
keep the affair silent.
It can be discerned from this
character analysis that it contained Pirandello's
philosophy of the intellect turning to passion, and the
multiple roles.
The greatest multiple role was carried by the husband.
He loved his wife and children.
He was hurt to
find out about the affair, and his anger escalated.
His
intellect was not active, and his feelings of passion
took control.
He squeezed information out of her to
make her give away her guilt.
when Guilia asked to be killed.
He showed indifference
All three characters
played a part in Guilia's death, and they share responsibility equally.
guilt.
Andrea helped to escalate Guilia's
Antonio was the wedge between husband and wife.
The views of all three characters can be considered to
be equal.
Andrea was disillusioned over their romance
when he first suspected his wife and Antonio were
having an affair.
All three characters had human needs
which they were trying to meet.
The three characters
experienced the intellect converting to passion.
49
With each multiple role, the characters were forced
to deal with the different circumstances--the different
realities.
For example, Guilia was a wife who had to
contend with a husband and children.
This is a large
portion of her life--this is her reality.
She also had
another reality; the reality of lover to Antonio.
In
The Vise, each relationship marks a different reality for
the individual.
At points in The Vise, the couples
connect and disconnect in accordance with the operation
of their passion and intellect.
Andrea supplied the
impetus to Guilia for her to kill herself.
Here, there
is a contradiction between his love for her and his
passionate crime.
Pirandello gives the actor the necessary material
for him to be able to create a role by "living the
script."
Outside histories as a method of acting are
not supported by Pirandello.
It is not told why Guilia
and Antonio have the affair, or how the couple got
togethe~.
It is also surprising that Andrea found out
about the affair and one wonders how he did find the
truth.
This does not only pertain to the acting, but
rather, it also relates to the writing style.
The
audience and actors walk into a situation already in
progress.
This can be equated with real life as we often
walk into a conversation already in progress.
Again, it
is the situation of the characters which hold the most
significance to the Pirandello play.
When the play
50
Q
begins, the affair is in progress, and we have joined
in seeing the "flux" of life, an ever-changing energy.
Conclusion
The application of a hypothetical production concept
was made possible by Pirandello's strong ideas about the
human condition.
in The Vise.
One can see these ideas just sprouting
The disillusionment that the characters
experienced were a part of removing their masks when they
no longer worked in favor of the characters.
The charac-
ters unleashed their passion and succumbed to doom.
This
is similar to Greek Tragedy, and especially apparent in
The Bacchae, when the characters are driven by passion
and are forced to confront their mishap.
One problem that I dealt with in Pirandello's work
were contradictions between his philosophy and his theory
and practice.
It would seem that when the character's
behavior is operating by passion, they are punished.
Pirandello demonstrates that there must be a balance
between the intellect
a~d
passion, yet he feels that
they are in constant conflict, and this is one issue of
the human condition.
Pirandello is not totally pessi-
mistic because he does believe that an individual can
pursue his/her objective through "trials of behavior,"
and it is the individual who creates part of his reality.
This is somewhat contradictory in his literature as the
characters become "self-indulgent" in creating their
•
51
own reality.
When they pursue their objective they
fail and become disillusioned as they strip themselves
of their masks; thus, one must find fault with the
"trials of behavior" (building of oneself up) and
stripping themselves of their mask.
This is a pessi-
mistic view if both of these behaviors fail and stop
the individual from meeting his/her objectives.
This
is what Pirandello might have considered to be part of
the life-form dichotomy.
This particular philosophy of having a form to life
is also contradictory to his literature.
As we have
learned, Pirandello believed that life needed to be
breathed into form as an expression of art.
This is an
abstract idea and difficult to translate into a hypothetical production concept.
It was the contradiction
between this philosophy and the functioning piece of
work which aided me to deal with this concept.
Tilgher
outlined Pirandello's methodical approach to art.
Althoug~
Pirandello proclaimed that he did not believe
in a contrived way of constructing his art, he did have
a method to composing his plays.
Tilgher outlined a
form which illustrated that Pirandello did in fact have
a pattern or form to his art which extended from his
earliest play of The Vise to his later works such as
Henry IV and Six Characters in Search of an Author.
This
is what made my approach to his philosophy and a production concept of The
~ise
possible.
52
Endnotes - Chapter 3
lwilliam Murray, trans., Pirandello's One Act Plays
(New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 13.
2Murray, p. 13.
3Richard Sogliuzzo, Luigi Pirandello, Director: The
Playwright in the Theatre (New Jersey: The Scarecrow
Press, 1982), p. 7.
Bibl iograph_y
Books
Bentley, Eric. The Genius of the Italian Theatre.
York: New American Library, 1964.
New
The Playwright as Thinker: A Study of Drama
in Modern Times. Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc.,
1964/67.
Bishop, Thomas. Pirandello and the French Theatre.
York: University Press, 1964.
Budel, Oscar.
1969.
Pirandello.
London:
New
Bowes and Bowes,
Driver, Tom. The History of the Modern Theatre:
Romantic Quest and Query. New York: Dell Publishing Co. , 19 7 0.
Guidice, Gaspare. Pirandello: A Biography.
Oxford University Press, 1975.
New Jersey:
Illiano, Antonio. Pirandello: On Humor. North Carolina: University of Carolina Press, 1974.
McQuire, Susan. Luigi Pirandello.
Press, 1969.
New York:
Grove
Moestru·p, Jorn. The Structural Patterns of Pirandello's
Work. Odense: Odense University Press, 1972.
Oliver, Roger.
Dreams of Passion.
University Press, 1979.
New York:
New York
Paolucci, Ann. Pirandello's Theatre: The Reco2~~~
the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art. London:
Peffer
and Simons, 1974.
Pirandello, Luigi. Pirrandello's One Act Pla~.
Doubleday, 1964.
Hurray, trans. New York:
Naked Masks. Eric Bentley, ed.
Dutton and Co., 1952.
53
William
New York:
54
Spoken Action." The Theory of the Modern
Stage. Eric Bentley, ed. New York: Penguin Books,
1968/78.
11
Pirandello: A Collection of Critical
Essays. Glauco Cambon, ed. New Jersey:
Prentice
Hall, n.d.
Luigi Pirandello, Direc~or: The
New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1982.
Sogliuzzo, Richard.
F-laywright in the Theatre.
Starkie, Walter.
Luigi Pirandello- 1867-1936. California:
University of California Press, 1965.
Vittorini, Domencio. The Drama of Luigi Pirandello ••
New York:
Russell and Russell, 1935/69.
Periodicals
Dombroski, R. s. 11 Functions of Humor and Paradox in
Pirandel1o's Lesclusa: A Context for the Plays."
Modern Drama, 20 (December 1977}, 393-41.
11
Il1iano, A.
Pirandello and Theosophy...
20 (December 1977, 341-51.
Modern Drama,
Paolucci, A.
"Comedy 'and Paradox in Pirandello's Plays
(an He1elian Perspective} ... Modern Drama, 20
December 1977}.
Sinicropi, G.
Theatre ...
11
Me taphysical Dimension and Pirandello' s
Modern Drama, 20 (December 1977), 355-80.
11
Vincentini, c.
Pirandello, Stanislavsky, Brecht and
the Opposition Principle... Modern Drama, 20
(December 1977), 381-92.