TRUTH MAKING : "REALITY" IN LUIGI PIRANDELLO'S HENRY IV 1

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Trutl1 Making: Reality" in Luigi
Pirandello's Henry IV
I CHIAMAKA UGWU I

Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV, written in 1921, made a significant contribution to

the canon of modern drama. The modern period encompassed a transformation
of drama beginning in the late nineteenth century, a hunger to represent reality
in counter-point to artificiality. Reality in this case represents the illogical world
we understand mainly through empirical experience, which exists independently
of our comprehension of it. Artificiality, in contrast, involves the ideas that
human beings construct to make our experiences in the world easier to
comprehend and classify. In their ambition to create worlds on stage that
reflected the reality of the twentieth century, many modern . playwrights
experimented with dramatic structure as a way to manipulate an audience's
perspective on the performance event. However avant-garde this
experimentation may have been, it often provided a sense of coherence in its
representation of reality. Arguably, Pirandello's dramatic writing is geared
towards reflecting the chaos and instability of human life rather than giving it
coherence. In Henry IV, Pirandello paradoxically attempts to reflect the instability
of life by adopting formal structures which deliver order and unity to audiences.

Pirandello's Henry IV tells the story of Henry, a "mad" man who believes
that he is Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in an eleventh-century court and the
attempt by the actors who run his court to expose Henry's life as fiction. As the
actors devise a plan to reveal this delusion to Henry climactically, confusion
arises as to whether or not he is actually mad. Henry expresses his awareness of
his fictional 'mask', and he asserts until the play' s tragic end that his fiction is not
 2 CHIAM AKA UGWU - WCCT 1:1

more or less real than their reality, whic h leave s quest ions
abou t the natur e of
truth and realit y unres olved .

The forma l play sh·uc ture Piran dello adop ts in H en ry IV

is roote d in an
early history of playm aking aime d a t cultiv ating an
audie nce's belief in a
dram atic fiction as if it were, for the duration of a perfo
rman ce, th eir realit y.
Arist otle's Poetics encou rages the unific ation of time "with
in a singl e d ay and
night " (23) and the event s of the actio n to b e "a comp lete
unit [ .. .] so plotte d that
if any of these elem ents is move d or remo ved the w h ole is
altere d and upset 11

(28). Draw ing from Arist otelia n prece pts, the 'three unitie
s' of time, place1 and
actio n were estab lishe d durin g the Rena issan ce, after
w hich "mos t critics
dema nded that a play have a singl e
While Pirandello's plot, take place in 24 hours or less 1 and
be confi ned to one p lace (Brockett
1

deployment of the '

130). This dram atic mode l, targe ted at

unities in the formal encou ragin g an audie nce's belief in a
play, becomes convo luted in Henry IV
structure of Henry IV as multi ple and inters ectin g world s of
seem s to provide time, place and actio n are revea led to
coherence . .. Pirandello's an audience despi te Piran dello 's
prese rvatio n of these dram atic unities.
man ipu lati on of these
uni ties illuminates The world s inhab ited by
Piran dello 's chara cters and the actors
inc ons iste ncy and perfo rming the roles of those
disorder in the play and characters can be divid ed into three
distin ct world s. First, in the 'fictio nal'
in the world world , Piran dello 's characters play
chara cters withi n the court of H enry
IV, tellin g a story that is unmi staka bly fabric ated.
Secon d, the 'perfo rming
realit y' is the space of chara cter self-c onsci ousne ss, wher
e Piran dello' s chara cters
are awar e of the dista nce betw een their 'play ing-s elves
' and their 'real- selve s' .
The final 'reali ty' invol ves the perfo rman ce of HennJ
IV, in whic h the actor s
playi ng Piran dello 's chara cters recog nize them selve s as
playi ng the chara cters in
Henr y IV' s court . That is to say that in the play there is
a threefold p erform ance,
/
"REALITY" IN LUIGI PIRANDELLO 'S HENRY IV 3

with real-life actors playing characters in the play we see unfolding, who are in
turn are fictional actors p laying charac lcrs in ano ther fictional world.

The superimposed representation of these worlds of playing and 'reality'

and the struggle of the charac ters wi thin them is arguably the most chaotic part
of the play, and it is seemingly contradicted by the organized structure of
Pirandello's writing. While Pirandello's deployment of the unities in the formal
structure of Henry IV seems to promise coherence for his audiences, Pirandello's
11.1.anipulation of these unities illuminates inconsistency and disorder in his play
and in the world. This manipulation ultimately undermines confidence in the
separation of "fiction" and "reality," which makes Henry IV an anomaly in the
longstanding dramatic tradition of counter-posing these two entities.

The unity of time in Henry IV is both upheld and subverted through

Pirandello's formal structure. With "the early 1920s" revealed as the temporal
setting of the play (i), and the action of Acts 1 through 3 taking place in the same
day, time appears to be unified according to Aristotelian principles. However,
the time that the characters of Pirandello's play act within the play they're
putting on takes place in the eleventh century, creating a distortion between the
time period the audience believes that it is viewing and the time period the
characters are inhabiting. In this way, the audience, actors, and characters are
interacting with different time periods throughout the play: the immediate
present in which the audience is watching actors performing Pirandello's
characters, the 'performing' present where the actors are playing characters who
are living in the 1920s, and the "fictionalized" present in which the characters are
playing figures in an eleventh-century German court.

The multilayered temporality of the play is further complicated when the

hired actors speak in the present tense when playing the "fictional" characters of
an eleventh-century court. One example is shown in Landolfo' s exclamation:
"We're engaged here, day in, day out, in the most frightful war between Church
and State!" (2, emphasis added). In claiming the eleventh-century Gennan court
as his present, Landolfo subverts the "reality" of the 1920s time setting the
audience believes is the present, thus corrupting the unity of time. Just as the
 4 CHIAM AKA UGWU - WCCT 1 :1

unity of time is disrup ted throug h the speech of the characters, the charac
ters'
own unstab le percep tion of the time they inhabit further adds to this disuni
ty.

The confus ion betvveen their personal past and presen t for Pirandello's
charac ters also disman tles the unity of time in Henry IV. Matilda, Henry 's
now
aged lover, expresses confusion about wheth er Henry IV is speaki ng
about
herself or her daugh ter when she reflects on a speech about her appearance:
"In
fact my hair is brown , doctor, like my daugh ter's. That's why he started talking
about her!" (34). Matild a's assertion that Hem-y has merge d his memo ry of
her in
the past with the appear ance of her daugh ter in the presen t complicates the
unity
of time within her own "reality." This in turn introduces the audien ce to
yet
artother time period , Matild a's past, which she superi mpose s on the present,
and
which further muddl es the multiple time periods already present. The actors'
and characters' involvement with more than one time period throug hout Henry
IV contradicts the stability of time while maintaining· a unity of time,
provid ing
audi~nces with the illusory comfort of a unified performance event that seems
to
take place over a single day (though in different simultaneous years).

The unity of place is also both maintained and confuted in Henry IV. With
the setting given as "a lonely villa in the Umbrian countryside" (i), and each
of
the acts taking place in different rooms within the villa, the unity of place seems
to be upheld throug hout the play. However, with the furniture and proper
ties of
the stage set "represent[ing] as accurately as possible the throne-room of Henry
IV" (1), compl ete spatial unity in the "villa" setting is betray ed, creatin
g
incong ruities betwee n the repres ented setting and the setting Pirand
ello' s
charac ters play within. Addin g to this disuni ty are the "two life-size modem
portra its in oils" (1, empha sis added) , as well as the tailcoat worn by the servan
t
Giova nni (7), both from their contem porary setting, not the eleventh centur
y in
the Holy Roman Empire.

Anoth er exa mple of this discord within the setting(s) of Henry IV is shown
in the privy councillors' description of the Canossa court se tting: "And this
is the
throne room!... Or Worm s! ... It depend s what scene we're playing. Like
us, it
leaps about from here to there" (1-2). This incongruity of space even within
the
alread y 'fictional' world of the court reveals the chaos created throug h
the
 "REALITY" IN LUIGI PIRANDELLO'S HENRY JV 5

intersection of these multiple settings in one space. Henry IV dismantles any

unification of place within the world it represents, while the introductory
description, as well as the performance of the play on a single stage and viewed
by its audience in one evening, provides audiences with an illusion of spatial
unity.

To complete his attack on the Aristotelian unities, Pirandello both uses and
subverts the unity of action as a tool for endowing a sequence of action with
significance in the dramatic structure of Henry IV. The foremost disunity within
the play's aclion is seen in Pirandello's naming of the characters tlu·ough their
roles wHhin the "fictional" Canossa court instead of in the contemporar y ltalian
lime frame of the play (i). By giving "real"
chc:1raclcrs lhc names of their "fictional" court Luigi Pirandel lo
roles, l'irar,dello ties the identities of the
charc1clers lo fabricated world of the
the effecti vel y
Cnnossn court. This naming coerces a presents plural
re la tionship between the "fictional" world nnd
the "pcrforming reality/' in which the action of
\vorlds that teeter
cnch chMt1Cll'r affects both world~ at the sau,e on the boundary
Lin1e. One example of this is ,..,·hen I lcru y is betvveen fiction
upsc.. . t ,11 Ad,1lbcrl of Bremen bcin~ "drivl!1'\ [... j
n1V,1y" " though lhL"' t.harnctcr playing Adalbert and reality
,1cl11,1l1y died: "13 ut /rt' ,st._1J"tcd yelling ''l'hey'vi:!
driv<.'n , \d,1/bcrt .11\ ,1,' ( ... ) bec.1use he didn't rc,tlisc poor old Tito was dead" (3).
The connL'Clil)fl bl'I WL'~n these "rcnlitics" sustains a unity of action by allowing
i111 i1Cfion in one r~.11ity to .1ffect another observably and causa lly, which, for
Aristotle. (TL',1k'S ··.1 L"tm1plc>te unit" (2S) of action. But this alleged unity
simult,1neousl\' C()ntus~s the buundaries between one character and another,
cffectiYely splitting J ··unified·· character in two.

Ironically, the unity of action in Henn; IV is mainly imposed on theh

realit_v by the characters within the play, rather than through structural conceits
imposed by the playwright. '\\'ith Henry IY' s demands on his court players,
including his transformat ion of Fino into Bertoldo to make a new member of his
court (4), Henry himself see1ns to be imposing the unity of action on the chaos of
6 CHIAM AKA UGWU - WC CT 1 :1

life. This desire to grant stable meanin g to the action of the "fiction al"
court
figures is shared by other characters, includ ing Landolfo:

It's a shame ... we're all just here, with no one to direct us, no one to give us
a scene to act ... we've got the form, but where' s the content? We're not
even so well off as Henry IV' s councillors ... at least they didn't know they
were suppo sed to be acting ... It wasn't a part, I mean, it was their life. (5)

Lando lfo' s desire for significance in their "play" of Henry IV' s court shows
yet
anothe r deman d for unity of action. The structu re and content of Henry IV collide
to assert and underm ine credence in the unity of action.

In using and subver ting the unities of time, place, and action in Henry IV,
Luigi Pirand ello effectively presen ts plural worlds that teeter on the bound
ary
betwee n fiction and reality . As fiction and reality become blurred, audiences
are
able to find solace in the familiar "unified" structure of the play while still being
immer sed in the confusion of the play.

Arguably, it is the job of the moder n playwright to provoke and challenge

his audience. Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV re-evaluates the project of moder
n
drama, showing that the hybridization of traditional forms with contemporary
moder n concepts and sentiments can create a new drama that maintains
its
connection to earlier dramas while representing a precarious, unsettl
ing
contem porary world. It is this desire to bridge old forms and new conte1~t that
made moder n drama so unique and inspiring for future generations
of
playwr ights. Pirand ello's explosion of the definitions imposed on the real
and
the imagin ary, and his reimagining of the connections between past and present
,
makes him a highly significant figure in the moder n reimagining of the capacit
ies
of the theatre for its creators, performers, and audiences.