Enrico IV

Enrico IV Seminar - Key Themes

•To what extent is Enrico ‘mad’?•How is time treated in Enrico IV? What is the significance of this theme? •Are different roles attributed to male and female characters in the play?•What is the significance of masks and theatrical metaphors in the play?

Enrico is not mad at all (deluded at first indeed – hitting his head by happenstance) he has seized control of his own reality (be it how he really sees himself or the reality around him) he rewrites history to create his own (perfect) reality

Time is an anachronistic bubble, its humour (Pirandello’s signature humour – his essay L’Umorismo says much on this, which’ll be explained later) comes from the historical inaccuracies by the ever flustered Bertoldo, Enrico’s grey hair dyed blonde, Frida dressed up as her mother Matilda. (Chronological progression, yet oddly non-chronological...)

The mask represents social laws because the face represents the complex suffering of the individual. For Pirandello, social institutions and systems of thought—from religion and law to philosophy and morality—are ways in which society creates a mask, fixing the face of man by classifying him. As well as the mask being put on the face by the external world, Pirandello believed that it could often be the construct of internal demands. The theme of masks (A theme also seen in Sei Personaggi in Cerca D’Autore) takes the form of costumes, make-up and props (A more literal mask, it is interesting how even in his deepest philosophical themes he employs humour in his work).Behind most of Pirandello’s plays “life is fluid and indefinable and that man uses reason to give life definition.” But, because life is indefinable, such concepts are illusions. Man is sometimes aware of this illusionary nature of his concepts, but “anything without structure fills him with dread and uncertainty.” The drama that Pirandello created from this idea is usually described with reference to the face and the mask.

Possible thematic parallels between Enrico & Zeno

•Unstable identities•The protagonist as a misfit/outcast•The conceptualization and treatment of time•The relationship between sanity and madness\illness•Self-perception and external perception •Truth and lies

Enrico – seems unstable but isn’t – in fact it becomes more stable because it is his permanent identity Enrico is seen as mad by everyone around him; the doctor’s proposed test is the proof that he isn’t mad Enrico’s life is a lie, a lie that he tries to will into becoming truth