Reading Order
Six CharactersSix Characters in Search of an Author Reading Order
Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) by Luigi Pirandello is the foundational text of theatrical modernism — the six Characters (a Father, a Mother, a Stepdaughter, a Son, a Boy, and a little Girl) who interrupt the rehearsal of a Pirandello play at a theater, claiming to have been abandoned by their Author and demanding that the Company of Actors perform their story. The play's central philosophical problem is the relationship between the fixity of fictional characters (who are permanently what they are, unlike human beings who change and contradict themselves) and the impossibility of theatrical representation (which can only approximate, never exactly reproduce, what the characters are). The play is organized around the paradox that the Characters insist they are more real than the Actors, because Characters exist in art permanently while human beings exist only in the flux of change. Pirandello won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, and Six Characters in Search of an Author is his most performed work; it was first produced in Rome in 1921 and caused a riot (the audience was divided between those who found it brilliant and those who found it fraudulent).
Where to start
Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) — any modern translation; Frederick May's is the standard scholarly text. Best Pirandello reading order: Six Characters in Search of an Author → Henry IV → Each in His Own Way → Right You Are (If You Think So) → The Rules of the Game
Complete Six Characters Book List
- 1Buy
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello·1921·The foundational text of theatrical modernism — the six Characters interrupting the rehearsal, the Company of Actors, and the paradox of theatrical representation. The first production in Rome in 1921 caused a riot; Pirandello won the Nobel Prize in 1934 - 2Buy
Henry IV
Luigi Pirandello·1922·The companion Pirandello play — the nobleman who went mad after a fall while playing Henry IV in a pageant and continues to play Henry IV twenty years later when he is no longer mad. Henry IV is the companion to Six Characters in the Pirandellian investigation of the relationship between madness, identity, and performance: both plays ask what it means to be 'in character' and what the relationship is between the role and the person who plays it - 3Buy
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett·1953·Beckett's companion in the tradition of the theatrical work that foregrounds its own theatrical nature — Vladimir and Estragon's awareness of being in a play and of the audience watching them. Both Waiting for Godot and Six Characters are metatheatrical works that use the theatrical frame to raise philosophical questions about identity, existence, and the relationship between performance and reality - 4Buy
Hamlet
William Shakespeare·1603·Shakespeare's companion in the metatheatrical tradition — Hamlet's play-within-the-play, and the play's extended meditation on the relationship between performance, reality, and the possibilities of theatrical representation. Six Characters in Search of an Author is in many ways the logical development of the questions about performance that Hamlet raises: if Hamlet uses the play to catch the conscience of the king, Pirandello's Characters use the play to raise the question of whether a character's conscience can be caught at all - 5Buy
If on a winter's night a traveler
Italo Calvino·1979·Calvino's companion in the Italian literary tradition of the metafictional work that makes the relationship between text and reader its explicit subject — the 'You' who is addressed throughout the novel as the reader reading the novel. Both Six Characters and If on a winter's night a traveler are companion investigations of the relationship between the fictional construct and the person who encounters it: who controls the fiction? - 6Buy
The Real Inspector Hound
Tom Stoppard·1968·Stoppard's companion in the metatheatrical tradition — the two theater critics Moon and Birdboot, who are gradually incorporated into the mystery play they are reviewing. The Real Inspector Hound and Six Characters in Search of an Author are companion metatheatrical comedies about the boundary between the world of the play and the world of the audience, and what happens when that boundary is crossed - 7Buy
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Tom Stoppard·1966·Stoppard's companion in the tradition of the work that takes minor characters from a canonical text and explores what their existence means from their own perspective — Ros and Guil existing in the gaps between their Hamlet scenes. Both Six Characters and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are organized around the question of what a character's existence is: Pirandello's Characters claim a fixed, permanent existence in art; Stoppard's Ros and Guil discover that their existence is entirely dependent on when Shakespeare needs them - 8Buy
Naked
Luigi Pirandello·1922·The companion Pirandello novel — Ersilia Drei's account of her life and the three men who challenge it, and the question of which version of the story is true. Pirandello's fiction and his drama are companion investigations of the same philosophical problem: the impossibility of knowing the truth about another person's inner life, and the stories people tell to make their lives (or deaths) meaningful
Six Characters — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Six Characters in Search of an Author about?
Six Characters in Search of an Author is organized around an event: the six Characters — a Father, a Mother, a Stepdaughter, a Son, a Boy, and a little Girl — appear during the rehearsal of another Pirandello play and announce that they have been abandoned by their Author before their story was completed. They demand that the Company of Actors perform their story, and the play then alternates between the Characters' attempts to explain their story (which involves the Father's relationship with the Stepdaughter and a brothel that he ran) and the Actors' attempts to perform what they have heard, which the Characters find inadequate — because the performance reduces the living reality of their experience to a theatrical approximation. The play's central philosophical argument is stated by the Father: fictional characters are more real than human beings, because they exist permanently and unchangingly (Hamlet is always Hamlet, from the first performance to the last), while human beings exist only in the flux of time, contradicting themselves and changing from moment to moment. The play ends without resolution: the Boy shoots himself, the little Girl drowns, and whether these events are 'real' or theatrical is left ambiguous — but the Characters insist that their deaths are always happening, permanently, in the fiction that the Author abandoned them in.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.