Henry IV. Followed by "The License" 14+

📖 Luigi Pirandello's "Henry IV" opened to general acclaim at the Teatro Manzoni in Milan on February 24, 1922, less than a year after his revolutionary theatrical achievement, "Six Characters in Search of an Author." The title of the later play suggests a historical drama, recalling Shakespeare's great history plays. Yet "Henry IV" is instead anti-historical in that it "plays with" history, presenting historical events not as sequential and true, but as simultaneous and as an imaginary refuge. Henry IV (whose real name is not given) lives in a fake medieval castle where everyone must wear the costume of a historical figure. He is a twentieth-century Italian aristocrat whose madness traps him in the role of the Holy Roman Emperor, the German Henry IV, who reigned from 1056 until 1105.Numerous comparisons have been made between Pirandello's "Henry IV" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." The affinities between their protagonists include madness, along with the pretense of madness, involving a consummate theatricality. Like other "mad" Pirandello characters, the man consumed by the role of Emperor Henry IV has been judged to be insane by a society that he judges to be insane. Madness, for Pirandello, can reveal a particular lucidity that gives access to truths not evident to "normal" people.Pirandello's one-act play "The License" ("La Patente," 1918), displays an earlier version of this them...