Henry IV by Pirandello

"The green garden, moonlit pool, lemons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky, across which, as the horns are joined by trumpets and supported by clarions there rise white arches firmly planted on marble pillars."

"LANDOLPH. Cheer up, my dear fellow! We don't any of us know who we are really. He's Harold; he's Ordulph; I'm Landolph! That's the way he calls us. We've got used to it. But who are we? Names of the period! Yours, too, is a name of the period: Berthold! Only one of us, poor Tito, had got a really decent part, as you can read in history: that of the Bishop of Bremen. He was just like a real bishop. Tito did it awfully well, poor chap!"

"We're worse than the real secret counsellors of Henry IV.; because certainly no one had given them a part to play--at any rate, they didn't feel they had a part to play. It was their life. They looked after their own interests at the expense of others, sold investitures and-- what not! We stop here in this magnificent court --for what?--Just doing nothing. We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for some one to come and move us or make us talk."

"Evidently, because that immediate lucidity that comes from acting, assuming a part, at once put him out of key with his own feelings, which seemed to him not exactly false, but like something he was obliged to valorize there and then as--what shall I say--as an act of intelligence, to make up for that sincere cordial warmth he felt lacking. So he improvised, exaggerated, let himself go, so as to distract and forget himself. He appeared inconstant, fatuous, and--yes--even ridiculous, sometimes."

"and he--look at him--(points to portrait)--ha! A smack on the head, and he never moves again: Henry IV. for ever!"

"Have you always been the same? My God! One day...how was it, how was it you were able to commit this or that action? (Fixes her so intently in the eyes as almost to make her blanch) : Yes, that particular action, that very one: we understand each other!"

"But we all of us cling tight to our conceptions of ourselves, just as he who is growing old dyes his hair. What does it matter that this dyed hair of mine isn't a reality for you, if it is, to some extent, for me?"

We create our own version of reality

"BELCREDI (laughing). Oh, as for the dress, doctor, it isn't a matter of twenty years! It's eight hundred! An abyss! Do you really want to shove him across it (pointing first to Frida and then to Marchioness) from there to here? But you'll have to pick him up in pieces with a basket! Just think now: for us it is a matter of twenty years, a couple of dresses, and a masquerade. But, if, as you say, doctor, time has stopped for and around him: if he lives there (pointing to Frida) with her, eight hundred years ago...I repeat: the giddiness of the jump will be such, that finding himself suddenly among us..."

"Don't you see, idiot, how I treat them, how I play the fool with them, make them appear before me just as I wish? Miserable, frightened clowns that they are! And you (addressing the valets) are amazed that I tear off their ridiculous masks now, just as if it wasn't I who had made them mask themselves to satisfy this taste of mine for playing the madman!"

The joke is on them

"Words, words which anyone can interpret in his own manner! That's the way public opinion is formed! And it's a bad look out for a man who finds himself labelled one day with one of these words which everyone repeats; for example "madman," or "imbecile." Don't you think is rather hard for a man to keep quiet, when he knows that there is a fellow going about trying to persuade everybody that he is as he sees him, trying to fix him in other people's opinion as a "madman"--according to him? Now I am talking seriously!"

"Crush a man with the weight of a word--it's nothing --a fly! all our life is crushed by the weight of words: the weight of the dead."

"I speak, and order you live men about! Do you think it's a joke that the dead continue to live?"

"You will do nothing but repeat the old, old words, while you imagine you are living."

"It's convenient for everybody to insist that certain people are mad, so they can be shut up. Do you know why? Because it's impossible to hear them speak!"

"Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman--with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, the logic of all your constructions? Madmen, lucky folk! construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather. Voluble! Voluble! Today like this and tomorrow--who knows? You say: "This cannot be"; but for them everything can be. You say: "This isn't true!" And why? Because it doesn't seem true to you, or you, or you...(indicates the three of them in succession)...and to a hundred thousand others! One must see what seems true to these hundred thousand others who are not supposed to be mad! What a magnificent spectacle they afford, when they reason! What flowers of logic they scatter!"

"Because it's a terrible thing if you don't hold on to that which seems true to you today--to that which will seem true to you tomorrow, even if it is the opposite of that which seemed true to you yesterday."

This goes back to knowing which mask you are wearing, no matter how life has changed you. Because we are all puppets and therefore helpless. We need to cling to the only thing we have- the role of the moment.

"You ought to have known how to create a fantasy for yourselves, not to act it for me, or anyone coming to see me; but naturally, simply, day by day, before nobody, feeling yourselves alive in the history of the eleventh century, here at the court of your emperor, Henry IV!"

Personalize his fantasy. it was a chance for him to live out a fantasy. and yet the held on to reality

"You Ordulph (taking him by the arm), alive in the castle of Goslar, waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, and entering straightway into the dream, clothing yourself in the dream that would be no more a dream, because you would have lived it, felt it all alive in you. You would have drunk it in with the air you breathed; yet knowing all the time that it was a dream, so you could better enjoy the privilege afforded you of having to do nothing else but live this dream, this far off and yet actual dream!"

"All history that cannot change, understand? All fixed for ever! And you could have admired at your ease how every effect followed obediently its cause with perfect logic, how every event took place precisely and coherently in each minute particular! The pleasure, the pleasure of history, in fact, which is so great, was yours."

A consistent dream.

"I preferred to remain mad--since I found everything ready and at my disposal for this new exquisite fantasy. I would live it--this madness of mine--with the most lucid consciousness; and thus revenge myself on the brutality of a stone which had dinted my head."

"I am cured, gentlemen: because I can act the mad man to perfection, here; and I do it very quietly, I'm only sorry for you that have to live your madness so agitatedly, without knowing it or seeing it."

Without knowing one is in fact mad. It is "invisible" and his was "visible". That is the irony.
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This play was extremely fascinating. The play between madness and reality is exceptional, and it ends up even tricking the audience- whether Henry IV is really mad or not.

The concept of this play was to expose our own masquerades. Does one have to necessarily be insane to live in a masquerade? Aren't our own lives merely a stage for our roles?
The way the play begins is also extremely clever, because the audience has no idea what they are seeing. Is it really during the time of Henry IV? At first that is what I thought- which meant that everything the valets were saying was a sort of metaphor of our own lives. As if we each were caught in our own time periods, and are programmed to play a certain role. "We stop here in this magnificent court --for what?--Just doing nothing. We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for some one to come and move us or make us talk." So many of us are just stuck, stuck in a certain role and only react when something has an effect on us...

There is so much truth in this supposed apparent madman! Everything he says pierces the deepest hidden parts of ourselves. He addresses our hypocrisy in front of others, and more importantly in front of ourselves. Especially being hypocritical towards ourselves. We actually do everything to sustain this role within ourselves for ourselves. The only difference for Henry IV is that he brought this life-long "invisible" masquerade that we play a part in, into the realm of the real. He first asks the lady- "Has it never happened to you, my Lady, to find a different self in yourself?' As if he asks, is it really you who are playing? It's really ironic, because she is in fact literally pretending to be this queen, but in real life she also creates her environment to fit this same role. She tries to keep the days when she had "reigned" and was beautiful still after she had lost them. He calls her out on it, "But I assure you that you too, Madam, are in masquerade, though it be in all seriousness; and I am not speaking of the venerable crown on your brows or the ducal mantle. I am speaking only of the memory you wish to fix in yourself of your fair complexion one day when it pleased you--or of your dark complexion, if you were dark: the fading image of your youth!" He clearly separates her from her "costume" even as a supposed madman. This had nothing to do with what she was playing- this was whom she really was or tried to act as in reality. Meaning, that whatever we try to appear as is not our only act, because we are also acting as ourselves. And so we have to ask- are we truly ourselves or is just another act? An act within an act. So the fact that he addresses this same question, and at the same time appearing "mad" is astounding. This of course is taken out of context, because he knew what was going on the whole time... or did he? I'll come back to that.

I also love the way this play addresses time. The first realm is our real time- our day to day existence. Then there is the past that is trying to be recreated in our present. For instance Henry IV tried to recreate the best time of his life (the masquerade) and the Lady tried to recreate her lost youth within her present. That is also why she refused to believe that Henry IV really did talk about her daughter instead of herself- because she in fact was jealous of her daughter's youth. This is when these "lost" times and the present actually parallel and in the end result in the same thing: a masquerade. "This dress (plucking his dress) which is for me the evident, involuntary caricature of that other continuous, everlasting masquerade, of which we are the involuntary puppets (indicates Belcredi), when, without knowing it, we mask ourselves with that which we appear to be...ah, that dress of theirs, this masquerade of theirs, of course, we must forgive it them, since they do not yet see it is identical with themselves..." This goes back to the "puppets on the wall" metaphor. We are actually those puppets in our own masquerade, our own time frame. We are constantly playing a role in our own lives. And the beauty of this is that it is involuntary!! We are somehow programmed to act out something. This actually relates to Pirandello's other play "Six Characters in Search of an Author"- because that in fact is also acting in our own play.

Yes we are just puppets in our own masquerade, and "fate" is the deciding factor of what role we are going to play. "The parts may be changed tomorrow. What would you do then? Would you laugh to see the Pope a prisoner? No! It would come to the same thing: I dressed as a penitent, today; he, as prisoner tomorrow! But woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or Pope !" We all need to realize that we are wearing masks in this masquerade called our lives, and we need to realize that it is not constant. Like Henry IV said, it can be changed in a blink of an eye...we can all just as quickly become our opposites.

It is interesting because the ones that were the most "stable" in this play were the ones that actually "knew" about the masquerade, which were the valets. They knew what they had to do, what parts to play. Everyone else was lying to themselves and trying to be something they are not. Which brings us to the final question- was Henry IV really mad? Did he know the whole time that he was sane?
I actually think he was sane in some parts of it, and through the end the "role" he was trying to play caught up with him and actually took over. Because he himself said, that he found another self within himself. Maybe this other "self" was the role he was acting, and took over his "real" self.
Let's take a look at the ending. Henry IV stabs Belcredi. Why? Why particularly him? Because from the beginning he picked up that Belcredi was Donna Matilda's lover. In the real masquerade, back when it happened for the first time, Donna and Henry IV were lovers. This shows that the "real" self, the one that feels and reacts to the present, was still inside of himself. The "real" self used the role of Henry IV as the "madman" to get rid of the one that hurt him the most. Basically saying, time has passed, Donna has moved on, and this masquerade of yours is all a lie-because you in fact have not stopped time. That is why Frida for him did resemble this eternal masquerade he was trying to forever recreate, because she was the image of her mother in her youth. Now it becomes clear- when he says one needs to know what mask they are wearing- if you're going to do it, make sure you do it right. This all comes back to:


"I mean, those desires where the will is kept within the limits of the possible. Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves."

--
THREE PLAY: Six Characters in Search of an Author - Henry IV (Enrico Quarto) - Right You Are! (If You Think So) (Luigi Pirandello, Edward Storer and Arthur Livingston)
Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc.