Authors: Luigi Pirandello
Meanwhile, unknown to them, as if he had been watching from afar throughout, the poet has been intent on making with and of that experiment his own creative work.
I
N
the first act of
Henry IV
Pirandello is careful to remind his audience of what they need to know about the ‘tragic emperor’ whose identity has been assumed by the unnamed protagonist of the play. A cultivated Italian public could, in any case, be counted on to at least know about the meeting between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII at Canossa. There is, however, no formal recapitulation of the emperor’s career and no chronological order in the way the protagonist’s imagination shifts rapidly from one event to another. The setting may be an imitation of the throne room at Goslar, but, as the supposed privy counsellors inform us, this does not prevent the protagonist from imagining himself to be at Worms or the Harzburg, in Saxony, Lombardy, or on the Rhine. English readers, therefore, may be grateful for a brief summary of the relevant history.
Henry IV, third emperor of the Salian dynasty, was born in 1050, became King of the Germans on the death of his father Henry III in 1056, and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1084. For the first six years of his reign, his mother Agnes of Poitou acted as Regent, advised by Bishop Heinrich of Augsburg who was rumoured to be her lover. In 1062 a group of German nobles kidnapped the young king at Kaiserswerth and took him to Cologne where their leader, Archbishop Anno, assumed the reins of government while Agnes retired to a convent. Restive under the stern control of Anno, Henry confided increasingly in his second guardian Bishop Adalbert of Bremen who, in 1065, succeeded in taking over from Anno as the dominant force in the Crown Council. When Adalbert in his turn was forced from power at the diet of Tribur in 1066, Henry became effectively his own master.
Henry’s reign was marked by constant struggle on two fronts: on the one hand there was the hostility of Swabians, Thuringians, and, above all, Saxons, who opposed his attempts to affirm and extend imperial power in Germany; on the other, there was his own resistance to papal authority in what is known as the Investiture Controversy. There is, however, no need for us to trace the complex interaction between these two contests: in
Henry IV
it is clearly the strife with the papacy that takes centre stage.
The first clash came in 1068 when Henry’s attempt to repudiate Bertha of Susa, the wife who had been chosen for him and whom he had married two years earlier, was blocked by the papal legate Peter Damian. Tensions between Empire and Church increased when the austere reformist monk
Hildebrand was elected as Pope Gregory VII in 1073. Not only was Gregory elected without the customary consultation with the emperor, but he soon began to make unprecedented claims for papal authority. At the Roman Synod of 1075 the appointment (investiture) of bishops by lay authorities was declared sinful and in the document
Dictatus Papae
of the same year Gregory asserted his right as Pope to depose emperors and to release subjects from their obedience to unworthy rulers. Henry, meanwhile, had continued to appoint bishops to dioceses in northern Italy, including the important archdiocese of Milan. Confrontation could not be avoided and in 1076 Henry summoned a synod at Worms where Gregory, ‘no longer Pope, but a false monk’, was formally deposed. Gregory, in his turn, declared the emperor deposed, released all his subjects from obedience, and excommunicated both Henry and all the bishops who had supported him. Henry had, in fact, overestimated his authority and, in August 1076, at the Diet of Tribur, an assembly of German princes, egged on by the ever-hostile Saxons, called on the emperor to repent and seek absolution before attending a meeting with the Pope scheduled for early in the following year. Apparently unrepentant, Henry crossed the Alps, counting on the hostility of northern Italian nobles and clergy towards Gregory who, on his way north to Augsburg, was forced to take refuge in the Apennine castle of Canossa, a possession of his powerful ally, Countess Matilda of Tuscany.
It was now, in January 1077, that Henry performed the dramatic action that has been associated with his name ever since. Instead of profiting immediately from what seemed to be an advantageous situation, he presented himself as a penitent at the castle gates, standing in the snow for three days, until Gregory finally agreed to absolve him. The depth of this humiliation is reflected in traditional iconography of the scene which usually shows him barefoot, clad in sackcloth, and presumably fasting. On the face of it, this was a huge victory for the papacy, but subsequent events soon proved Henry’s abject acknowledgement of papal authority to be no more than a temporizing stratagem. He could now return to Germany to announce that he had fulfilled the conditions imposed on him by the German princes while his Lombard allies still prevented the Pope from travelling to Augsburg. The struggle continued. Arguing that at Canossa he had pardoned Henry as a sinner but not reinstated him as king, Gregory renewed the sentence of excommunication. Henry called a synod of bishops at Brixen (1080) and deposed the Pope yet again. In 1084 his troops entered Rome and he was crowned emperor by his chosen antipope Clement III. Gregory died at Salerno in 1085, defiant to the last: ‘I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.’
Henry’s later efforts, whether in resisting the papacy or strengthening the empire, were not crowned with any lasting success. Matilda of Tuscany
remained a formidable enemy, the Saxons were not reconciled or overcome, and both of his sons turned against him. The peace proclaimed at a diet in Mainz (1103) proved short-lived. Imprisoned and forced to abdicate in 1105, he escaped to win one last victory over his son (Henry V) before dying in 1106.
As John C. Barnes has demonstrated,
1
Pirandello’s interest in Henry IV dated back to his years of study in Bonn (1889–91) and to his reading of Karl Geib’s
Die Sagen und Geschichten des Rheinlandes
(‘The Sagas and Histories of the Rhineland’, 1836). Geib’s romanticized version of events was supplemented before the writing of
Henry IV
with serious works of history such as Hans Prutz’s
Staatengeschichte des Abendlandes in Mittelalter
(‘History of the Medieval States in the West’, 1884) which Pirandello read in an Italian translation that is quoted verbatim at the end of Act Two. Pirandello may also have been aware that the figure of Henry IV already belonged to German theatrical tradition. Landolph remarks that ‘the story of Henry IV would be matter enough for several tragedies, not just one’ (
HIV
, pp. 66–7) and, indeed, between 1768 and 1910, it had provided dramatic material for Johann Jakob Bodmer, Julius Graf von Soden, Hans Köster, Friedrich Rückert, Ferdinand von Saar, Wilhelm Ressel, Carl Biedermann, Ernst von Wildenbruch, and Paul Ernst. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when Bismarck’s attitude towards the Catholic Church was summed up in his famous ‘We shall not go to Canossa’, German historiography and literature tended to elevate Henry IV into a hero of national resistance against papal aggression. Though the Italian play is in no sense political, this aspect of the ‘tragic emperor’, together with his concern for the welfare of the common people, must have appealed to Pirandello’s Garibaldian anticlerical instincts.
The Rules of the Game:
one of Pirandello’s most successful plays before
Six Characters
, first performance Rome, 6 December 1918.
Can’t see … please:
opening line of the play in the first edition (1921) which does not contain the exchange between the Stage Manager and the Technician, the dancing of the Actors, or the late arrival of the Leading Lady. The definitive 1925 edition shows how much Pirandello had learned from Pitoëff’s 1923 Paris production, especially as regards the need to reinforce the presence of the Actors in relation to the dominant Six Characters.
Yes, sir … the puppet of yourself:
a sly piece of self-parody.
Sancho Panza … Don Abbondio:
the down-to-earth servant in Cervantes’s
Don Quixote
and the pusillanimous parish priest in Alessandro Manzoni’s novel,
The Betrothed
.
Chu Chin Chow:
hugely successful musical with music by Edward Norton, opened in London in 1916 and ran for a record-breaking five years. Dave Stamper’s song was a spin-off composed for the Ziegfeld Follies in 1917. The French version sung by the Stepdaughter may be translated as: ‘What clever folk the Chinese are! | From Peking to Shanghai | They’ve put up placards everywhere: | “Beware of Chu Chin Chow!” ’
Robes et Manteaux:
dresses and coats. The use of French suggests a tawdry pretentiousness just as
Madame
hints at Mme Pace’s real profession.
each one of us … we do:
the passage anticipates both the title and the theme of Pirandello’s novel
One, No One, One Hundred Thousand
(1926).
Commedia dell’Arte:
a form of popular theatre that flourished in Italy from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth century; the actors were trained to improvise on the basis of a rudimentary scenario involving a relatively invariable set of instantly recognizable comic types (the rich elderly cuckold, the lovers, the wily servant, the braggart soldier, etc).
shaped by the stage itself:
for the sudden apparition of Madame Pace see
PSC
, p. 194.
‘viejo señor’ … ‘amusarse con migo’:
old gentleman … amuse himself with me (Spanish).
impossible on the stage:
these fears are well founded: in 1922, even without the threatened nudity, the play was banned in England by the Lord Chamberlain and was only given a private performance by the Stage Society thanks to the advocacy of Bernard Shaw.
alive and ever-present
: see
PSC
, p. 194, for a comparison with Francesca da Rimini in Dante,
Inferno
, v.
waste a whole day:
this is where the play ends, brusquely and somewhat flatly, in the 1921 version. The 1925 version leaves the Characters in possession of a stage that they will continue to haunt in search of the dramatic realization that they have been denied.
Goslar … the Harzburg … Worms:
all places connected with Henry IV: Goslar, his birthplace, site of the imperial palace in Lower Saxony; the Harzburg, a castle built to protect Goslar, destroyed during the Saxon rebellion in 1074; Worms, where Henry called a synod to depose Pope Gregory VII (see
Appendix II
).
the French one:
Henry IV, King of France (r. 1589–1610).
1071, we’re at Canossa …:
this should be 1077; probably a slip of the pen, unless Pirandello wants to undermine our trust in Landolph as a historian.
Berthold of the folk tale:
in the Italian folk tale Bertoldo is the apparently simple-minded rustic whose practical peasant wisdom earns him an unlikely appointment as royal counsellor.
Charles of Anjou:
King of Sicily, son of Louis VIII of France; driven out in 1282 by the revolt known as the Sicilian Vespers.
Bonn
: German university where Kaiser Wilhelm II had studied as crown prince; also where Pirandello obtained his doctorate in 1891.
Adelaide, the mother:
Adelaide of Susa, mother of Henry IV’s wife Bertha. Lady Matilda is tactful enough not to resume her old role as Matilda, Countess of Tuscany.
Hugh of Cluny:
St Hugh (1024–1109), Benedictine monk, reforming Abbot of Cluny, adviser of Henry IV’s mother Agnes of Poitou, but also supporter of Pope Gregory VII.
Peter Damian:
St Peter Damian (1007–72), austere reformer and ally of Pope Gregory VII, prevented Henry IV’s repudiation of his wife Bertha (see
Appendix II
).
Bishop of Mainz
: Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz from 1060 to 1084, at first supported Henry IV against Pope Gregory VII but later changed sides.
Tribur
: the Diet of Tribur in 1076 (see
Appendix II
).
Six years old:
presumably referring to the Kaiserwerth episode (1062) when Henry IV was, in fact, 12 years old (see
Appendix II
).
she’s dead
: Henry associates the death of his sister with that of Henry IV’s mother Agnes of Poitou which occurred at the end of the same year (1077) that saw the Emperor’s spectacular penitence at Canossa.
Brixen:
the Synod of Brixen (1080) where bishops and nobles favourable to Henry IV once again pronounced the destitution of Pope Gregory VII.
Robert Guiscard:
Norman conqueror of southern Italy, eventually came to the help of Gregory VII and drove Henry IV’s forces from Rome (1084).
This is a solemn … that he is
: Pirandello felt that this passage, set here within square brackets, slowed down the action and should be omitted in performance.
Quantité négligeable:
an insignificant quantity (French), Belcredi’s false self-deprecation.
humble monk:
possibly an allusion to the anonymous author of the
Vita Heinrici IV Imperatoris
(
The Life of Emperor Henry IV
), written shortly after the emperor’s death.
The peace … the latter
: transcribed from the Italian translation of Hans Prutz,
History of the Medieval States in the West from Charlemagne to Maximilian
(
Staatengeschichte des Abendlandes im Mittelalter von Karl dem Grossen bis auf Maximilian
, 1884).
Villa ‘La Scalogna’
(
the Scalognati
): literally ‘Villa Misfortune’ and ‘the Unfortunate’, but in this case a better translation might be ‘Misfit House’ and the ‘Misfits’.
the Countess:
Pirandello certainly remembered Countess Olga De Dieterichs Ferrari who staged plays in her own Roman house and whose touring company, founded in 1926, proved a financial disaster.
If you would stay … cruel fate:
these lines and all subsequent passages in verse are taken from
The Fable of the Changeling Son
(see Introduction, p. xxiii).
the Women:
malevolent witchlike figures in
The Fable of the Changeling Son
.
cinema:
Pirandello’s initial reaction to the cinema was the blend of scepticism and fascination that can be seen in his novel
Shoot
(1916). Even as late as 1929, in a
Corriere della Sera
article, he argued that the introduction of the talking film would result in a pale imitation of the theatre (
SP
, pp. 1030–6). He did, however, collaborate with the film industry and many of his works reached the screen, including
The Late Mattia Pascal
and, with Greta Garbo and Erich von Stroheim,
As You Desire Me
(1932).
the Angel Hundred-and-One:
taken from his 1910 short story,
The Starling and the Angel Hundred-and-One
(
NA
ii. 502–12).
Favara:
small town near Agrigento; the ‘indeterminate’ setting is, after all, Sicily.
Mary Magdalen:
character already described by Pirandello in a 1929 piece for
Corriere della Sera
(
SP
, p. 1248).
Old Piano Man … Sailors:
characters from
The Fable of the Changeling Son
.
‘Vanna Scoma’:
a sorceress in
The Fable of the Changeling Son
.
saracen olive:
indicating an olive tree of great age; the saracen olive had strong personal associations for Pirandello who may have seen it as a symbol of endurance under harsh conditions or of his own rootedness in the soil of Sicily.