Pirandello’s Use of Puppetry as Metaphor and Technique

Abstract

P I R A N D E L L O ’ S U S E O P P U P P E T R Y AS M E T A P H O R A N D T E C H N I Q U E SIST E R CORONA SHARP Brescia College F o r some eighty years before World War II, Europe witnessed a culmina­ tion of puppetry, both as an age-old folk art and as a newly invented, sophisticated theatre art. Companies sprang up in important cities, perform­ ing mostly to adult audiences, while authors, painters, composers, and theatre people busied themselves with puppetry. The revolt against naturalism evoked a new interest in the mask and the marionette, both of which became props and symbols in the new Symbolist drama. Italy, probably the first European country to foster puppetry, developed her rich and manifold tradition still further during the nineteenth century. Many dynasties of pup­ peteers devoted their lives to the art. Puppets were especially numerous in the southern provinces. Farces, satires, melodramas, folk and religious tales, and plays of chivalry comprised the Italian repertories. A new form of pup­ petry had appeared in Sicily, the pupi, largely devoted to productions of the Charlemagne and Roland (Orlando) romances.1 Palermo and Catania be­ came the principal centres. Travellers in Italy recorded their impressions of Italian puppets.2 In the early 1900s, Gordon Craig lived in Florence and deeply admired Italian puppetry. Most critics recognize Pirandello’s comparison of man to a puppet, but the tendency has been to discuss this topic within parameters other than the art of puppetry.3 My purpose is to complement these analyses, because Piran­ dello’s uses of the metaphor seem to form a salient contribution toward an aesthetic of puppetry. His complete familiarity with this folk art appears in his thinking and writing. In this respect he has affinity with his fellow Sicilians and Italians, who have amassed a body of research and criticism dealing with puppetry, probably more extensive than that of any other nation.4 I will first survey Pirandello’s early fascination with puppetry and his later encounters with related influences; then I will briefly propose an aesthetic for puppetry, and finally apply it to three earlier works and then to Henry IV . Whereas in Six Characters in Search of an Author the metaphoric use of puppetry is partially concealed, in Henry IV it appears quite plainly and E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C anada, x iv , i , March 1988 affects dramatic technique in several ways: first, certain characters resemble the Sicilian pupi; second, the set is constructed like those on Italian puppet stages; third, the dialogue often conveys the puppet metaphor or images borrowed from puppetry; fourth, the dramatic conflict is shaped by alien forces, as if a giant puppeteer were pulling the wires. The Italians have several names for puppets: pupazzi, marionette, and fantocci (marionettes on strings or wires) ; burattini (hand puppets) ; and pupi (Sicilian marionettes, operated by an iron rod through the head, and another rod and a rope controlling the hands). The degree to which pup­ petry has pervaded the Italian consciousness is indicated by numerous idio­ matic expressions. For each of the four terms, burattino, fantoccio, marionetta , and pupazzo, there are at least two figurative uses in ordinary speech. In nearly all of them, the human being is compared to a puppet in a derogatory sense. Pirandello makes similar allusions in various writings.5 From childhood Pirandello imbibed the native Sicilian enthusiasm for the pupi, which he probably first saw in Girgenti, and later, as a student, in Palermo. The pupi were wooden figures a metre or so tall, very clumsy and heavy, with large, staring eyes and brightly painted faces. Chivalric heroism, violence and love, supernatural forces, monsters, the struggle of good and evil, and comedy were presented in continuous cycles amid grand dis­ plays of costumes, real armour, and noisy battles, with occasional fireworks and blood gushing from decapitated heads. Pirandello admitted having had a great “passion” for the pupi:6 In his autobiographical novella, The Choice (La scelta), he describes himself as...

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 0 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.