In reality, Pirandello did not get his stride until he began to concern himself with social and domestic problems, such as those depicted under the title of "Maschere Nude" ("Naked Masks"). In the play "Il Piacere dell' Onestà" ("The Pleasure of Honesty"), he pictures a new type of ménage à trois: the "unhappy" husband in love with the mature daughter of an aristocratic Philistine mother, who, when she must needs have a husband for conventional satisfaction, appeals to a facile male cousin who finds in a ne'er-do-well disciple of Descartes one who is willing to act the part vicariously, the apparent quid pro quo being the payment of his gambling debts. The hypocritical, bombastic lover; the sentimental mother with a "family complex"; the anguishing, passionate daughter; the suave, aristocratic male procurer, and finally he who was to be the victim of the machinations of these experienced persons, but who proves to be the victor because he plays the game in a way new to them—that is, straight—each in turn delivers herself or himself of sentiments and convictions that reveal the social hypocrisies and conventional lies which form the scaffolding and supports of what is called "every-day life," and give Pirandello an opportunity to display his irony, his sarcasm, and his humor. The art of Pirandello is a subtle play of paradoxes and analyses of motives which are second nature to persons called complex, the result of inherited and acquired artificialities. To get the full effect of these paradoxes and analyses the closest attention of the reader and of the auditor is required, and as a matter of fact Pirandello's comedies read much better than they play. Those who know maintain that he has little capacity for stage technic, that he knows nothing of the art of the stage. Hence his comedies have not had the success of Giacosa and of Bracco.
As human documents they depend upon their humor and veiled irony more than upon any other qualities. The humor, which seems to be obtained by simple means, is nearly always the result of an analysis so fine, so subtle, that sometimes one loses track of the premises on which it is founded. He compels the attention of his reader and he makes him think. Without such attention and thought the subtleties of Pirandello often escape the reader. Sometimes he labors a point almost to a tiresome degree, for instance, in the play "Così è se vi pare" ("It's so if You Think It's so"). The central point is the identity of a woman, which would seem, to the average individual, could be established readily beyond peradventure, but the point is—is there anything that can be established beyond peradventure? Is there any such thing as literal truth? Is not truth in reality synonymous with belief, individual or collective, or both? Discussion of questions of this sort may become very tiresome, but Pirandello has the art of mixing them up with human weaknesses and human virtues which makes the mixture not only palatable but appetizing. In his last comedies—"Il Giuoco delle Parti" ("Each One Plays His Own Rôle") and "Ma non è una Cosa Seria" ("But It isn't a Serious Matter")—he reverts to matrimonial tangles and attempts at disentanglement, depicting in the former the "temperamental" woman who gets what she wants, but who finds when she gets it she does not want it, and the long-suffering husband who is discerning enough to know how to handle her by conceding what she demands that he may get what he should have.
The man who usurps the conjugal privileges of the husband must also discharge his obligations. So it transpires when his temperamental wife has been insulted by some intoxicated gilded youths who by their conduct in her house provoke a scandal in the neighborhood, it is necessary for the de facto husband to challenge the most aggressive of them to a duel. During the excitement of the preparation the happy thought comes to him to have the vicarious husband fight the duel. He does so and is killed. The cause of all the trouble, the lady, is quite ignorant of this arrangement and thinks the de facto husband is battling with the most invincible sword of the city and that he will get killed, which is her desire. On returning to her house she finds her husband lunching as if nothing unusual had happened. The dramatic climax soon comes when she scornfully taunts him with having some one fight a duel for him and he replies: "Not for me but for you."
The play gives Pirandello the opportunity to display his knowledge of the sentiments and passions of the modern "high life" individual. Although they talk and act and express familiar sentiment in a way that makes one think they are real people, in reality they are unreal. They are taken from the author's imagination rather than from real life.
The second comedy in this volume is much more meritorious than the first. The author portrays characters who well might have existed in the flesh. Gasparina, who has put twenty-seven years of continency behind her and had achieved the direction of a second-class boarding-house, is derided and maltreated by her "guests." The most swagger of her boarders, who has been miraculously saved in a duel which followed a broken engagement, has an original idea. He will make a mock marriage with her and thus establish freedom from further love, annoyance, and duels. She sees in the proposal escape from the boarding-house. In the little villa of the country to which he sends her, under promise that she is not to make herself evident and where he is not to visit her, she blooms like a flower. In due course of time he falls in love again, and in order that he may accomplish matrimony he must free himself from Gasparina. This could be accomplished, as it never was consummated, but the messenger, an old aspirant to her favor, is on the point of having his aspirations realized when the husband in name only sees in Gasparina the woman he really loves. The curtain falls at an opportune moment before any hearts are broken or any blood is shed.
It is one of the plays of Pirandello that has had considerable success on the stage.
He is in reality a finished workman, an accomplished stylist, a happy colorist, and fecund withal. His most important of the stories are "Erma bifronte" ("Deceitful Hermes"), "La Vita Nuda" ("Naked Life"), "La Trappola" ("The Snare"), "E Domani ... lunedi" ("And To-morrow—Monday"), "Un Cavallo Nella Luna" ("A Horse in the Moon"), "Quand ero matto" ("When I was Crazy"), "Bianche e Nere" ("Blacks and Whites"); his romances, in addition to the ones already mentioned, are "I Vecchi e I Giovani" ("The Old and the Young"), and "Si Gira" ("One Turns"), the most recent and poorest of them.
It would be a mistake to convey the impression that Pirandello is universally admired in Italy. His stories and romances have an adventuresome quality that transcend ordinary experience, and his plays attempt to dispense with theatricalness and to substitute for it a subtle analysis of life with corrosive comment, both of which are very much resented.
It is strange that the Freudians have never explained the popularity of plays and novels concerned wholly or largely with sexual relations that infract convention and law as dominancy of the unconscious mind, a "wish fulfilment" of the waking state. It may be assumed that three-fourths of those who see and read them never have, and never contemplate (with their conscious minds) having, similar experiences. They would be scandalized were any one to assume that they approved such conduct. Perhaps the explanation of the hold such literature has upon the public is the same as the interest we have in the accounts of criminals seeking to evade apprehension. It is not that we sympathize in any way with the malefactor. We are lawmaking, law-abiding, law-upholding citizens, and we know he ought not to escape, and, naturally, we hope he will be caught. However, we cannot help thinking what we would do confronted with his predicament. We feel that in his place we could circumvent the sleuths and overcome what would be to the ordinary person insuperable obstacles. Thus we divert ourselves imagining what we would do if we were adulterous husbands, lecherous wives, lubricitous wooers, vicarious spouses, while assuring ourselves we are not and could never be, and plume ourselves that we could conduct ourselves even in nefariousness in such a way as to escape detection or, if detected, to disarm criticism. Meanwhile we enjoy being virtue-rewarded and vice-punished, for it is only upon the stage or in books that it happens, save in exceptional instances.